“New Years Resolutions:

1. Exercise more (gotta keep the effects of cake at bay somehow)

2. Eat more healthily (ditto.)

3. Learn to cook like my mother.”

I stared at the list in front of me, half-wondering if I should succumb to reality and toss it out before I was forced to admit defeat, or if I should give it a go. Just this time. Just this year.

And as I stared at the piece of blue-lined notebook paper in front of me, black words scrawled across the page, I was startled by the sound of said mother hollering up the stairs at me.

“You want to learn to cook or not?”

Huh?

“Afterwards when you are old you cannot eat cake for dinner you know.”

I hustled down the stairs to see my mother standing in front of the stove. The vegetables were chopped. Her apron was on. It was time to get serious.

“Where’s your camera?” she asked, looking at my empty hands “Vegetables isn’t good enough is it?”

But it is! I mean, they are! And now I know that if I were ever to move out of the comfortable nest that is my family home, I will not have to live on cake. Hurrah!

(Better yet, I’ll be able to cook food that vaguely resembles my mother’s. And oh! What joy that will bring anybody who walks through my door around meal time, for there is nothing quite as settling as a bowl of veges, just like mum made them with a bit of rice underneath to soak up all the tasty.)

Mama-Bite-More’s Homestyle Vege Stir Fry

You will need:

Veges – whatever you have at hand. We used a carrot, half a head of broccoli, a handful of mushrooms and some beautiful sugar peas that we picked up from the markets.

Garlic – about a clove, more if you like garlic.

1/2 tsp Sesame Oil

1tsp Vegetable Oil

2tsp Soy sauce – we used seasoned soy sauce for seafood because it has extra yumminess in it. I don’t know what said yumminess is made from, but boy is it good.

Tapioca starch – about 1/2 tsp. If you don’t have this, use cornflour.

How to do it:

1. Chop your veges up into similarly sized pieces.

2. Finely dice your garlic and add it to the sesame oil, soy sauce and vegetable oil.

3. Here we go! Heat up your wok and toss the sauce mixture in! Watch it bubble! Smell the garlic! Scare away the vampires!

4. Once the steam dies down a touch (about five seconds later) toss in your longest cooking vegetables. In our case, we added the carrot and snowpeas.

5. Keep adding the vegetables, stirring briefly in between additions. We added the broccoli after about 10 seconds, then the mushrooms after another ten seconds.

6. Mix up your starch with about tbsp (or 60ml) of water. You should have a smooth slurry. You’ll know it’s time for the slurry because the colour of the veges has started to pop. Toss that into the wok, stir like crazy, then pop the lid on for 20 seconds. This will allow the sauce to cook and the veges to steam.

7. Pull the lid off! Stir, stir, stir! Marvel at the the rich greenery of the broccoli! The saucy semi-translucency of the mushrooms! The shiny brightness of the carrot and sugar peas!

8. Throw it in a bowl, or on a plate. Try to keep the Bean from chopstick-ing vegetables into her mouth. Give up and chopstick vegetables into your own mouth and get a *Tsschhkk!* from your mother because it’s almost dinner time and why can’t you just wait a second?!

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