Cloud Nine Had Some Turbulence Yesterday

I was in a fantastic mood yesterday. Very engaged, excited to be a global citizen and make a difference in the world! I am taking care of myself physically…yeah, go me!
Of course, the realist and Tibetan Buddhist that I am, I knew that this feeling could not last forever. I also knew that preparing for whatever bad thing was coming next was pointless because it will always be unexpected and it will always throw me on my ass. So I decided to enjoy myself with company and let it come. Not like I could do anything about it anyway.
Had a homecooked dinner with friends. Relaxed.
Then felt suddenly ill.
Very ill.
Oh sweet Jesus ill.
Then I combed through my food, and found meat. Pieces of meat.
I suppose I should have mentioned earlier that I am a vegetarian. My friends are not. But they promised to carefully make sure that no meat got anywhere near my food.
Someone later told me that the chef was not as careful as she could have been.
So my meat allergy/intolerance kicked in. I was so miserable for the next 5 hours.
I accepted it with as much grace as I could.
I suppose it’s lucky I didn’t have a peanut issue.

Mmm…

I had kimchi last night. It’s been a while. Luckily there is a really excellent and authentic Korean store in Ithaca, an hour’s drive away. One of my friends is from South Korea, and she had a big jar of it. It’s really a fun thing to eat. She told me, “Well if you like kimchi, you’ll do fine in Seoul. You’re the first American I’ve seen that likes it,” but then the small international group that I was with made comments that of course I liked it, I’m Russian after all. As if that has anything to do with it.

Mother Me

Step back FreshFoods, this is even more intense! Mother, a Singaporean company,  gives you the experience of cooking your own meals…without having to go shopping or chopping. You order the recipe you want, and they send you everything in neat little bags. Depending on how much effort you want to put into it, they will do pretty much all the steps for you.

From their webspace:

Mother is about the tradition of homecooked meals.  It’s about sitting down and connecting with friends, family or lovers.  It’s about how it feels to serve something delicious to someone special, and watch their face when they take that first bite.  It’s about being able to say “I made this!”.

Mother is about making it easy for you to cook as often, or as seldom as you like.

Too tired to go to the supermarket after work?  We do the shopping for you.

Not confident about your cooking skills?  We provide step-by-step instructions.

Only cooking for yourself? Most of our recipes are single servings that can be multiplied for a party, or for just you & the telly.

Don’t want a bunch of food decomposing at the bottom of your fridge?  We send you the ingredients in just the right quantities so there’s no waste.

Don’t want to spend the whole evening in the kitchen? Most of our recipes can be made in 30 mins, and we offer an option to do all the prep work to speed things up even more.

They sent you all the ingredients in little neat bags with step-by-step directions. I suppose this is a step-up from frozen dinners…and not nearly as terrifying as that add-water-and-shake pancake mix. I could see this Mother-Me thing spreading quickly in the states. Especially the allure of making it look as if you “cooked it yourself.” We keep chasing as this elusive “I cooked it myself,” while paying for products to simulate this, rather than making time in one’s life to have enough time to actually cook it yourself, if its so important to you. Sure, not at all people have this luxury, and instant, fast-foods have been the saviors of some working families. But those families cannot afford this Mother-Me product. They actually go to the supermarket.