The essence of cooking

Ahh. If there's one thing cliche every exchange student tells everyone back home, it has to be that of independence. You realise and appreciate how easy it is to eat about in Singapore, be it home-cooked food by parents or hawker centres selling cheap (and I really mean cheap) food. There's even 24-hour supper places you can hop over to in the middle of the night if you feel a tinge of hunger.

Not in Denmark.

For starters, it gets dark around 4.30pm, or at least during this winter season. And there's no culture of supper-ing. Danes usually eat a hot dog/cold sandwich for lunch, and a heavy meal for dinner. So for us Singaporeans adapting to food and culture here, our way of survival is cooking our own "chinese"-style meals. Surprisingly, I wasn't the only one who brought up a rice cooker (yuanheng and songning brought one each too!), but I was the only one with the privilege of baggage allowance to bring up an incredible 10kg of rice. *sticks tongue out*

Anyway, the point I was going to make is that of independence and how much time we set aside walking (until we buy a bike) to the supermarket at the town centre to shop for groceries. We not only have to think of:
- what we want to eat,
- how we want to cook it and how many people it will feed,
- how long we think it'll last in the refrigerator (since there's no freezer compartment),
- how heavy the food we buy will be (since we have to use our own plastic bags/carriers),
but also the preparation time before cooking the food.

Whilst tonight was only the 2nd time Lin Chang and I tried our hand mixing every damn sauce with most dishes, we still managed to impress the other Singaporeans with some methods/details of cooking, like chopping garlic to put in the oil and adding cornflour to create the stickiness in any gravy. With every luck, we managed to whip up 3 dishes and a soup in an hour. When school kicks in full-swing, we'll have less time.




After dinner I tried mixing up a flaming lamborghini which failed to light up. Chang and I both had a shot of a relatively warm drink before I made up something light for the rest. We went on to coffee, tea, and bridge before heading back to our rooms for the night. Last day of Introduction Week happens tomorrow, and my group is supposed to make salad for the dinner.

For now, the bed's calling.