It's all about presentation...

I have to confess... I love food. I love the smells of food. I love the taste of food. I just love the very look of food. Which makes it all the harder for me to be the kind of foodie I want to be (sigh... I will sadly never be an Iron Chef judge) because of my allergy to certain foods, though this actually makes my husband quite happy on account of him being able to eat more of what I can't and won't eat (I've only lately started eating cilantro again and it's barely... LONG story there!).

I've never quite possessed the taste buds necessary to be a badass chef, nor have I the skills (though I'm very proud that I made little flowers out of carrot slices for a particular clay pot once). Suffice it to say that the food I cook is definitely edible and considering I haven't had much time to really indulge in fine cooking, the fact that I can put anything together at all has been a feat in itself. Fortunately for me, my grandmother being the awesome cook that she is, gave me a great lesson in cooking. I had made dinner one night in an attempt to NOT consume the usual grandmother-fare (see "Hazards of Salad") which was very simple: steamed rice, steamed chinese sausage, steamed eggs, and stir-fried cabbage with dried shrimp. Granted, two out of three were steamed and didn't really require any extra effort on my part but I DID cook the cabbage (stir-fried with some garlic and a little bit of chicken broth)! In fact, my husband and I agreed over dinner that night how nice it was to have a simple dinner and how refreshing it was to eat a plain vegetable dish. I had made quite a bit of it that night and was, in fact, the only thing remaining as leftovers.

The next night, I had come home a bit later than usual and even though I had told my grandmother that I would cook dinner, I had returned to find dinner already made. One of the items I saw cooked and ready to eat was my leftover cabbage, only it wasn't really my leftover cabbage. It resembled my simple stir-fried cabbage dish of the night before except that this one seemed to have huge chunks of chicken in it along with a visible layer of oil coating just about every nook and cranny.

"Grandma, did you recook my cabbage?" I asked rather incredulously.

"Yes, I added some chicken!" She replied happily.

"Why did you add the chicken?"

"So the dish will look prettier!"

So there you have it.