From Cardboard Box Meals to Asian/Hillbilly Fusion: How My Cooking Style Evolved

I love Asian food. Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, it doesn't matter. Something about the flavors and even the experience of cooking these foods appeals to me on many different levels.

Growing up, my mom cooked basic, rural American foods. There was a lot of ground beef, soup beans, and other common type foods presented every night for supper. Now, I appreciate that she always went out of her way to cook hot meals for us every evening after working a full day and am always glad to visit her home on Sunday afternoons when our family gets together for a lunch to catch up on things over one of her home-cooked meals. Her spice cabinet was always minimal with salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, and maybe paprika if she was feeling spicy.

I didn't cook much growing up. My cooking experience went as far as heating up a can of vegetable beef soup and then hot pockets in the microwave after I turned 16 and got my first job in a grocery store. Being able to afford my own foods meant that I had all the great offerings a grocery store could offer a teen in the late 1990's. I never aspired to learn how to cook foods as it wasn't necessary to my survival.

I met my husband and we were married when I was 20. It was a whirlwind relationship with us headed to the altar after only dating two months. During those two months, I never cooked because we would stop by the local Chinese takeout shop for quick dishes to eat together. Once we were married however, I suddenly realized that I had to prepare at least a filling supper every evening.

That first year was filled with any type of meal that I could buy a kit for in a cardboard box. Cheesy noodle somethings and instant flavored potatoes were regular features in our tiny, studio apartment. We didn't have much money even though we both worked and when we were given a deer by a local hunter, we were excited to have meat in the freezer. I quickly found out that fried deer meat got old very quickly.

At some point in those early days, I discovered the Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Meals program on Food Network. These were the early days of the show and I watched in awe as she would bring out foods and spices that I had never dreamed of trying out or even noticed in the store before. I began to copy down some of the recipes and would try them out when we I got the chance to purchase the ingredients. Slowly, I became more confident with preparing the foods and didn't need to write the recipes down and chose to just "wing it" when it came to replicating the foods. My husband was a big fan of Rachael's due to our improving menus and I remember being thrilled when he bought me my first RR knife by Furi with the bright orange handle.

From Rachael Ray, I found Alton Brown and Good Eats. His program being able to show the why's of how foods worked together and the preparation methods gave me even more confidence to recreating meals I had seen or even coming up with my own creations in the kitchen. To this day, my three Good Eats cookbooks are some of my most informative cookbooks and ones that I refer to often.

After having our first child, I left the workforce to focus on being a wife and mother. This was also around the time we had faster internet installed in our home and a new world of recipes was opened up to me. AllRecipes was a favorite site for quick supper ideas. By this time, I could look at a recipe and know if I could change the ingredients used to fit what I had in the pantry and how the flavors would develop together. I of course became a fan of YouTube and would go there to find recipes from time to time though I didn't have any particular channels that I preferred to watch at that time.

One evening Hubbie and I were watching an anime called Rurouni Kenshin. During the show, the characters would frequent an eatery featuring a dish called beef hot pot. My husband mentioned that he would like to try that someday and I set out the next day to figure out how to prepare this Japanese dish to surprise him. This is when I found the channel Ochikeron or CreateEatHappy. She showed how to make a dish called Beef Sukiyaki. I watched in awe as she took a simple approach to making a delicious looking meal in one pot. I went to our local grocery store and bought the closest ingredients I could find which was a little difficult in the rural Appalachian Mountains. I came home and watched the video as I prepared the dish step by step. When it came time to try the dish with my husband, he was extremely happy and impressed that I was able to make such a dish in our home kitchen.

This bit of success was all I needed to push me on to furthering my cooking experience. I subscribed to Ochikeron and from there began watching Cooking with Dog for Japanese recipes. Later on, I was looking for a Korean recipe I had heard about and found Maangchi's YouTube channel. Maanchi was so full of life and excitement for the foods she prepared, I couldn't wait to recreate what I saw her prepare in her kitchen. I became well-versed in Asian ingredients and found a restaurant supply store in a nearby town that also happened to have a small Asian grocery section contained within.

Today I proudly have cookbooks from Ochikeron and Maangchi sitting on the shelf next to my Alton Brown and Rachael Ray volumes. For me it is a kind of display of where my cooking started and where it is today. I prefer cooking and eating Asian foods but my kids still prefer the classic, American meals I make. I try to keep a good combination of meals that we have come to love and a few new surprises mixed in to the weekly menu as inspiration strikes. I think I have come a long way from the cardboard meal in a box of my early wedded years to today Asian-hillbilly fusion cuisine that family and guests have come to expect when they visit our home.