Cooking with Someone

Every Summer, my family plans a trip to go to the beach. I always go with my siblings, parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Needless to say, we have a large family and we even have to rent a large van in order to fit everyone along with our luggages. Since I am the youngest adult, I have to sit in the back of the van while the stack of luggages, cookware, and baby strollers bump into my shoulders and fall onto my head. My grandma always seemingly brings an entire kitchen. She brings her rice cooker along with her pots and pans, spices, and other various ingredients whenever we go so that she can cook dinner for us. We tell her to rest, but she insists on bringing them since she and my grandpa never seem to like the restaurants at the boardwalk. The food is often either too salty or too bland for their taste. One year, I had insisted on assisting her with cooking dinner. I had grown confident since I had been using my parents and my boyfriend as guinea pigs for my new recipes. Reluctantly, my grandma decided to teach me how to make pho, the infamous Vietnamese noodle soup consisting of beef, pork, herbs, fresh vegetables, noodles, and broth. She often made it for me when I was little, excluding the vegetables since I was a picky eater. I remember following her around the kitchen and recording her while she instructed me on what to do. The second my phone pointed at her, she got shy and told me to turn it off. I reassured her that I wanted to record so that I can remember the recipe for future reference, but I really just wanted to capture the moment of the two of us doing something together. We rarely get the chance to spend time together, especially just us two. After putting in all the necessary ingredients into the large soup pot, we rested and ate watermelon by the kitchen waiting for the soup to boil to its usual savory and delicious taste. And once it was time to test the soup a few hours later, I hesitantly reached for a wooden spoon and dipped it into the simmering broth. It tasted like my childhood.