By Hook or by Cook

One of the things I love doing these days is to cook.

Cook and cook and cook.

And store.

I had never imagined that meal prepping can be so fulfilling.

I've come to love spending Sunday afternoons labouring over the stove to cook up big pots of food, portioning them out, and then freezing them for the rest of the week.

Stanley my sex bunny friend worries about my newfound hobby.

"You're so damn inward you're acting like a Martha Stewart," he says.

"And you're so damn outward you're acting like a Martha Farker," I replied.

My newfound hobby is actually inspired by Sasha Natasha, my university classmate who's career woman by day and Stepford Wife by night.

Sasha - or Sasa as we call her - loves her kitchen.

You'll love it too if you'd stepped foot in her magazine-featured condo unit, which boasts a lovely kitchen island.

It's literally state of the art.

Her kitchen appliances are also very high tech.

And pretty useless.

I remember questioning Sasa the value of buying a $200 pot, made purely out of copper which is fully capable of conducting heat - including the bloody handle.

"It's French. It's Mauviel 1830. And I went to great lengths to get it," Sasa said, feeling slightly amused by my lack of taste, as if it were layman knowledge to know about vintage pots.

I asked if Stanley knew what Sasa was talking about.

Stanley, who has heard me speak of Sasa, and is one with lots of taste, was appalled.

"You need to introduce Grindr or Tinder to that girl," Stanley told me urgently.

"I've acquired vintage French through those apps - for free - and trust me, they also have great lengths," Stanley said with pride.

But Sasa does have other nifty kitchen gadgets - such as an automated wine opener that does all the unscrewing and sucking of the cork out for you.

Stanley was naturally intrigued by that product when I told him about it later.

That night, Sasa messaged me to say she's meal prepping.

The two of us had always been in touch, having been through thick and thin in university, which normally revolves around hanging out at the campus cafe, or having rowdy house parties at someone's place.

I'm making collagen soup tomorrow, Sasa announced to me that day.

And it'll take 10 hours.

I immediately thought of her gas bills, but with the Stepford Wife, gas bills, water bills, all bills are no issue.

What is an issue to Sasa though, is her health.

Sasa, unlike Stanley, is very careful and particular with what she chooses to put in her mouth.

Collagen soup keeps her young, she'd say.

Stanley, who hasn't met Sasa in person, raises objections when I relayed that bit of info to him.

"Surely it doesn't take that long... the ones that I take - which  keeps me young - needs only 10 minutes of my skillful extraction," Stanley said matter-of-factly.

I can bet that Sasa and Stanley won't be dinning together anytime soon.

Apparently, Sasa has to use 10 litres of water to boil chicken feet and bones to death.

Sake is added and constant stirring is needed, a task that no doubt will give you the python-sized biceps that Carl my dense friend has, by the end of the assignment.

The next day, mid-way into her culinary project, Sasa sent me a video of her large bubbling pot of milky goodness.

"My broth" was her caption.

When I forwarded it to Stanley, he replied with a video of his bathtub, also captioned "my broth".

Not to be outdone, Stanley also offered a follow-up video.

"You want to see my milky goodness?"

Oh my goodness. Hell no.

Back to meal prepping please.

It's a very therapeutic activity.

Plus, I get to be in charge of planning hearty meals for the week.

Among the things I'd prepped: Chicken curry, meatball sauce for pasta, fried rice, stir-fried ginger pork.

And with a microwave, I get easy, warm meals after a long day at work.

But truth be told, the joy of meal preps has its origins with my boys Carl and Stanley.

In our younger days, we loved having cookouts.

Sometimes, it'd be at Carl's place when his parents are out of town.

Sometimes, it's at J's.

Most times, it'd be at my place before I moved overseas for my current job.

Those cookout sessions were really fun.

We would typically start our day with hawker breakfast, then stroll along Cold Storage, each grabbing ingredients for the dish we'd prepare.

Stanley always insists on preparing tang yuan for some strange reason.

We'd then lug those fresh ingredients and get to work.

Music is supplied, wine is poured and passed around before we each channelled our inner Master Chef.

For Stanley though, his inner Master Chef was literal.

The chef who was briefly in Stanley whipped up a good meal for him after their hookup.

Stanley was rightly impressed with that encounter that he would always share that romantic One Night Stand at Christmas parties.

As you can imagine, time passes very quickly during our cookouts - there's free flow of wine, and Stanley's never-ending flow of sex stories.

Often, by the time we sat down for dinner, we're already filled with laughter.

Cooking alone overseas reminds me of those happy cookouts.

While I can invite my new friends over to a meal or have such cookouts, I don't do that because cookouts have a very special place in my heart, and it's selfishly reserved for my gang of Stanley, Carl and J.

I relayed that to the boys in our group chat the other night.

Stanley said: "I'm so happy we have a special place in your heart."

"But," Stanley said, suddenly feeling all nostalgic with his old fling the Master Chef, "the true way to a man's heart is through the stomach... but only after making a trip first through his anus."



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Adam's stories are based on real life events and inspired by real people