Priceless Dishes

It is not an everyday affair that my children helps me with my chores. On rare occasions when they eagerly offered to help mop the floor for me, I ended up spending another extra half an hour to complete the job. As much as I appreciate their kind assistance, sometimes I am better off that they leave me alone while I whizzed around the house.

It was a usual weekday evening. I was preparing dinner when my elder child dropped by the kitchen. He was trying to kill time while waiting for his turn to 'polish' the ebony and ivory keys (yes, I am one 'lucky' mother to have free 'piped-in' music every evening).

He offered to help me with the cooking.

In my mind, I was telling him 'You should be spending time to solve that mysteriously unsolvable maths question, the stove is not going to give you any inspiration', but what came out from my mouth was "Ok, go get the eggs from the fridge. We will have stir-fry eggs with tomatoes tonight."

Even though I wish that he spent the time on his studies, I know that I am doing myself good. In time to come, I would probably have to chain him to the dinning chair just to have him sit down to have dinner with me. I shouldn't miss golden opportunities like this, especially since it is out of his own will.

The next scene you would see a mother trying her best to slice the ingredients into 'equal' sizes, and a boy cracking eggs using only one hand. A few knocks on the edge of the bowl, with a squeeze and a squash action, the egg flowed through the cracks effortlessly. I inspected the bowl, no tiny bits of egg shells, great! Do you believe that I am not able to break an egg with one hand? I have cracked so many eggs for the past years, and yet, I can only do it with both hands, and I still get egg shells in the bowl, sometimes. I have showed him how to break an egg with both hands, but he does it his way...which I think he finds it cool! This is just like the Chinese saying "初生之犊不怕虎", aka the fearless youth...there is no worries or fear of making a mess, and no silly self-imposed rule that the yolk has to stay in shape and not be broken, even though it was meant to be scrambled anyway!

Few minutes later, he dished out (actually it was pour, slide, push) his master piece from the frying pan. I was very impressed with him since I was almost hands-free throughout the cooking process. It was a simple stir fry dish, with just some oil, tomatoes and eggs, zero seasoning...no salt or pepper. The Chinese cilantro is a treat for his younger brother...who loves to stuff his mouth with parsley and cilantro...what we referred to as 'smelly vegetable'.

He also helped me with this stir-fry bean sprouts dish...one of my favourite dishes. My elder boy was so proud with his master pieces, that he had to make sure his brother (who was so engrossed polishing the black and white keys all this while) acknowledged his effort.

Both dishes cost less than a dollar, in total. But to me, they are priceless.

To cap it off, I was pleasantly surprised to see both boys folding the clean laundry when I was done cleaning up after our dinner. Even though their eyes were fixed on the tv set while working their way through the mountain of clothes, they did help save a few minutes of my time. It was a pleasant evening indeed.