My Asian Mom’s Lovable Kitchen Quirks

My mom, Clara Tuyet Thi Nguyen, is a lady through and through, right down to how she manages her kitchen. She has a lot of preferences, which when we were growing up, we interpreted as harsh rules. For example, she loves neatness even down to the fruit. To that end, she trims persimmons to tidy them up and to prevent spoilage. She and my dad would spend hours with the persimmon harvest that my neighbor Dan provided each year. Since my dad fell ill, Mom goes at it alone. She lines up the persimmons with care and makes sure they have space and airflow to ripen well. She respects homegrown fruit.

But even when she buys bananas at the store, she manages their ripeness. Purchased rock hard and green, small chuoi xiem bananas from the Vietnamese market are left to ripen partway, till they are yellow-green. At that point, to ensure the bananas do not bruise one another, Mom cuts them with scissors and gently arranges them. She checks in on them to rotate their positions and eats them according to ripeness. I used to think she was overly persnickety until I started cutting apart my banana bunches.

Below are more of her loveable kitchen quirks. Do share what your mom does!

Small Spoons Rule

These are from my mom’s spice cupboard: MSG, mushroom seasoning powder, and turmeric. When you open up the jars, there isn’t a little shaker goodie on top. She has tiny spoons inside each. Some are tasting spoons, some are sporks and others are little measuring spoons. She uses the spoons to easily dispense small quantities without getting her fingers dirty. It’s her way of measuring pinches and sprinkles as she seasons her food during the cooking process. She and my dad collected these tiny spoons from different sources — Costco food samples, perhaps. They also customize to match the spoons, to the size of the little jars. Along with these from the cupboard, she keeps a refrigerated jar of chopped garlic with a spork stuck into it. The spork was too long for the jar so its handle was folded and made easier to retrieve when needed. Very handy.

Smart Storage

Look inside my mom‘s fridge and she often times has flat lids on things. Instead of using plastic wrap or a pot lid, she will use a plate or a plastic lid so that she can stack things one on top of another. When she has space in her fridge she may use a regular lid with a little knob on it. But otherwise you may see her fridge with two or three stories tall containers of food. That’s how she has been able to feed a crowd nearly instantly. She saves container lids and keeps them in a cupboard within easy reach. It’s smart storage.

Organized Frozen Chaos

There are four refrigerators in my mom‘s house. She has a very large stand up freezer. She also has a side-by-side fridge that is stuffed to the gills with frozen food. It looks chaotic, but everything is labeled. She must keep a file of everything that she has frozen in her head because she knows how old things are. She label things in great detail. I wish I could be so organized. (Yes, the 2020 ginger is alright. I use extra if it tastes weak.)

Dishwashing

My parents moved into a brand new home decades ago and the dishwasher has never been used. Mom repurposed it for storing the most often used serving bowls and utensils. The ancient door’s hinge has sprung, making it heavy and difficult to keep clo6eds. We have to lock and unlock it to open and close the door. How does my mom keep dishes clean? She hand washes everything. The dishwasher was never used because she does not trust it to get dishes pots and pans clean. She also lines her mini processor with a special paper towel cutout that she made; the aim is to prevent mustiness. She lets the parts dry and reuses the cutout.

Planting it Forward

We eat a lot of fresh herbs in our house. To keep replenishing them, Mom plucks most leaves off their stems and leaves some attached. The partly stripped stems are put into water and kept in a sunny spot so that they may root. Mom changes the water every few days, and after roots come out, she plants them in the garden. That’s how she can keep herbs going. I pitch in by buying her starter plants every few years to replenish her stock.

Rooting works well with many herbs; some folks just stick the stem into damp soil but I have not had great luck with that. Regarding cilantro, we eat so much of it that we buy it by the bunch.

Peculiar Yet Practical and Curious

But my mother isn’t all about old fashioned ways. For as long as I know, she wrote down recipes in an orange notebook that she brought to America. Now she maintains a recipe box. She takes collagen for health and also drinks filtered alkaline water. So far so good. She is 87 years strong and we are lucky to spend extra time with her these days.

I regret not appreciating her more when I was younger. She made my top in this photo below and I'm sure she sewed the outfit she wore. I’m working on making it up to her.

Wishing You and Yours the

Happiest of All Mother’s Day!

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