THERE is an old, sexist joke that goes like this: Q: Why are kitchen appliances white?
A: Brides wear white, don’t they?
When I got married, I opted for a modern, lilac-coloured gown instead, and nobody dared to give me any kitchen appliances for wedding presents.
Despite my mother’s best efforts, I was resolutely antihousework, ate out all the time, and wouldn’t have touched a food processor or slow cooker with a ten-foot pole.
If you had told me five years ago that I would be in rapture over an oven, I would have scoffed.
But that is exactly what happened last week. While most women would have been insulted if their husbands had bought them an oven as a gift for a special occasion, I dragged mine to Best Denki, picked out a steel convection oven, made him pay for it, and then thanked him for my “present”.
Why the 180-degree turn in my attitude? It’s not because I am unleashing my inner- Martha Stewart (I fancy myself more the hot-tempered, scary Gordon Ramsay model).
But the oven has helped draw my family even closer.
Ever since we got it, my four-year-old son Julian has been poring over his First Activity Baking Book daily trying to decide what to make.
His papa and I help him as he gathers his baking tools, measures out the ingredients, sifts, whisks and mixes them in a big bowl, and pops the trays filled with muffins, cupcakes or brownies into the oven.
Flour and sugar inevitably gets spilled. Julian always gets his hands dirty. And his younger brother Lucien watches from the sidelines with as much fascination as a six-month-old baby can muster, gurgling happily when we put down the wooden spoons to chuck him under the chin.
Observing Julian in the kitchen, the kiasu parent in me notes happily that he is learning about mathematical concepts like weight, volume and time, while honing character traits like patience, attention to detail and the ability to read recipes.
In time, I can sneak in some science lessons about why baking soda causes the flour to rise, or how an oven works. But what really gives me the warm fuzzies is seeing father and son working side by side – two faces so alike set in identical expressions of concentration.
They trawl supermarket aisles hand-in-hand in search of obscure baking supplies and get excited over grease-proof paper to line loaf pans.
“I don’t get it,” a single female friend of mine commented recently, after I clapped my hands girlishly while thinking of my oven (yet again).
Like the bride I had been, she felt no inclination to cook at home, much less bake for leisure.
But as the cakes and pastries pile up in my home, I am sure of one thing: It is not the size, brand, price or power of your oven that matters; it’s who you use it with.
And nothing gives me greater pleasure than to assist my very own pint-sized baker.
We bake, therefore we bond.
[email protected]
For more my paper stories click here.
