When I was a kid, junk food was a mostly predictable sometimes food. It’s not really because my parents were health food advocates so much as they were seemingly forever budget conscious – so a lot of what we ate was made from scratch, or from ingredients bought in bulk and/or at a discount, or even grown in the backyard.
Sometimes my mum would work nights at a nearby Chinese restaurant, and we would get the odd ‘takeaway’ at closing time – my bro and I thought it was sheer luxury to have our pick of the menu. To this day, if I’m in a Chinese restaurant I will struggle to go against my typical orders: homemade dim sims or dumplings, won ton or chicken and sweet corn soup, chicken and cashew, lemon chicken, sweet and sour pork, beef hor fun, and special fried rice.
It probably goes without saying that my folks cooked a lot of Chinese food at home as well – different stuff to what you’d find in a regular Aussie Chinese takeaway joint. A lot of the dishes I loved when I was growing up aren’t what I can find in restaurants – I’m not sure if my parents just made them up, to be honest.
The thing is, these days when I get a craving for trashy eats, it’s a fine line between missing home-cooked food and my body hankering for junk. In hindsight, the times when my fam did lash out on legit takeaway it wasn’t just about fulfilling an urge for fried/fatty food. Not for my parents, anyway.
For them it was a night off from cooking. Or a chance to eat something they liked but didn’t know how to cook. It felt like an extravagant expense for us to do something like dine in at the old school Pizza Hut, Sizzler, or even a Chinese restaurant that mum *didn’t* work at.
A couple of weeks ago, I was immensely pushed for time before I was meant to turn up to a ‘bring a plate’ party. Remembering how overjoyed I felt when a friend brought me bulk chicken nuggets during Lent when I was giving up drive-through/takeaway food, I thought it would be a good idea to bring a bag of assorted fried food to the party. Look, not all heroes wear capes, right?
I must admit, I was somewhat disappointed that despite ordering vast amounts of fried items as part of some kind of family meal deal, there was no bucket. If there’s anything I recall from the warmest, most cholesterol-ridden memories of my childhood, it’s that the best fam times are to be had when you’re outdoors with a group of friends and a seemingly neverending bucket of fried chicken to share.
I wanted to be the bucket-bringer, nay, the fried chicken saviour, of all the seedy partygoers that afternoon… even if it meant that I was the failed adult interpreter of ‘bring a plate’ at the formerly civilised garden party.
I felt that things have sort of come full circle… where I’m now the off-duty cook with a penchant for cuisine I can’t (or shouldn’t) make for myself often. And I’m now earning enough money that lashing out on sometimes food for a party isn’t too much of a stretch.
In a way, I hope my parents are proud.
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