Cold soba noodle salad and vegetarian curry

I remember when I was younger I used to help my grandma making two meals (lunch and dinner) a day for the family. We live very near to a small open market but big enough to provide all the fresh ingredients such as live stocks, vegetables grown by the people who lived a little bit outside the city. Every morning, my grandma took her basket that made with straw, her conical hat (if you have been to VN, you would have known which hat I am taking about), and asked if me or my sister want to come with her to the market. I always love going to the market because my grandma used to take us to have breakfast at one of the food stands there (pho, hu tieu...), and then of course, we were allowed to have dessert (yes, dessert after breakfast! ;-). We had been lucky because even when my grandfather was put to prison for trying to escape VN when the South VN lost the war, our family did not have enough foods, but we were often given the best stuffs to eat. After breakfast, we went from down to up market, my grandma would stop by to look at the merchandise ;-), bargaining...The whole experience took more than 3h from leaving house to going back home (I guess that explains why I love spending time in the supermarket nowadays-even though the experience is nothing to compare with but still just looking at the different wine labels, or different sort of potatoes or fishes..often relaxes me ;-)).

Once home, my grandma started the prepare everything, then she would cook first the dishes for my grandfather, and there was always something to accompany his wine (snake wine or herbal wine ;-) before he started the real meal with everyone. After meal, my grandma would take the fruits that were offered to Buddha and then she would give everybody an equal part ;-) (often me or my sister would get my grandfather's part because he gave them to us after he receiving his ;-)).

Yes, the love for cooking has come to me because I see it as a way to keep everybody together, I loved it when I tried to make something and my grandfather would say that it tasted good ;-). Even now, I like to cook a lot (and usually for a great number of people), and many different dishes for friends and family, so my guess my dishes are often not well-presented because I learnt that foods had to taste good, and not look good. But of course, a couple of months spent next to the chefs and my favourite TV time (BBC's Sunday Kitchen), I know that good foods should not only taste good but also look good (okey, nothing new here ;-)) but that is to say the main idea is about to make dishes become exquisite when they should be.

I guess I will try to limit the number of guests from now on and try to experience the other side of foods, that means the look of my foods ;-). That would be difficult because I have the tendency to want to have all my friends at once.