Almost every day, for the past 16 years, I have cooked for myself. I no longer do these days. My heart is just no longer in it.

Cooking used to bring me great joy. It was one of those things that combined both art and science, the perfect activity for the person with cross-wired brain hemispheres. I enjoyed experimenting with unfamiliar ingredients, and a relished finding new uses for familiar ones. There even was a book I used to scribble in, to make sure I could reproduce my inventions.

I drew great joy watching people’s face light up when they liked a certain viand I had concocted. But things did not always turn out the way I planned it to. On several occasions I remember starting the meal with a warning, followed by a prayer for the well being of those gathered.

I’ve never looked on cooking as a chore. Actually, I think it brings me peace. So why not engage in it more often? I wondered about this myself. My answer? Back then, I was inspired.

This was the type of nonsense I would pull off… and I would even make a menu for it.

My picture of happiness finds me in a house with a well equipped kitchen, no… not one of those modern day kitchens where your microwave triples up as an oven and a dishwasher. I want a kitchen with a thick stone counter top, preferably worn smooth from the years… so I can roll pastry and pasta on it. And I want ample dangling pots and pans, each with their own personality. Oh, and a tajine. I’ve always wanted a tajine. Actually, a few tajines would be ideal.

I’ve always wanted to grow stuff I could cook. Onions, potatoes, spring onions, garlic, curry leaves, coconuts, bananas, chilli… and BASIL. I think I’m guaranteed a spot at the bottom of the food chain in my next life, considering the number of basil plants that have met their demise in my hands.

If you were to ask me today, I’d tell you this. That the most important ingredients for good cooking are time, peace of mind and good company.

Drammamine Delusions:
They swabbed my camera for explosive residue. If I ran, the two soldiers no more than 20 feet away from me would have shot me. They would probably have shot to maim just so they would be able to ask me questions like, “who sent you?” And in failing to appropriately answer their simple-difficult questions that clearly do not apply to me, they would probably send for an Arabic translator.

As a precaution the airport would be evacuated and scanned brick to brick for bombs. Thousands of Americans would start to hate me for I would have been the the reason they would not be with turkey, cranberry sauce and their family on Thanksgiving, not thinking for a second that, instead of being mad, they should be thankful that they were not the one roiling in pain because of a bullet behind their knee as armed soldiers and translators rattled their brain with simple-difficult questions and Arabic babble. But they did not find exlosive residue on my camera. So I did not have to run. And they did not have to shoot me. And I was on the plane to Oakland International a couple hours later.

Touchdown Oakland:
Hui Chin and I chose to fly Southwest because they listen to the little people. It was $39 to Oakland on Thanksgiving afternoon and $59 back to LA early Monday morning. But low prices aren’t the only reason to fly Southwest. They’re more on time than other airlines, Southwest employees are generally nicer, during the flight they occasionally sing you funny songs and tell jokes over the PA, they’ve got better ads on TV and they serve salted peanuts instead of pretzels on the plane.

The flight to Oakland took slightly less than an hour. From the airport, we took a $2 shuttle to the closest BART station (Bad Ass Rail Transit) which happened to be at The Colliseum, home of the Raiders. Touchdowwwwwn Oakland.

Do the Bart man!:
There was a really friendly black guy who worked at the BART station who helped us out with how to get tickets to where we needed to go, and back. Stopping only about five times to pick up and drop off passengers, we were in Union Station, San Francisco in no time. It was getting dark when we got there so Hui Chin and I wasted no time getting to the hotel.

They’ll treat you right at the Cartwright:
The cheapest (without too dangerous), most geographically strategic place we could find on the internet was the Cartwright Hotel. Their selling point was their friendly service and we got a taste of that service as we checked in; both Hui Chin and I had a a glass of wine in our hands as we were escorted up to our room.

The Cartwright wasn’t a five star hotel, or even a four star. But it works. We had a mini bar, a TV, City Guides, Queen-sized bed and our own bathroom (some of the places we looked into had common bathrooms. Yucks