Ron's ESL Blogs

My Favorite Food

My mother always cooks special food for special occasions. She usually chooses to cook the small snails with coconut, which is my favorite food, but the first time I hated it.

When I was eight years old, I didn’t eat seafood because I didn’t like the smell of it. One day, I visited my aunt’s house outside of the city. There was a big river in front of her house, and my cousin dived in and caught a lot of small snails for her to cook dinner for me. They smelled disgusting. When she cooked the small snails with coconut for one hour, they smelled delicious and tasted good. Until now, I still love it. On a New Year Day, my parents invited all of my close relatives to spend the day with us. I decided to help my mother to cook my favorite food. When I got up, my mother had been in the kitchen since sunrise. She had already begun to cook but she forgot something. I had to go to the market to pick something up for her such as vegetables, small snails and coconut. When I came home, my mother said “There are a lot of things I haven’t finished yet, so the small snails with coconut is your responsibility.” My mouth dropped open but my mother said “no dice”. I had never cooked it before, but there is a first time for everything. First I have to chop off the head of the snails and put them into salt water for 15 minutes, it would help to remove the sand. While waiting for the snails, I went to wash the Vietnamese coriander and ground it. Then I prepared the coconut milk. Finally I mixed the dressing for the snails (a mixture of coconut milk, Vietnamese coriander, and salt.) and I cooked it for one hour. It was five o’clock in the evening. It was almost time to eat so I went to set the table. My mother had finished her work. And we went to our room to change into our good clothes. When most of my relatives had already arrived and everyone sat down at the table. I brought my dish up. They put the small snails into their mouths and each took one slurp. Everyone said my dish was very delicious and tasted good.

In conclusion, everyone enjoyed my dish. I’m very happy they love it like I do. If you have time you can come over and I will cook it for you to try. You will love the small snails with coconut the same as I do.

- Linh

One of my favorite foods is spicy noodles made by my grandma. I think my grandma makes the best spicy noodles.

I was born in the spicy city of Chengdu, where everyone loves spicy food. When I was 5 years old, my grandma thought that I was old enough to taste spicy food, so she decided to make her best food — spicy noodles. After I finished the day of kindergarten, I was tired and hungry, I ran back home as fast as I could, because I was expecting to eat my grandma’s food. When the spicy noodles had been prepared on the table, I fell to with ravenous appetite, but after I swallowed the noodles, my lips were scorched, and my mouth was “on fire”, I ran to the kitchen, and drunk a lot of water. I thought my grandma was going to kill me by the food poison, but a few minutes later, my tongue stopped curling, and my lips were no longer scorched, the spicy noodles are like drugs on the table, I was totally attracted to the delicious and hot spicy noodles. Even though I drunk a lot of water during the time I was eating the noodles, I felt that I was mind racing, and flying through the air, it was so enjoyable.

My grandma made the best spicy noodles, and her self-made hot spicy flavor was unique. Maybe the noodles are cheap and they are easy to make at any time when you don’t have time to make any fabulous food, but I know even though noodles are simple and cheap, what my grandma put into the noodles is not only her unique hot spicy flavor, she also put all her love in the noodles which is always priceless to me.

- Meng Ying