One of my very first attempts at cooking was not a voluntary one. When I was younger, my mother, a talented cook, had insisted that I learn at least one domestic skill, so cooking it was. She tasked me with an essential dish of Vietnamese cuisine. “Wash the rice,” she said through her thick accent. It sounds simple enough now, but back then my mother might as well have been speaking Greek. I never bothered to observe how she washed the rice, let alone do it myself.

Wash the rice. Huh. Well, I’ve washed my hair before. And I’ve washed my hands before. How hard could it possibly be? So, putting two and two together, I proceeded to dump a sacrilegious amount of dish soap into the rice pot. I lathered the rice up like I would my hands and kicked up a massive amount of foamy bubbles. My mother shrieked, shooed me out of the kitchen, and promptly dumped the rice out, grumbling to herself about how her daughter was hopeless. After wasting about four cups of perfectly good rice, my first foray into the world of cooking had ended up a (hilariously) miserable failure.

I’m proud to say that I’ve made some major strides since then. I wasn’t deterred from the first failure and kept at it through the years. If I may brag for a moment, I can cook quite extensively now. My mother even consults me to taste her new recipes. Food has become a huge part of my budding adult life. I seem to be an exception to the rule though. Out of my entire friend circle, only a handful can cook beyond instant ramen and fried eggs.

Of course, there are some obvious reasons for this. My friend group is composed of either students or young professionals; everyone has hectic and often erratic schedules. There simply isn’t enough time in the day to consistently cook balanced meals. Why bother when fast food is abundant and cheap? You could literally order, pay for, and finish eating a full meal from McDonald’s in the time it takes to go grocery shopping. Cooking is just not as important as how fast you can stuff your face and move on with your life. That being said, this is the norm for most adults. Everyone in this day and age is busy with work and school, and yet plenty of adults manage to cook regularly. My friends are all intelligent, competent people. So what exactly is it about my generation that makes it so difficult for us to cook?

If I may take a step back, my friends have much more in common than just a busy work schedule. We are all children of immigrants, albeit from different countries. The food was arguably the most accessible facet of a culture; when millennials like me don’t know how to cook, there is understandably a “missing piece” so to speak. I had a huge detachment from my own Vietnamese identity when I didn’t know how to cook the food. People stand to learn a lot about their roots when they learn the cuisine. But many people my age can’t even be bothered to set foot in the kitchen. They never tried or their parents never bothered to teach them. This is not from a lack of oversight; on the contrary, it was due to our parents being “too good” at parenting. Our immigrant parents ensured that we never went with empty stomachs because most of them have experienced the hunger pangs. The fact that we never felt the need to learn how to cook is a sign that our parents kept us well-fed. Expressions get lost in translation through accents and language-bouncing, but feeding your child was not one of them. Preparing a meal for a loved one has always been a universal sign of affection.

In an oversimplified nutshell, I sucked at cooking because my mom is too good at cooking, and I’m sure many of your parents are too. When they can’t say “I love you” because their English is too broken, they serve you a warm plate of food instead; when you eat their cooking, it says “I love you” back. When I learn a new recipe, I always think about who I'd share this meal with. It's a clear sign that cooking is still an act of caring. I guess this is just a really convoluted way of saying, “thanks for the food, Mom.”