18/09/2025
As the saying goes, we will always learn the most from mistakes. Allow me to share mine so you don’t do what I did. Like the wife Catherine Li has kindly mentioned, I did progress from someone who doesn’t know how to pick up a wok to someone who is happy to experiment and improvise my dishes with the assistance of A.I.
So a couple of hours ago. I was contemplating what to cook and I felt that it’s high time I prepared a rice dish, the last time I cooked rice must have been during Food and nutrition classes almost 30 years ago. When I reached for the container of rice, I noticed a swarm of tiny brown insects crawling around rather menacingly. I didn’t think too much of it as I felt that I took the clean layer on top and didn’t let any of them contaminate my rice.
I went along my merry way, learning how to boil rice and prepare shallots for the first time in three decades. After some thrills and spills , the fried rice was complete and I couldn’t help but to recall the bugs earlier. My wife has a sensitive gastrointestinal system. That could have triggered my thoughts.
Perplexity AI helped me to plan my meal so I figured that it could help me to decide if the rice dish is safe to eat. To my horror, I realised that even though I had steamed and fried it throughly, the bug remnants could still cause problems such as allergies or gastrointestinal problems. I was instantly reminded of the time when wifey had a raw egg and spent hours at the AnE with a terrible food infection. I knew that this is not going to work.
I instantly ordered a fresh batch of food via foodpanda, we will eat that instead. This batch of fried rice will have to be a painful lesson for me. I cannot and will not compromise food safety for myself and my loved ones. Down the bin the fried rice goes.
Begone, fried rice with weevils bits and whatever. I intend to learn this lesson well.
Yours sincerely
A hapless chef who did the right thing.
