That’s great 
. My parents never forced me to eat anything either (only to try it a little so I knew I disliked it, and obviously not things I’m allergic to), because we ate mostly healthy anyways 
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I can remember cold cooked spinach. UGH. I like it raw or warm and barely cooked or in things. Cold and cooked plain is nasty, at least it was to my young palate. Never tried it as an adult.
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I like warm cooked spinach and raw spinach …
But cold cooked spinach? Yuk! Who would eat that? 
O, sure, over the years you can improve or just do some things differently cause it better fits your circumstances. But the first “expert” you meet is usually your mom, so you initially do it her way. I also grew up with the idea that rice needs to be drained after cooking. Then at some point my aunt had found some new way of cooking a rice dish: just throw the rice and all the other ingredients together in a pot, add a certain amount of water and cook till all the water is gone … My mom adopted her method for a while but later she changed back to “normal”.
In the end, when it comes to cooking, my mom taught me things and I taught my mom things.
Luckily mine didn’t either. 
They didn’t force me to eat boiled potatoes , Brussels sprouts , broad beans (my mom was the only one loving those and by the time she finally had convinced my dad to like them as well it turned out they made him sick, so by now I wouldn’t even want to eat them anymore) or stamppot zuurkool .
And when I finally let them know I wanted to become a vegetarian, they cooperated as much as possible. It was harder at the time, especially in a small town, so in the first period I had to make a concession on the cheese, as vegetarian cheese was not available in my town at the time, but they would buy what little choice of vegetarian burgers were in the supermarket at the time and never forced me to eat any kind of meat.
I guess it’s also because my mom understood what it was like to be forced to eat something you don’t like. In her childhood her doctor had claimed she was too skinny so she was forced to eat yogurt with sugar every single day. For the rest of her life she detested all sour dairy and would even know whether any kind of food had some form of sour dairy as one of its ingredients when others wouldn’t even taste it.
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You have great parents, and all parents should be like that. My two adult kids have different taste in food, and I have to cook 2 different kind of meals (maybe that’s why I got FED UP of cooking). One loves spaghetti and the other one hates it so, if i make spaghetti, I have to make something else for the one who doesn’t like spaghetti.
I hate seeing them eating microwaveable stuff but I’m hoping they learn a lesson. So far, it doesn’t face them.
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Thank you. Unfortunately by now I don’t have them anymore, though. 
That must be complicated. Is there ANYTHING they both like? Or maybe you could give one of them spaghetti, the other one rice and then both the same sauce or whatever?
Or maybe their next birthday present could be a cookbook!
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I still can’t picture it. So do you put the spoon face down causing it to trap air in the spoon face with the handle in the the water resting on the rice acting like leaver? so when the water is just right, the weight of the metal spoon is overcome by the trapped air, so the tip of the spoon handle is where it is “standing” on the rice?
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I thought you couldn’t mean standing on the tip? But it is! So it’s like staking a post in a flooded field. Never seen that before, did you learn that from your parents?
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Yes, is a custom in my Island to teach us girls how to measure the water in the rice this way.
My paternal grandmother (RIP), was the one who taught me to cook.
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My mom’s mom wouldn’t let her in the kitchen so she didn’t learn to cook until after she was married. Then she had 5 kids in 8 years. My sisters were better cooks than my mother was, so I learned from them. We had a rule that you had to eat everything on your plate. Not the best practice and she would always put a small amount of spinach on my plate. I’d eat it last and nearly be sick.
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Hahaha there is this Korean side dish that is exactly that. Seasoned cold, blanched spinach - not the kind that we usually eat, but the Asian spinach. It’s actually quite tasty 
But cold, plain (often overcooked) spinach? No, thank you.
A lot of foods that I didn’t like as a child I learned to like more, especially after experimenting with different cuisines and cooking methods. For example, I hate cooked mushy Brussel sprouts. But roasted whole or halved Brussel sprouts or charred mandoline sliced Brussel sprouts with a miso sauce is one of my favorite things now 
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Interesting. And you have a restaurant near you that serves this?
I still someday want to try a salad with (raw) Brussels sprouts. Maybe that’s better than the cooked ones. And yes, the cooking method, other ingredients etc. can all make a difference. I do eat potatoes … just not plain boiled (Yuk!). But potatoes in a stir-fry dish or in soup? Yum! Mashed potatoes or stamppot or okay too. French fries, potato chips, all fine. Just not those big, round, stinky things that are often served with a traditional Dutch meal, hahaha.
As a vegetarian I eat quite a lot of beans and peas. But I never eat them without other ingredients. At the very least some onion, but preferably with lots of tasty vegetables.
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I was thinking of 시금치 나물 (Korean spinach side dish), too.
@mirjam_465,
You can blanch the spinach for about 10-15 sec, then season with salt, minced garlic, a little soy sauce, sesame seeds and sesame oil. Or you can use dwenjang (soybean paste) seasoning. Korean spinach is bigger and a little “sweeter?” and more flavorful though. You can eat it as a side dish with rice or add it as a inside stuffing/topping to Kimbop (seaweed rolled rice, that looks like sushi).
Same here! Including that spinach dish, and roasted halved Brussels sprouts. I never had it with miso sauce though.
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My son is a vegetarian and I just looked up how to make Hot Pot in an Instant Pot the vegetarian way. It looks interesting.
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@ninjas_with_onions yup, happens to me quite a lot too. Also, having to address everyone to eat by hierarchy before starting a meal and then allowing those elder than you (usually grandfather and grandmother) to eat first. If you come from big family like mine, then you have to be quick to grab the food otherwise there’ll be none left
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We don’t observe as much the addressing by hierarchy to eat in our circle.
We wait until all the food is laid out, then the ‘ice breaker’ host/cook (or the hungriest ) would announce “let’s eat” to start the race, followed by everyone else’s courteous announcement in general to all at the table to “let’s eat” after which it’s chopsticks at dawn for every man, woman and child for themselves to the food! 
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The internet is going crazy and trying to cook the recipe. I’m laughing so much at their cringe
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Is it a recipe from an Asian?
The first thing Asians learn to cook is rice and to use is chopsticks!
(Is it like Italians and pasta??)
For the fried rice, we can use new rice.
Normally we use rice leftovers from previous days to fry it before it’s not edible enough.
We can put anything in the rice, cut sausages or ham, or just crambled eggs, cut green beans, peas…
+Chili Asian sauce and/or soy sauce/ Maggi sauce and/or fish sauce (yulu sauce).
In Asia, if a woman doesn’t know how to cook rice or cook, it is a shame and people might tell: she’s not a good wife.
It tends to change with young generations.
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It’s a recipe from a cook named Patel (don’t know how to spell) and I’m guessing she’s of Indian or another similar country descent?. @ninjas_with_onions posted a comedian reacting to the original video a couple of posts back. That video went viral
I think in all cultures where they have traditional rice dishes, they learn to cook rice as one of the first things Recently I saw the first episode of the Paik father partly and some of the people he was teaching how to cook didn’t know how to cook rice / measure how to cook rice. Some people didn’t even have rice at home - only the microwaveable kind I can buy those Korean microwave rice here too, but it’s almost 2 euro’s per bowl, which is way too expensive! I don’t have a problem cooking my own rice
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We don’t own a microwave and I can’t remember how old I was when I learned to cook rice. We never had a rice cooker either but I do like using my Instant Pot that I’ve had for maybe 4 years (maybe less). We use it for everything including rice. It turns out great. Congee I think is still best on the stove-top. I stir it every 15 min and let it go for an hour if I only use a 1:8 ratio.
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I assume this was classic British sarcasm when you said “our beloved BBC”. I’m not sure the BBC can be described in that way any more.
unfortunately
She pretty much completely drained off that rice does she want people to eat cardboard because that’s what it’ll be like.
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