My Dad is a pretty good cook. My parents owned a Chinese restaurant for a few years so he had a lot of practice. He has a good staple of recipes but he can also experiment if he's given a suggestion. One time us kids wanted clam chowder and he made it, not too great the first time. It was more like clam-milk soup. But after a couple more tries he got it down and it was pretty good. New England style of course, Manhattan style clam chowder is almost indistin- guishable from Minestrone soup.

So when Stephanie and I go home, we can usually request one of our favorite meals. One of the meals I like is fried chicken. This is a relatively simple dish to make. Cut up a whole chicken into parts. Dip in some sort of flavoring solution, cover with flour, drop into the deep fryer. Twenty or so minutes later it's done. Or at least that's how I make it, although it's not quite the same when I cook it.

Stew is another popular dish. Either beef stew or, less often, chicken. Dad has potatoes, carrots, peas, onions, some other stuff for flavoring. The beef is some kind of stew beef. Usually eat it with rice. The chicken version we have it with rice or spaghetti.

Curry chicken is yet another dish we like. There's a can of coconut milk, curry powder, potatoes, chicken, probably some other things. It's not hot like the curry you get at an Indian restaurant, although I've never found that curry to be hot either. Once again, good with rice.

Now, my dad can make Chinese food too. It's just not what we grew up with. The kids' idea of Chinese food is stuff like fried wontons, fried rice, pot stickers, chow mein, low mein. But all without vegetables. Like any normal kids, we didn't like vegetables and I especially hate Chinese vegetables.

So another dish that we like is Arroz con Pollo, which I suppose that by the name the exact makeup varies. But the one that my dad makes uses cilantro so it comes out green. Chicken, rice, carrots, peas, a can of beer. When my dad cooks he makes a lot of food. Even with me there we have leftovers, and always have. So after a few days there's lots of leftovers to eat for lunch.

I've also seen another version of Arroz con Pollo that comes out orange. Chicken, rice, carrots, string beans, carrots. Not too sure what spices go into it. That's one of the problems with my cooking. I never paid attention to what spices my dad used, so I get the main ingredients and then pretty much just use salt. This makes my cooking rather bland, although good enough for my standards.

There are a couple of dishes that I don't like. My dad makes this fish stew that's kind of disgusting. It uses a whole fish so you get fish parts everywhere. It tastes quite lemony and it has cauliflowers and peas which I don't like in the soup. My sister doesn't like it either so it's not just me.