By Isa Ghani

Daily Titan Multimedia Editor

If you live with your parents, you’re lucky. You get nice, home-cooked meals. Your mother, father or another adult figure in your household seems to have the innate ability to make delicious dinners, cooked with tender loving care. I don’t live with my parents so what do I get? I get bacon five times a day.

That’s right, I can eat bacon five times a day because I live on my own and cook my own meals. I can eat bacon five times a day just because I can. I can put bacon on rice, bacon in spaghetti, even bacon on my ice cream if I wanted. The possibilities are endless and – in most cases – delicious.

Bacon could be the one thing that might make chicken soup taste better. I really hate chicken soup, but with some bacon in it, it might not be so bad. I wouldn’t know because I don’t eat chicken soup ever.

I love how in America, bacon has become a very versatile product. Bacon bits are a common condiment that can make anything taste awesome – you can buy them pre-chopped in a jar, ready to sprinkle on your meal. Genius!

My mother is a professional chef, so back home I had delicious home-cooked meals, made with mom’s own recipes.

They also had the added bonus (or drawback) of being healthy, so no bacon was allowed in the house.

When I moved away from home for the first time I realized I was free. I could eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.

Shall I have ice cream for breakfast? Sure! Can I eat fried chicken at midnight? Of course!

Do I ever have to eat chicken soup ever again? Thank God no, because I really hate chicken soup.

As you can probably imagine, I went crazy when I first came here.

I learned how to cook – at least the lazy, unhealthy college student way of cooking – that usually involved the microwave and clever attempts at making Top Ramen more interesting.

Here’s a hint on how: it involves (you guessed it) bacon.

So I cooked tasty, albeit extremely unhealthy, meals all the time.

If I wanted to make loaded mashed potatoes with more bacon in it than potato, I would.

If I felt like a BLT without the lettuce and tomato, I just fried myself some bacon.

On one occasion when I felt like eating roast chicken, I bought and roasted a whole chicken for my roommate and I. It was finger lickin’ good. I learned layering strips of bacon on top of a chicken when roasting really brings out the flavor of … well, bacon, in the chicken.

I realized between mouthfuls of bacon-infused chicken, that this is an incredible incentive to move out of your parents’ house as soon as possible.

I didn’t have to eat my vegetables, I could eat at weird times of night and I could start my day with a big plate of delicious, unhealthy goodness if I so chose.

About 6 months into this, I slowly realized the reason why my mom refused to have bacon in the house.

Eating a lot of meat isn’t very good for you. Meat is fattening, especially when not consumed with enough dietary fiber (found in vegetables) which helps absorb some of the fat content of meat.

Fiber also helps smooth out your excretory activities.

These eating habits lead to the inevitable freshman 15 – except in my case, I measured in kilograms.

Making matters worse is the fact that the kinds of foods I am used to back home – rice with cooked meat and vegetables, while not exactly healthy, contain much lower levels of saturated fat and cooking oil than a regular meal in America.

A normal carbohydrate accompaniment to a meal back home would be rice – just plain boiled white rice.

Here, a typical side would be something along the line of french fries.

The difference between a potato deep fried in oil and rice boiled in plain water is obvious.

Nevertheless, after a combination of those factors, I got fat. Or as some would say, fatter. My cravings for home-cooked meals increased.

There were mornings I would wake up tasting Malaysian food in my mouth. I realize I missed what I took for granted for so long – my mom’s home cooking.

When I found out I was going back for summer, forefront on my mind was the fact that I could eat delicious home-cooked meals again.

For days and weeks I dreamed about all the traditional Malaysian dishes like nasi lemak, kai fan, char kuey teow.

When I finally got home and rang the doorbell I was salivating, thinking of the feast I would enjoy for the next couple of weeks.

I settled down in my house after being away for a year, wondering what home-cooked wonder I would have that night. Steak? Seared salmon? Roast chicken?

The suspense was killing me, but I knew whatever gastronomic delight my mom pulled out of her chef’s hat would be amazing.

So you can imagine my disappointment when my mom cheerfully served up chicken soup because it just so happened it was what they were having for dinner that day.

That was when I muttered: “Damnit, where is the bacon when you need it?”