My mum can beat up your mum (Flavours of Youth: Netflix)

Netflix recently released a series of 3 shorts stories presented in a movie called 'Flavours of Youth'. I wholeheartedly advise everyone to go watch it, but it's the first story in particular that got my brain ticking.

Netflix recently released a series of 3 shorts stories presented in a movie called 'Flavours of Youth'. I wholeheartedly advise everyone to go watch it, but it's the first story in particular that got my brain ticking.

The first story, titled 'Rice Noodles' (no spoilers, don't worry I got you xx) is about a man who reminisces over the taste of the rice noodles that he would eat with his grandmother as a child when his parents were busy with work. The noodles were handmade and he found such childlike wonder in how the noodles could be so clear yet so flavourful. He speaks of these noodles so beautifully and I started to realise that I could relate very much the same. Not necessarily with noodles but with the feelings of nostalgia associated with food, taste and smell.

My mother is absolutely the most talented cook I've ever had the honour of knowing in my life and her food is always perfect. To this day I have never had any food, be it in a restaurant or someone's house, that has exceeded the flavour of my mum's food.

Now I will hold my hands up and admit that their could be bias considering she is my mother, and I will be the last person to say that bias is a bad thing.

There is no other rush of emotions and sensory overload like the smell of walking into a warm house after a long day of school walking home in the cold to smell my mums' chicken curry boiling away; ready just in time for me to get changed and sit down to eat. My glasses fogging up from the heat, my lungs filled with smells of chicken and my tongue flooding with hunger.

As I'm writing this I came to the realisation that it would actually be far more practical for mum to start cooking in the morning. Up until just now, I never really questioned why mum would always be finishing off her cooking as I got home. I now realise that it's because she would wait to cook in order for my siblings and I to have fresh and warm food as we came home (Meraj and Numa if you're seeing this I love you guys <3).

If you're reading this thinking 'no chance, my mum is a waaaaaay better cook', then I applaud you.The smallest things from which cuts of chicken we like (breast pieces always, chicken legs are gross) to even how we like our glasses of milk (ice cold) are things that really only our mothers would know. You arguing that your mothers food is better, is our innate and natural way of expressing our love for our mothers, even if we don't take the time to stop and understand why.

I know at the end of the day some may view food as just nutrients, but that's boring and mundane and do you really want to live a life like that? My mothers food holds so many memories for me.The taste, smell and nostalgia keep me going.

I often think about what kind of parent I want to be. My answer to that question will continue to fluctuate, but one thing that's constant is that I want my children to grow up with their grandmother's cooking, so they can hold the same memories dear to themselves the way I do now. (And yes, I did write this hungry)