Ma taught me how to cook vegetables — the art of cutting, sautéing, and adding water to make them sizzle and steam. I knew how to stir-fry before I knew the word for it. To me it was just cooking.

Daddy cooked flapjacks or waffles on a random Sunday morning. Many times he would make a noodle dish with macaroni, hamburger, tomato sauce, and other ingredients topped with cheese. He called it "slumgullion," and I laughed at the name.

Together, my parents taught me most of what I know about cooking.

My hubby is a great gourmet cook. He never learned how to cook from his family, but honed his skill as an adult watching cooking shows on television and reading food magazines. I don’t have a great love for cooking because I grew up expected to cook. Sometimes I feel pride when I’ve created a dish from scratch and it tastes great. Usually it’s a practical skill.

My mom was a connoisseur of international cuisine. She knew how to make Asian dishes such as curry, sushi, gyoza, and kimchee, but also spaghetti with breaded meatballs, pot roast, and turkey with stuffing. But the skill she ingrained in me was the proper way to prepare and cook vegetables. Each vegetable required a specific way of cutting and order of introduction into the wok. It took split-second timing. If I didn’t get the timing right, cooking with my mom was frantic.

My husband and I rarely fight, but we do squabble over the proper way to stir-fry vegetables. The instructions he finds in recipes often contradict what my mother taught me. I hold back my comments as I watch him cut vegetables. I can’t help but think his chopping is akin to butchery. When he tries to throw all the vegetables into the wok at the same time, I do an intervention and take over the cooking. I don’t feel this way about anything else he cooks.

Most of the dishes he makes from online recipes or cooking shows are delicious. However, it’s nearly impossible for me to fight against what I’ve been culturally trained to expect when cooking Asian food.

I generally stay out of the kitchen, but to keep peace in the house, he lets me take over when stir-frying. I also take my turn when he runs out of ideas for what to make for dinner. If I don’t feel like stir-frying, I attempt some form of slumgullion based on what we have in the fridge.

I grew up at a time when no one had coined the term ‘stir-fry’ to refer to Chinese cooking. Now everyone uses it as a noun: "Tonight, let’s do stir-fry." But few people in Portland know the name my dad used for cooking leftovers.

My mom was from Taiwan, my dad from Oklahoma. His grandparents settled there from the Ozarks travelling by covered wagon. The word slumgullion can refer to a stew, a muddy cup of coffee, or a mountain pass in Colorado. My dad’s slumgullion was delicious and often included leftovers. When he cooked, it was a more pleasant, less intense experience than trying to achieve my mom’s ideal of perfection. He didn’t really care about the outcome as much as that it had hamburger in it.

As a vegetarian, I’ve learned to make slumgullion my own way with tempeh or just topped with cheese. I use any vegetable we have with tomato sauce and pasta. Sometimes I’ll throw in black olives or kernels of corn to give it more color and texture. It’s a low expectation meal — comforting and delicious.

The first time I told my husband I was going to make slumgullion, he laughed at me.

"Slum-what?" he asked.

"It’s what my dad taught me. I think it’s from Oklahoma," I said, as I dug around the refrigerator.

Luckily, he liked it. He’s easier to please than I am. I think he was relieved I wasn’t criticizing his Chinese cooking.

Stir-fry and slumgullion have similarities. They both involve a menagerie of ingredients and there is no set way of creating an individual dish. Most Asian cultures have their own way of combining vegetables and protein in a stir-fry dish. And many European cultures have creations made from leftover ingredients. In Hungary, it’s goulash. In Cornwall, it’s a fried patty made of leftovers from a Sunday roast known as "bubble and squeak."

I take pride and comfort in both stir-fry and slumgullion. To me, they both involve a way to combine various elements to make one whole new creation. In many ways that describes what it means to be a hybrid of multiple cultures. Often I cook in a combination of both my cultures and I call it stir-fry slumgullion. It’s homage to my parents and a reflection of who I am.