Cooking lessons...

One of the dreaded things , at least for me before i leave for my masters, is the cooking lessons i am subjected to at home. I should say more than cooking lessons they have turned out to be a torture of a poor soul who is exploited because the angle cant cook..  :p

So since i cannot cook complete meals as yet i get the task of cutting onions, potatoes,chillies,tomatoes,lady fingers,cabbage,cauliflowers etc etc.. and basically any other ingredients you have to cut before you cook them.. :|  After i have cut most of the stuff i get the task of cleaning up. If by chance me and mom are watching TV together .. miraculously ...just out of the blue.. (I need to find which puts these shows on air) a cookery show starts...The lady blabbers n blabbers and cooks some yummy looking dish, which my mom was some how looking for from a few days...and instead of writing the ingredients down she interrogates me to know the ingredients and the method.She calls them revision lectures. And i have to repeat. Its like De-ja Vu..reminds of the vivas during my engineering days.Making tea in the afternoon,breakfasts for sunday mornings (if i am not making it..i still have to stand and watch), fast fix recepies when mom wants to go someplace all have cozily snuggled into my daily timetable.

I am proud to say i can now distinguish between curry powder, garam masala, asafotida and various other similar looking powders that sit in our spice box. And no matter how much i crib i have to admit somewher i have started enjoying making these simple meals and experimenting with them. May it be Dal Tadka,spanish omlets,bhendi fry or exotic spinach Pasta. It definitely tastes much much tastier when you know you have made it and it gives a lot of pleasure to see your family relish and praise you for your 1st attempts even though sometimes i can taste the extra salt i have dropped in :)


PS: Image of the really delicious Spinach Pasta i had cooked along with my sister.Trust me its tastes better than it looks :)

The stalker Apple..

Don't be fooled by the innocent look of that red,sweet,juicy ..Monster....Its a dangerous thing armed with deadly force behind it  called 'The MOM'.

So this was a few days back when i was still at work and my days were super busy to notice anything but my comp screen. A day before my mom got these lovely looking apples and decided that all of us at home need to include a fruit in our diet . So the next day she wraps this fella up and puts him in my purse .. and there he sits snugly .. i  go happily to work thinking ... "ok so i take him out at 11 am and finish him off" but the things that i plan usually never happen.. So he sits there quietly when i go n have breakfast (i should have eaten him then) ... and the i don't get hungry at 11..i see that fella still sitting tight in my purse and just one thought in my mind.. "If i don't eat him m mom will eat me..." So i take him out.. oh he is sooo cold... but then again i keep him back ... next is lunch ... now how can any sensible ,'not on diet' gurl ever have apple for lunch ?? So i go n have my usual plateful of food and there is this one friend in office who is married and is recently pregnant so i get a scandalous idea... How bout i could make her eat this apple ...(In the name of health of course... and c'mon it wud actually be good for her .. ) but nah ... the stalker stays with me.. in my purse faithfully... so next chance it cud have is at 4. pm... but then again .. as fate would have it .. i am in mood for tea and c'mon .. tea and apples do not .. i mean absolutely do not go down together... so he is still there watching me with his cold pink cheeks.. so i decide to bury him further inside in my bag..

and so the time goes by  .. m on my way home.. and i know he is still there and i know 'mom is going to stare .. mom is going to give those weird looks '. I come home and i forget the most important thing ever .. to unwrap and keep the monster in the fridge. So my mom comes and sees this monster in my purse and the eyebrows are up and the apple is out .. he is out of the wrapper .. and my mom is goin on on and on about how she worries bout our health and how irresponsible i am for doin this .. and how could i keep such a nice apple that she got after such a lot of effort and such a long walk and that i should be ashamed... i think  she said the last sentence about 10 times.. i mite have actually punched someone and not got to hear so much from the police as much as from the colonel mom ... and then she got a knife...cut it ... and fed it to me rite then and there ..i bet that apple was laughing at me all the way...for the whole day...


Moral of the story : If your mom wants to get something in your tummy ... no matter what happens she will get it there.

PS: Thats the pic of the monster stalker apple..