Tryst with the kitchen

I've always taken some sort of perverse pride in the fact that I suck at cooking! In the sense, I not only was absolutely inept in making the stuff deemed "simple" by my mom like an egg omlette, but I couldn't even distinguish between the different dals (you know...moong, udad and the like..) and different masalas! It never bothered me, of course. For me, cooking was never one of those skills a person needed to show atleast minimal expertise in. Infact it's a standing joke in my family that a guy fit enough to be my life partner would need one of these qualifications- he should either be a good cook; or should be rich enough to afford one !!

I think my hatred for cooking was because my first two attempts at it failed miserably. The first time was when my sister and I decided to surprise my parents on their wedding anniversary by making them pinwheel sandwiches! (I was around 12 then; I had simple tastes :-P) We were supposed to mix cream cheese and tomato ketchup, add salt and pepper, apply it on the bread slices and roll them up. Simple enough, eh?! Well, everything that could possibly go wrong, did. The cream cheese and ketchup mix wasn't smooth enough, I added too much salt and pepper and the bread got all soggy when the mix was applied on it, so it didn't even roll up properly! We ultimately ended up eating the mixture without the bread so as not to waste it, and bought a cake for our parents! So basically, when you mess up something as simple as pinwheel sandwiches, it doesn't do much to bolster your confidence! Added to that is the fact that my mom always says that I look my awkward best when I'm in the kitchen! The icing on the cake was when I messed up Maggi noodles! Huh! Well, over time I did manage to make a decent omlette, so I could atleast rake up something to eat in case of an emergency.

The past week has been a radical change though. I think it all started when the admits count reached four. I think my mom had been waiting for this very opportunity all this while. I knew it was coming of course; I didn't want to be thrown out by my room-mates in foreign land coz I didn't know how to cook! So now I proudly declare that the jinx is over and I can make edible food, fit enough to be consumed by fellow graduate students! :-D:-D Of course, I still hate cooking and I'm bored of it in just a week but atleast I know that I won't go hungry now. And I admit, it's pretty easy to make the simple Indian stuff, as long as you get a judgement of the proportions of the salt, sugar and the masalas. Besides, it does feel good to sometimes cook for your people- even if it's a simple gobi ki sabzi! The best part was when my dad told my mom ki kabhi socha nahi tha ki kisi din apni beti ke haath ka bana khana bhi kha sakenge! Lol.. :-D