Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Crooking in the kitchen

I'm not a good cook. But I can manage with a few things.
My first main experience of cooking was right before I left for the US in 2010. Had to go to the states for close to 2 months and my mom helped me quickly learn a few things. But I usually stuck to preparing the select 4-5 thing I had known. Most of the times, I used to get the ready to eat things such as the ones from the MTR stable, or eat out with some colleagues. And at times I confess, I used to binge on ice-cream for dinner. God, the variety of ice-creams in Walmart!!!
So after returning from my US trip, having gained close to 7Kgs, I did not need to cook for quite a while since I was with my parent for a year and then moved to Mumbai for my MBA where we had dining arrangements on the campus premises. 
Recently, when I started working again after my MBA, I moved to a new city and thought of resuming my cooking, much to the disappointment of my mom. She always felt that I should hire a cook who can help prepare the meals since cooking was not really my skill-set. However, I had started off thinking that I will hire a cook soon after I get settled in. As the story goes, I started liking the process of cooking. I wanted to try newer things. I don't aspire to becoming a chef of a restaurant or remotely close to him, but wanted to atleast try and give myself more variety in terms of what lands on my plate.
The thing is, I was a bit sick of eating out and needed to get things as per my taste/preference. Additionally, I wanted to be a bit more careful about the calorie content I take. So cooking at home became something of a regular thing. Earlier I started off with simple things like Daal, Rice, simple vegetables, gradually moving on to making Rotis, Parathas, more vegetables, just short of making exquisite cuisines. I must confess, my work int he kitchen has not yet proved to be very successful, but I have been gradually improving. The thing is, I realized that I can judge how something will turn out to be before its done, so I can modify it mid-route. The whole process takes me over an hour easily, and this is when I am able to handle 2-3 things at a time. I'm able to multitask in the kitchen, and I never thought I could do that.
The bottom line is, I now enjoy cooking. I like chopping the vegetables into fine pieces. But, as it happens on Sunday, 24th June I got a cut on my thumb while pealing a papaya, and then after an hour I got a big cut on my index finger while chopping some tomatoes, and then later that evening, I got another cut on my palm trying to cut something else. All on my left hand, which by evening was covered in band-aids. Some days are meant not to be spent in the kitchen, despite your liking for the cooking.

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