Life - or something like it

Nah, Nah, you got it all wrong. I am not writing a Romantic post here. Psst...let me tell you a secret, though I  am a sucker for Romance, I hide it quite well with my brash attitude. There, now it is out in the open.  Sweet Nothings is a part of the ' Cooking Disasters ' series, and my dish was actually on the verge of becoming, a Sweet NOTHING. Come festival season and the women in Indian households go into a cooking overdrive. My FB wall is plastered with orgasmic pictures of delicious dishes, posted by many a budding 'Nigella Lawsons' (I think she is too hot). Many of my old readers know that I am repelled to cooking and I really have nervous jitters, when there is a party at my place (I pretend to pass off restaurant bought food as my own..just kidding). I feel that the 'cooking gene' was really watered down by the time it was passed over, from my Mom to my two older sisters and finally me.  To come back to Sweet Nothings, this ' Ganesh Chaturthi...

Hold it there...I am not reviewing Apple's iPad or anything. I have seen enough Apple bashing in blogosphere recently. Believe it or not I am going to review a very non-technical kitchen gadget. Ha! Now you will wonder how come a cooking-hater  is doing a review of Kitchen Gadget? Read on and you will know.... I am a 'kitchen gadget stalker'. I get starry eyed whenever I visit shops selling kitchen stuff. My heart skips a beat and I feel like a kid in a toy shop (I must be a cook in my past life, no wonder I obsess so much about cooking in my Blog).  My eyes glaze over and I am smacking my lips....okayyy, I know you got the picture. So, during one of my forays into 'The Kingdom of Delights', I came upon a gadget which I thought will make my life a bit easier. After much haggling with Hubs I went and bought this thingamajig. I present to you.... I had to quickly put this wonderful looking gadget to use. I decided to make some Pasta. And yes...I needed Garl...

I know most of you will raise your eyebrow looking at the title. After all, you know of my fiascoes with Cooking 1 & 2 . In spite of many years of cooking (palatable food), I still am uninitiated and clueless about a lot of cooking skills. It so happened that nearly a litre of milk had survived near the expiration date and something needed to be done to finish it fast. I keep getting pearls of wisdom from friends who are excellent cooks and know all the tricks to make excellent food. One of them is my eldest sis and she suggested that I make Cottage Cheese (Paneer) from the milk. Here are the tips for the Recipe (For Disaster): 1) Firstly never ever go for suggestions from great cooks. My sister made it sound as if it's a 'game for my left hand'. I, in the heat of the moment actually started believing this nonsense and took up the challenge. 2) Always use a thick saucepan which is deep enough to hold the milk and leave an inch or two of empty space for the milk to boil...

By nature I am a calm and gentle person (thats what I think, am sure lots of my friends will disagree). Inspite of all this calmness I have an uncanny knack of being uncoordinated when it is anything to do with chores and mainly in the kitchen. My hubby will have many examples of these situations. Mainly when I am pouring sugar, lentils or semolina into airtight containers and manage to spill half of it on the kitchen platform. I have tried and tried but have never managed to perfect the art. I always secretly envy the people who can do this without spilling a bit. Armed with such meagre qualifications, jumping into the 'art of cooking' was like jumping from a airplane without a parachute. All those who have read 'My experiments with cooking-1' would already know about how I approach it, with a bit of weariness and a lot of sarcasm. My 2nd foray was when my mum was away in Bangalore. I am sure whenever my pater recalls that incident a shiver would definitely run down h...

Cooking has always been my nemesis ever since I was a girl of 14. Growing up in a household with two elder sisters I was shielded from this chore for quite some time. But there is no escape from cooking if you are a girl born in the Indian Middle Class. The day eventually had to come sometime. Mommy dearest had tried number of times to steer my interest towards it but I had escaped from that ordeal unscathed.For this I thank my father and my two elder sisters for delaying my foray in this scary world of 'cooking' by taking the mantle themselves. One fine day, 'Mater' had figured it out and she outsmarted all of us. That day my sisters had gone out and my Pops also was not there. She pounced on me (just as a mother shakes a pup by the neck to correct him) and dragged me to face the unthinkable. The first experiment was to knead the dough for 'Phulkas' (Rotis). As per my mom, if you know how to make the perfect dough and then a perfect roti, you were set for life....