Tuesday, December 7, 2010

In The Kitchen

You know how some people say that they find cooking relaxing? That it's their hobby? I used to find remarks like that rather weird, and I saw it as more of a chore that my mother did because she had to do it, and skipped every so often when she was too tired.

That was before I actually tried to cook on my own.

There are certainly days when I am tired after work and maybe feeling a little sick and wish that my husband would come home before I did and make me a nice bowl of soup. But when I am well, and only mentally tired from work, I love to experiment in the kitchen. Try things that I haven't tried before. Change some ingredients around in a recipe. Of course, once every week or so, I do make something standard like a simple yellow dal (which I don't really like all that much but my husband can't go without it for too long) or aloo gobi (actually it's aloo broccoli for us, more often than not), but the rest of the time, I make something at least a little differently. Add a little lemon juice to my pasta. Chop some cubanelle peppers into my rajma. Bake my own bread. (I haven't done a regular bread, but I have tried my hand at pumpkin bread from a mix and cranberry orange bread from scratch. Both turned out pretty good.) It's fun. It's satisfying. It gives me a feeling of having created something on my own. And that is a feeling to be savored.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can totally relate to it! I used to find cooking frustrating! But nowadays, I have started liking it.. Okay! what I do is not exactly cooking by your (now elevated) standards, but I did make some awesome kulfi 3 days back! Some more stuff, and a post about the same coming soon! :-)

Bhavya said...

Hey my standards are not that high, I do make some complicated dishes but I also make mashed sweet potatoes and claim that I made an extra side dish because we were getting bored of the leftovers. Kulfi is a great thing to make... just that right now, the mention of it is making my already sore throat hurt even more. It's 33 F outside and I feel like drinking some warm soup and nothing else