Cooking is therapeutic!

Ahh! The third post and another aspect of me!

You know, I have been pampered as a child mainly because of few good reasons: I am second youngest in the huge family in my generation, a daughter and a sister who was not allowed or asked to help in household work unless the situation demanded and given the independent life that they believed I deserved. Now, when your elders say, ‘it’s ok, we’ll manage the kitchen’, you really don’t want to hurt their feelings and stay away from cooking. So it happened in my case. I was only allowed to make tea, instant noodles or sandwiches and not beyond that. It was alright till the time I was at home or was staying with my sister but regretted getting pampered in this case when I moved to Bangalore and started surviving on my own.

One of the very first things that you realise is important when you stay independent is cost cutting and saving. So I decided to cook for myself and in the process, learn the art of cooking. Unending telephonic consultations with the mother about ingredients, basics and survival food recipes continued for about two months. While the curry and vegetables would turn black without telling me, the rotis or wheat flat breads were of different shapes and crisp as biscuits, milk loved to overflow and get spilled and colors of the cooked food never matched the ones I grew up eating. Nonetheless, it was the taste and the desire to cook better that kept me going. I started looking forward to making my own food and improve with each effort. I even took advantage of the discounts that were gifted to me by a popular bookstore on my birthday and ended up buying cook books by Nita Mehta, Sanjeev Kapoor and others. I became a regular visitor to the cookery blogs and magazines and noted down recipes that I found easy to make.

And now, well, I cook them perfect. The salt, the colour, the taste are in place except for the rotis who are soft and nice but definitely not round! Cooking worked like a therapy for me when I was trying to adjust to the sudden new development of staying alone in a new city. Buying vegetables, negotiating with the vendors, picking up spices and sauces, spatulas and bowls, measuring spoons and just the ingredients that the recipe demanded—all became fun activities!  And yes, the mother now boasts about her daughter’s culinary skills and share tips and recipes that are in the range of medium to difficult.

Paneer Bhurji

Egg Bhurji

Matar (peas) Pulao

Flavored Rice

Orange Kheer

Few things that I cooked!

And as a follow up thing, my next effort will be to start a food blog soon!

So, that’s me and how cooking brought about peace and change in my life!

I am linking my post to the A to Z Challenge for #Day 3 alphabet C.