I am a bad cook. OK. Let me be honest. I just can?t cook. The people who have to share the blame of this equally are : me and my mother.
My mother is an absolute angel but an angel who was determined to bring up her daughters like ?sons?. And to make matters worse, she has a special place for me in her heart. So being the her youngest and pampered child, I stayed away from the kitchen and whenever I tried to venture inside, I was shooed away with ?Go and study.?
I had a few experiences which could be called my attempts at cooking :
The egg that could fly
One day, I decided to boil an egg. Boiling an egg is easy. Just put some water, dunk the egg in it, light the gas and leave it. Or so I thought. While the egg was boiling, I got busy solving a rather tough physics numerical. The next thing I knew was a BIG EXPLOSION. I sat, shocked and stunned. What was that ? A bomb ? A gun shot ? Following the sound, I peeped in the kitchen and saw a sight that could have numbed the faint hearted. The egg had hit the roof. Literally. Apparently, the water had evaporated, the egg was heated to its limit, the hot air inside it gave it enough energy to defy gravity and hit the ceiling.
As I was standing there, musing about the thermal motion of the particles in the egg and its subsequent projectile motion, my mom came, took the scene in one glance and exploded. Her explosion was worse than the egg?s. I hastily retreated to my room and came out only once she had cooled down and the remains of the poor egg had been removed from my scene of crime.
Australian maps
I loved the way my mother makes perfect, round chapattis. It looks simple enough. Just a matter of putting enough force and lo and behold ! a round one ready to eat. Well, all that was till I tried to do so myself. I huffed and puffed, I tried different angles and under the disapproving and irritated eyes of my mom and sister, I made a perfect map of Australia. Or was it North America ? It was then I realized that making round chapattis is a feat which is more difficult than solving all problems in my physics book. Phew !
Rivers of milk
Boiling milk is easy. Just put the milk on heat, do NOT pick up a book to read, watch the milk and when it looks like the milk is wild enough to come jumping out of the container, take it off. Simple ! The problem came when I was just about to put the milk on the flame. I espied a black creature watching me from beneath the gas range. There went the milk, container and all, flying in the air as I ran as fast I could out of the kitchen, screaming loudly enough to wake the dead. It turned out to be a big black ant. I had thought it was?. You guessed it?. A cockroach.
So after all these frightening, scary, terrorizing incidents, I decided that cooking is NOT for me. And so it went on.
Till Maggi came about.
Now that?s something I can cook, I proudly acclaim. And so can anyone else.
It goes like this : Take out the Maggi noodles, cut in small pieces. Heat some water in a pan. (If you spy black creatures, ignore them). Dunk in the maggi and the tastemaker. Wait till the water evaporates, take out maggi, put in a plate and eat ! Simple, huh ?
I don?t care what horror stories people have to relate about Maggi and its ill-effects on health. It?s been a boon for me for the days when the cook is on leave. I can finally say that I can cook. Something.