Cookery lessons!

She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
                                     -Alfred Tennyson

The doom has come upon me too. The prophetic revelation of apocalypse has come true!! If you are thinking this is one of my murder mysteries, well I'm warning you this could become one.

My Mom told me yesterday that it’s high time I start cooking! Well I can start it but the end result would be something of a cross between baking, deep-frying, boiling and burning. of course I can make noodles with a lot of panache and style(uniquely my own). I would take nearly anything and everything I can lay my hands on in the kitchen and throw it in the boiling stew. From butter to corn flour, soup powder to chaat masala, nearly everything will be there in the noodles except of course vegetables, I have still not learned to chop. Now don't you regard me with that derisive stare of yours!

Being in the software industry for the past 2 years I have learnt to face extremely trying circumstances, difficult people and harsh deadlines because of which I have been able to dust off the fears that I possessed as a novice. But cooking to me is quite scary. To quote certain instances, consider the scenario of boiling milk, you never know exactly when to switch off the stove. You don't know if it’s done until the milk rises out of the container or just when it starts rising. When I stand there, almost 10 seconds would go in making this decision ("will the bomb burst now? Will it not?") At the end of which the milk would have spilled out of the container on to the stove and my mom would come running with some expletives which I will not be revealing in order to preserve the tiny blotch of self-dignity that I possess.

She often says, "You have done a B.E. Cant you even boil milk?” Good logic! But flawed argument, almost equaling casuistry. The fact being, in software everything has proper guidelines, in engineering if you get above 50% you pass, these things abide by certain rules, whereas cooking seems to have no rules. No one tells me exactly how much salt or sugar to put and what could be worse "they look the same!” Ever watched a cookery show on television? I used to think they quantify things so it must be easy for me to learn from it.... well for starters I have no clue about the names they attribute to the ingredients we use at home. They use 100 different teeny tiny ingredients that you may not have even seen ever in your life. Now the only thing that looms in my mind at the end of the show is "Why? Why god why? Why me?"

So the only thing that could salvage my reputation and save me from the verge of death due to starvation and mockery is “I like noodles! That’s why I make only noodles"(So not true! but I gotta live!)

In the meanwhile, my future plan (may be in about 20 years!) is to learn to make cookie, brownie, garlic bread and chocolate cake. When I announced my cooking intentions ever so enthusiastically to mom, she laughed. Well I'm sure basics like boiling milk could be handled by anyone, I'm gonna go on to do bigger and greater things (just to bolster up my pride a little! no offence meant). Until then “Noodles! Thou art my only companion!"