Cooking n Me

According to me the people who cook can be broadly categorized into two categories: the first - who love the art of cooking and feeding other people, and the second - who had no option but to cook. Truthfully speaking I come in the second category. Both my parents know how to cook and its my father's claim that he taught my mom the basics of cooking :). My father loves cooking and experimenting with food. During my early childhood, I have seen my father cooking when my mother was hospitalized due to jaundice and whenever he felt like experimenting. But later on due to work, he gave up on that hobby and now my mother is the only cook. When I was in India I never tried to cook or even learn it, my mother always nagged me saying "what are you going to do when you get married ?". I never cared much for that anyways. The only things that I made out of my own free will were variations of aloo tikki and manchuria. Later on in my early 20's, there were situations when I had to cook and I did. Sometimes I went wrong and my poor brother had to suffer. Even then I had no desire to learn cooking, because I had my mother and I could also go out to eat.

Just before getting married I invited my friends over for lunch and cooked under my mother's supervision. Thats was my first full scale cooking and luckily for my friends the dishes turned out just right ;). Though i never had practical experience cooking, I had the theoretical knowledge and I loved watching cookery shows. Still, with just basics and some theoretical knowledge I can't claim myself as a cook. Can I? So I should really applaud my husband for marrying even after knowing that I can't cook. But now looking back I guess he was not worried as he himself is a pretty good cook. He is pretty strict when it comes to cooking as he has certain steps to cooking certain dishes.We always argue on that and still do what we want to do :D. I don't remember, what exactly I cooked as soon as I arrived in US after getting married. But I remember my husband making sambaar after an elaborate process. It kind of surprised me, because I have seen my mother cook sambaar in such a way and more over my mother's sambaar tastes unique everyday even with the same ingredients. How she does it is still a mystery (even to her). In my early marriage days, it was mostly my husband that cooked. But as days went by I started to crave for the food that I used to have in India.. So the motivation for me to start cooking were my "Taste Buds". I am still not a great cook, I go wrong at times but found ways to rectify then except for cases when I add more salt than needed.

I am starting this blog mainly to serve as record of dishes I have cooked and turned out well. Sounds like a show-off right ;). I found the recipes for the most of the dishes online so hoping that this blog will help me keep track of those links. My cooking is kind of erratic, as I do not exactly follow the measurements or the ingredients mentioned in the recipes and, I alter them to my convenience. I also, eyeball the  measurements for ingredients based on taste and my judgement (except for certain recipes). So the recipes posted by me may not be the authentic way, but thats the way I have cooked them. I still cook for my taste buds, but I have started to enjoy cooking now. It makes me really happy when people enjoy my cooking. Hoping that this love for cooking continues and I keep posting about my experiments :).