Gimme the white hat!

Fooooood. Not so much a passion than a way of life. All my greatest memories seem to have food linked to them. Growing up, I was a nitpicky eater, I admit it. I used to hate ghee (still do), anything that looked gooey or  mushy or not made of chocolate. But I still loved eating. My mom will always tell stories of how I ate 20 jalebis once, or how I finished off all the besan ke laddoo before Diwali. I spent most of my money on eating out; there's hardly a place in Pune that serves food and I haven't tasted it.

However, till this September, it was only about the eating. But moving 3000 miles away (that's just a number, I have no idea how far Canada is from India) does put you in new situations. Here I was, September 7th, in an apartment with a kitchen, some cooking apparatus, masaale and scant knowledge of how to make dal-rice. It took me a total of three days of eating all my meals outside to realize that hell, I have to cook! Thereby followed grocery shopping, chopping, measurement and internet recipe searches. Suddenly, cooking was fun! I love it! And not in a I'm-too-bored-and-broke-to-eat-out way (that too, slightly) but genuinely. There is some magic in taking a bunch of things from your refrigerator and making something entirely tasty out of them! It took some time to get the proportions of water and salt right, and I'm still not great with the salt, but I can safely say that I can satisfactorily feed myself everyday, along with a couple of people if necessary. Not to brag, but I can make great chicken curry from scratch now :D It is possibly the biggest achievement of my semester here; a year ago, if anyone had told me I would be able to cook, the response would have been a lot of laughter and disbelief. I now look forward to my grocery visits, checking the deli section for the meat I'd want to cook with this week, and the cheeses I'd like to have at home. Till now, herbed goat cheese is my favourite to work with: not too fatty, yet great taste. Also, I don't have a microwave here. So heating things up is almost as much effort as cooking every time. Hence I cook. :P The fact that I'm here precludes me from owning a handmixer and the like, hence baking is a little far off, but I'll make anything else. I've even become a regular on epicurious.com! And thanks to my sister, I have a wonderful book about Italian cooking :) In principle, I'm against fast and/or frozen food, so I even make my own pasta sauce!

I've been fortunate that I've met fellow foodies here :) Everyone loves Indian food so during Diwali we hosted our own little Indian food night :) breaking all norms, we cooked Chicken of course :D The spices did give our foreign friends some heat, but I'm happy to say that they loved it :) And in Montreal, the amount of great food I've eaten shows in my weight :D

As you can see, I've become addicted to cooking. So much so that when I'm bored, I cook :P As a result, my refrigerator currently overflows. :D I don't know how long this obsession will last (I have been known to get bored of things pretty quickly) but I have a feeling this will stick. If I gave up the noble pursuit of engineering, I think that's what I'd do. Besides writing of course. Makes me sound like Eat Pray Love. And cooler than an engineer.

You can't be unhappy as long as there is good food on your table.

:)