How to set the kitchen on fire (Work in progress)

I wouldn’t call myself hopelessly clumsy. I was reasonably good at chemistry and didn’t really blow up anything in the lab when I was in school despite being in close proximity with a number of chemicals and teachers who could blow up. I even have a memory which is good enough to remember instructions. So why does every cooking experiment I embark on end in near disaster?


Case 1: Custard.

How easy is this? I mean, all you have to do is boil milk with sugar, cool it, mix it with custard powder, boil it again, cool it again and put it in the fridge; fairly simple as far as recipes for dessert go. It’s even simpler with ready made ice cream mixes.

Everything was fine till I mixed in the custard powder. I forgot this one vital little thing: stir. Burnt custard is not really all that appetizing.And it smells weird.



Case 2: Cutlets

Everything was going great. Mom was right there to help (read: give instructions, lament about how hopeless I am at this, pity my future husband, et cetera , et cetera) and I was totally hyped about mashing the potatoes and mixing in the egg and stuff, feeling like one of those celebrity chefs on TV.

The moment of glory arrived when the potato patties were finally ready to be fried. The oil temperature was just right, the kitchen temperature was sweltering and I carefully dropped the first cutlet into the oil.

Success.

Or not. I watched with all the disappointment of a scientist on the edge of breakthrough who, instead of a super human ends up with a mutant creature from hell bent on destroying the lab, as the patty disintegrated into the oil and emitted copious amounts of smoke.

‘Too little egg,’ my mother observed dispassionately.
I fished out the remains with a ladle and gave up cooking for a while.



Case 3: Soup (date: today)

I am a big fan of instant soups (and noodles and pasta…in fact anything instant is right up my alley). I have done this many times over the years and though other people might be paranoid about tasting it, I have been perfectly satisfied with my hot and sour/sweet corn/chicken/ veggie soup. Today was a little different. No instant soup packet.

Do I give up? No. Great people who are hungry do not give up. They persevere. They go online and find a simple recipe for the only thing they can find at home.
However, they might not leave oil in a pan to heat up on a high flame for too long.

By the way, don’t do this.
After putting out the flame (Dad helped. Science lesson: Put a cloth over it. If the cloth doesn’t catch fire, the fire will be put out because the oxygen supply is cut off. If the cloth catches fire, you’re in trouble) and exiting kitchen for the exhaust fan to do its job, I continue on my quest and look up soup thickeners.

Corn starch: don’t have it.
Vegetable puree: too lazy.
Roux: flour mixed with butter. Hmm...

Ten minutes later I sit at the computer proudly, with one bowl of bonafide onion soup thickened with roux. I wait for it to cool as I type out my entry on how to set the kitchen on fire. I finally taste my culinary masterpiece.

Too much salt.

Fashion on the Streets...

Every girl I've ever known, down to the most studious bookworm, always craves fashion and style. Most of them might not show it but the desire to look good is natural and there are few people who are completely indifferent to the way they look.

I'm not saying that looks are everything, but it is something we are all intrinsically attracted to. Like many girls, I went through the heady phase of imagining that my future lay in fashion designing. It pretty much went down the drain after my folks told me fashion designing was not a 'decent' field because of all the bikinis and bare midriffs. And yet, I drew faceless girls with long legs wearing my teenage idea of fashion. I still have those old notepads with the pencil-drawn figures. They are by no means amazing and sometimes only vaguely resemble actual human figures but they still make me smile nostalgically when I happen to glance at them sometime. I love good clothes, whether or not I’m the one who’s wearing them.

Recently I came across a blog by Scott Schuman, a blogger who walks the streets with his camera and takes pictures of interestingly dressed people whom he comes across. I am completely captivated with the idea of fashion on the streets and not merely on ramps and red carpets. I adore from his blog, The Sartorialist.

Plans

I met up with my friends today. It’s been a while since most of us have been free at the same time. While we sat eating chat, lasagna, sandwiches and cheese balls in Sree Mithai, I was surprised at how everyone seemed to be seriously choosing and sticking to their specific paths in life.

Kay’s already working in a bank; KD and Remy are still in college but were discussing how they could implement a system for treating accident trauma cases as soon as possible. Princess is going to do her M.Sc in Clinical Psychology. I just sat and ate my chili cheese sandwich and quizzed everyone on the meanings of words in KD’s GRE word list. No one might ever use words like obloquy and hirsute these days but damn, it’s fun. I would do GRE just to get to that word list but higher education is definitely not on my agenda right now.


Anyway, it’s a little difficult to join in conversations like the ones my friends were into today when you know exactly how clueless you are. It’s all very well to say most interesting people are clueless but I realize that I can’t be clueless for long. At least I now have some clue about what I don’t want to do.


I went down to KD’s place a little later and we sang along to Rihanna and Breaking Benjamin. Some things never change. It’s reassuring to know that we can still go crazy and do embarrassing things like karaoke and getting high on Pepsi no matter how much things change.

Taking optimism nowhere

I want to study, I’ve taken all my books out and I totally understand the importance of opening them and actually reading them. So why haven’t I done it yet? It seems to be a rather simple thing to do at around 3 p.m in the afternoon. However, a couple of hours later when confronted with the actual books themselves, the feeling loses steam and somehow, I inexplicably end up making instant soup and reading Douglas Adams.

Talking about Douglas Adams, is the dude extremely awesome or what?
I mean, this is the man who boldly declares, ‘Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all’ and writes about Bistromatics, the Pan-galactic gargle blaster and Marvin, the paranoid android not to mention Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe. What is C and aptitude compared to humour about the vast, fictional reaches of the universe? Sadly, no one gets this.