ONE YEAR OLD!

 

A lot has changed since I first started putting this blog together. I didn’t even really want a food blog. I had just moved back home from Bombay and started to pile on the pounds. After scrounging and scavenging for food for over two years, home cooked meals turning up on the dinner table again and again, was almost too much to process. Every day I shoveled more and more food into my pie hole and thought of living in Bombay, eating out or ordering in thrice a day.

In an ordinary day I’d skip breakfast so I was starving by 11. By 11:30 a.m. I wouldn’t be able to wait for lunch anymore and I’d order something terribly sugary from the coffee shop in my office building. By 1 my sugar rush would have faded and I’d run to lunch. Lunch was supplied by an enterprising Ms. Leela Verma who delivered bland, oily vegetables, dal and chewy chapattis unfortunately unfailingly. This would send me spiraling into depression which I would try to fix with more sugary confections from the coffee shop and some overpriced coffee. If I was still at work at dinner time, I’d eat whatever the late night stragglers were ordering. If I went home I’d order in pizza or Jafferbhai’s greasy, orange interpretation of Indian food.

When we couldn’t take it anymore and our eating habits started to make us physically ill, me and my flatmate started to cook. We had the tiniest kitchen in the world. It wasn’t actually a room, it was a corner with an exhaust and a sink but that worked well because you could cook and watch the television in the living room at the same time. There was a vegetable market across the street so we never had to bother to keep the fridge stocked. In retrospect it was a pretty good set up to start cooking in.

We cooked mostly simple Indian food. I suppose because that was the only kind of food we didn’t have access to. My flatmate was a far more talented and resourceful cook than me. My specialities were a really thick, sludge like dal and a rich pulao. On days I would be done with work reasonably early I’d go home and cook dal, a side of vegetables, rice and raita. Occassionally there was chicken. There were no rotis because I still don’t know how to roll those buggers into a proper circle. Cooking even this much was nerve racking initially and things often went horribly wrong. Very slowly, imperceptibly, I really didn’t even notice when it started to get easier.

With time I cooked at home more and more often. Sometimes I even cooked at friends' homes. By the time I came to Delhi, it had become one of my favourite ways to spend an afternoon. I figured I could put something together for reluctant, hesitant, ignorant cooks like me.
I photocopied and printed hundreds of recipes, borrowed cookbooks from everyone I knew and spent every waking moment out of office knee deep in recipes and food writing. When my mom suggested I start a blog while waiting for eager publishers to get around to breaking down my door, I wasn’t very enthusiastic. I didn’t think I’d be able to put in that kind of consistent effort.

It hasn’t been easy but it doesn’t matter because it’s been so much fun. All the people I’ve met, crappy photos I’ve taken and cupcakes I’ve burnt all add up to this blog. The formatting is (a little) better and I havn’t totally scorched anything in a while but I still show the enthusiasm and nincompoopery of a novice in a kitchen.

I look forward to more food related schemes and setting more stuff on fire during year 2!