Gourmet

With food, i have the habit of making things sound more fancy than it actually is (especially when i am cooking it and nobody can see what i cooked! :~P ). I blame it on my recent TV viewing.

I watch TopChef, Hells Kitchen, MasterChef- Australia, India, USA, UK, Ina Garten, Nigella Lawson with thorough dedication. The pan fried seabass with potato pate or the lambchops with salad of grilled garden vegetables or the baked bread pudding with vanilla ice-cream inspire me. I then head to my humble kitchen and think creative and inevitably end up making different versions (purely by accident) of the same thing: Slow cooked thick creamy oats (aka porridge)..some days its just Slow Cooked Oats (when i add extra water and it gets all runny) or Burnt Creamy Oats (when i forget to pour the water/milk in time!!) or Burnt AND Runny Oats...but still when i tell people that i had  Slow cooked thick creamy oats ppl think that i had breakfast at a five star hotel :~D


[Image courtesy: theginlady.com]


But the other day this is what happend:

Me (feeling exuberant that my science project in the kitchent was successful)- Guess what...today my sandwich was highly appreciated by my colleagues in office..

Boy- Oh that is very good ...so what did u make?

Me (trying to sound like the winner of Master Chef UK)- I made brown bread sandwich with chicken in marinara sauce and alfa alfa sprouts.

Boy- What??...Kaunsa sandwich?

Me (losing patience but still trying to remain calm)- Its a sandwich  and the filling was chicken in marinara sauce and alfa alfa sprouts....!!

Boy- How is this food? (!?!!)

Me (loses cool and all sense of sophistication in accent)- Maine salaaad banaya tha...with left over chicken and vegetables and sprouts in the redwala pasta sauce. Then  i put it between 2 slices of bread which is brown in color!!!!

Boy- Oh...so call it a Chicken sandwich...what is with all the marina..alpha centre sprouts!!!

I learnt my lesson.

Dedicated to all out there who know the humble Idli as steamed rice and lentil dumplings served with spicy lentil soup and a dollop of coconut chutney flavored with mint :~p

Ok so i have been absent from this space for QUITE sometime..no excuses this time...it was plain old laziness and bad time management.

For some reason this year the monsoons, which generally puts me in a laz-'ier' disposition, have charged me up to take up some interesting intiatives (interesting only from my prespective!). Why blogging after a two year gap one may wonder- i am now a senior...i DELEGATE work..(Muhahahahhaaaa)

An attempt will be made to feature the following activites on my blog:

(a) Eat. Prey. Love - This will largely be my science projects in the kitchen. My take on cooking with imagination. Why is this lawyer-chick doing 'another food blog' when we have enough and more good blogs-one may think- Simple..its for me to chronicle whatever i cooked (rather attempted to cook), so that when i run short of imagination, i know where to look. So the idea is to Eat the Prey identified for that meal and hopefully Love what i make.

(b) Reality Bites - My smart and charming neighbour S put forth the idea of creating a list some what on the lines of  a 'bucket-list' with respect to a city. Now her idea is before you leave a city, prepare a list of all the things you want to do in that city. Much to the neighbour's surprise, the only thing yours truly wanted to do was go to restaurants and eat!!! So the city identified is Maximum City and Reality Bites will mostly be about the food paradises and food hells explored in the city. The food will be rated on the basis of the emotion trigged in my mind. The classification will be as follows:

           (i) Orgasmic- wen the food is SOOOOO good that u see me banging the tables in delight :~D
           (ii) Heavenly- wen the food is SOOO good that i feel at peace inside :~)
           (iii) Down to earth- wen the food is such that they should be buried down to the earth :~(


(c) Miscellaneous- Attempts will also be made revive the regular BS that i used to dish out here.

I hope to stay regular...but only time will tell...

Just tucked in some divine mutton dhansak and cutlets for lunch today- courtesy the secretary!...and btw did u know that its sleep inducing...zzzz....zzzzzz..zzzzzzz......

Blinking Red

A blinking red light warns us about an impending danger, be it a police van, any electrical equipment or for that matter our very own BBs!!!

Every time the red light flashes, my heart skips a beat. MS Outlook does not have the same intimidating effect…may be because, unlike the BB, I have restricted my access to MS Outlook to 11 hrs of the day.

Given below is my reaction through the day on not finding the flashing red light:

Wake up - HAPPY
Before leaving for office -how is this possible!!! is there a problem with the e-mails??
Before leaving for home- Cool..i am such a dedicated associate..finished all assignments :~)
Before going to bed - Good I can sleep in peace
5 minutes after going to bed - how is this possible!!! is there a problem with the e-mails??

No matter how engrossed one is in an assignment, that small flash of red is sufficient to distract anyone. I was getting ‘advised’ (read reprimanded) for not honing my observation skills to a 11 (on a scale of 10!!!) Then played the BBpro_Sanguine in the background and followed by the small flash of red. It made me so uncomfortable that I succumbed to the temptation and checked the phone and my senior dismissed (read chucked out) me from the room. Irony!! I should have been lauded for my observation skills!!! I observed the small flashing red light!