I am a self-proclaimed foodie! I simply love to eat and am absolutely fascinated with the delights of the culinary world. I'm pretty sure I inherited this trait from my Dad who had what they call "the typical Thanjavur Naakku" (the Tanjore tongue!), it being said that those who hailed from Tanjore were food lovers nonpareil! His love for delicious food was legendary, and it was no wonder then that he was a better cook than my Mom. I seem to share my father's passion for food in the sense that though I don't eat much, I'm very particular that every morsel that goes into my mouth be of the finest taste, or else I will never touch it even if it means I have to starve!
I never learned to cook till after I got married. My excuse was that I was too busy studying (yeah, right!!!) and simply refused to enter the kitchen. What an idiot, I'd been! When I was at university, my mother couldn't leave me alone and go out of town simply because I couldn't cook. My eldest brother was married and living in the same town at that time, so I would promptly be packed off to his house whenever my mother had to leave town. My sister-in-law, of course, was a fantastic cook, and incidentally, she had picked up her cooking skills from her own mother.
My husband put up with my half-baked attempts at cooking, and then he hired a full time cook after 3 years of marriage. At that time, I was delirious enough to think that the husband was lavishing me with the luxury of a live-in cook. Little did I know that it was an attempt at escapism, never having to go through the trial of tasting his wife's food! So the story goes that I lived like a queen in India, just rattling off the menu each day to my cook and having a delicious spread at each meal every single day. The luxury lasted 7 years, till there was this radical change in our lives of having to move to the United States. I was petrified because I knew nothing about cooking, not even enough to survive.
My mother-in-law was my saviour...she painstakingly wrote down all the recipes for me in a notebook which became a Bible of sorts to me after I moved to California. I would have the notebook wide open and attempt whatever recipe it was, the guinea pig at that time being my eldest sister who lived a mere 10 minutes away. I slowly became hooked to the art of cooking, and by trial and error, I seemed to have perfected every single dish, so much so that my sister thought I had missed my calling! "You are soooo good, Olivia. Maybe you missed your calling. You should never have become an English teacher.You should have become a chef instead," she would go. I thought she was saying it out of filial piety or sisterly affection or whatever! Then my second brother from England visited me in California, and after one particular meal, just as I was beginning to put the dishes away and clear the table, he poured a little bit of the curry on to his plate and licked it with his fingers. This, from one who's a well-accomplished cook and food lover himself! I knew then that I had really aced the whole cooking thing!
It so happened that a friend of ours who had a grocery store had come to our house for breakfast, tasted my idlis (steamed rice cakes), and asked me if I could supply idlis to his store. I laughed incredulously, but he convinced me to give him just 5 boxes, to see how they moved. Silicon Valley being full of bachelor engineers at the time, the 5 boxes flew from the shelf. I gradually ended up supplying 55 boxes each weekend and made a cool 1400 dollars each month. Not bad for a weekend's work of a few hours, eh? Soon enough other stores began asking me for the idlis and I had to turn them down because I ran a household kitchen, and not a commercial one. Typical Gemini that I am, I did this just for over a year, and soon enough, I began to tire of the whole thing. I needed other diversions and so went to university to earn all my teaching credentials.
Though I teach English full time in Vancouver now, my love for food hasn't abated one bit. I faithfully scour the Internet for recipes and am game enough to try all kinds of cuisine. The husband and the kid compliment my every attempt and I feel gratified that my interest and efforts in the kitchen get appreciated all the time. Today I made a chicken gravy authentic to a particular region of my home state in India, and eaten along with idlis, they were heavenly bites indeed! My husband has already asked me if there are any leftovers, and if so, he wants them with pooris (deep fried mini tortillas) for breakfast tomorrow...all of which has prompted me to write this blog!
Happy eating, my friends! May you be blessed with heavenly bites as well!
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