A Need To Write: When the Belly Rules the Mind...

As far as I can remember the one question that I have always pestered my mother with is: “What’s there to eat?” No matter how much I have eaten or how stuffed I am, just before the next meal time I would find myself standing at the entrance of the kitchen looking at my mother cooking and then finally asking the question. I have asked her the question so many times that if I were to die before a meal time, my tombstone would read, ‘Passed away without knowing what was being cooked.” In order to avoid such a scenario I am trying to do certain good deeds which will come in use when it is my time to go. I would love to go on a full stomach.

George Bernard Shaw once said that there is no love sincerer than the love of food and I absolutely agree with him. I have always loved food. I mean who doesn’t? I come from a country where the easiest way to make a person happy is to serve him a scrumptious meal. Once he is done eating, he won’t ask you for anything else. I’m no different, as I love everything about food. I love the smell of it which incidentally I find better than the fragrance of any perfume in the world, I love the way it satisfies you, I love the fact that a person is always spoilt for choice when he has to choose what to eat and obviously I love to eat. It is my parent’s genes and God’s grace that have kept me slim (if not fit) no matter how much I eat.

But what has actually surprised me is just how much I love to cook. Being the epitome of laziness, I am surprised just how much I am willing to persevere to in order make that perfect dish. I am not saying I am a great cook, good maybe, but not great. I have never learnt to cook and the only knowledge I had of cooking was when I was getting certain basic lessons from my mother before coming to the UK. But I guess all those years of standing at the entrance of the kitchen and peeking at mother cooking must have ingrained these cooking skills into me at some subconscious level.

I still remember the first meal that I cooked after coming to the UK. When I began to cook, somehow I just knew what to do next and ended up cooking a meal that even my flatmates loved. That just spurred me on. I love to try new dishes, be it eating or trying to make them. I scour the net in search of new dishes to make or just add ingredients to make certain dishes taste a tad different. I have come to love cooking so much that it has become a way of unwinding after a long day. Cooking and then eating a meal that has been well made just takes away all the tiredness and then I go back to being at my best; lazy. The one thing that I hate about cooking though is cleaning afterwards. I just hate doing the dishes and after cooking every meal I wish that we had a dishwasher in our flat. Oh well, I guess one cannot get everything one wishes for in life.

Below are the pictures of the dishes that I have cooked so far. It is not much, but when you look at them and then at me, you will wonder where it all goes. Please don't mind the quality of the photos, most of the times I am just so hungry to sit still and click a good photo. Enjoy!!