Why is it that you never question your mom

The why is it guide

I have been a very curious girl ever since I was a little girl. Not the curious-discovering-how-a-space-ship works kind of curious but the kind of curious where I harangued my parents, relatives and anyone who asked me to do something that I didn’t agree to.

The following conversation has been altered for dramatization purposes

Mom: Please don’t touch the milk pan after you have just touched the container of lamb curry and haven’t washed your hands yet.

Me: Yes, but I only put the container in the fridge, my hands are clean.

Mom: Yes but you still touched it and it’s not kosher to touch the milk saucepan now.

Me: Ok, but washing hands will make it okay?

Mom: Yes

Me: why is it that when the lamb curry was sitting on the bench with the milk saucepan on it too, it didn’t contaminate it?

Mom: You know I never questioned my mother, if she said something, I accepted it because she was my mom

Me:….

End of conversation.

I can list many more of such riveting conversations I have had with my mother (mostly with her) where I question why is it and don’t have a satisfactory answer, but that is not the point of this blog.

The point is my questions still remain and I am trying to get around to trying to answer them for myself and others and in the process perhaps have a helping hand from the reader(s) (I am really ambitious) who too can help me out with some answers.

 

Mastercheffy

 

As a self-proclaimed amateur home cook I love cooking shows to death. I might not own fancy kitchen appliances like magic-mixers or necessarily always use fresh thyme sprigs (believe me the dried stuff is pretty good and doesn’t go bad in the fridge) but I love cooking. I love sautéing, frying, poaching, stewing, baking roasting and all things that start on a cooktop and end in “ing”. I love watching cooking shows (obviously) and I watch all of them, I mean I try, I have a full time job you see. I watch the good ones with great camera work and which actually show you the inside of the pot and the not-so-good ones where the chef stands sideways and they never take the camera close to the pot. I even watch the shows that appear on infomercial dedicated channels where only the chef’s voice makes it to the video, which now that I am thinking about (who makes it after all).

Anyway, so since my love for food and all things cooking has been established you can imagine my excitement for the 3 months in the year when Masterchef is on the television. I religiously come home on time and have my tea (because otherwise I start drooling as I watch) take a bathroom break and sit down to watch the master of all cooking shows the Masterchef. However from the very first episode the thing that stands out are the “mastercheffy” phrases that are inserted in the mouths of the judges (sometimes against their will I am sure). I love these because they are overused, clichéd and sometimes don’t make sense logically. So here are my top 5 overused but never too old phrases in dedication to the Top 10 contestants that have made it thus far through blood and sweat (literally).

 

1. “I am salivating”- Ermm of course you arel, you probably have not eaten yet because you have to judge 24 dishes times 2 or 3 rounds (even 1 forkful times 24 times 3 is a lot of food) and the whole place must smell amazingly confusing, what with French, indian, spanish, Mexican, Italian food being cooked at the same time. I know you are salivating but please leave the mention of drool to us viewers at home.

 

2. “A well-oiled machine”- Yes of course he/she is. I mean they run a kitchen and a successful business together in a time of uncertain economy, but can we think of any other metaphors for a well-oiled machine.

 

3. “That duck/chicken/lamb/steak is a minute over”- 1 MINUTE, that is about the length of time it takes to grab a tea towel and accidentally drop it and pick it up and take the pan off the heat. C’mon 1 minute does not the world break, unless we are talking deep impact.

 

4. “It lacks a bit of zing”- the most confusing of all flavours is zing. It is just above umami and under truffle I guess because it is really hard to achieve. If I ever aspire to join the culinary greats I will have to discover this mysterious flavour and unearth its hiding place.

 

5. “Oomph factor”- Now I know about fear factor but nothing inspires more fear than lacking this elusive factor. Someone really needs to harness this factor and put it in a jar.

 

6. “The perfect marriage”- Now I know the news of the successful nuptials of pork and apple, duck and orange, strawberry and cream, but the poor contestants just made a dessert with blue cheese, beetroot and cauliflower and paired it with chocolate, may be the idea of the perfect marriage of tastes is passé, it is the era of collision and disagreements of flavours

 

7. “It does not look like a restaurant dish”- Yes, because obviously they had to cook within 60 minutes and that included the shopping (so what if it was from the shop-with-everything next door), plus there were multiple cameras and 3 cooking stalwarts breathing down their neck. Its lucky that the medic outside is only called in for cut and burnt fingers and not nervous breakdowns or PTSD.

 

8. “You have tried to make it a look like a restaurant dish, when all we want is you cook from your heart”- MMMhhhhmmm, yeah I don’t know what to say

 

9. “It lacks that textural component”- Oh yes, the texture fixture has driven all the contestants to so much madness that they are ready to put cornflakes from a box on a beautiful lemon-curd pudding (there wasn’t time or ingredients to make a textural element) or dip fried rice noodles in chocolate to create wonky looking chocolate spiders (oh what the hell)

 

10. “This is my version of…”- Well it looks wonderful, of course and must taste amazing but you have only had a whole day and all the time in the world to cook it not to mention “the one I made earlier” version of the dish to help you along. But that’s okay.

 

This should, however, not reflect on my love for the show, I have, I am and I will keep watching this for all seasons to come.

 

Do you have a favourite phrase you think is hilarious?

 

 

 

Now that is a restaurant quality dish from a restaurant

 

 

Birthdays

I just turned the age we all know as the wrong side of the twenties, and I know there is nothing to cry murder about it since it is not on the wrong side forties or even thirties. I am not whinging about my age at all except I will from now on only have 1 birthday in 2 years as a control measure on aging (maybe I will when I hit the wrong side of the next two decades.) but as another so called “Birthday” passed I couldn’t help but observe some strange things around me. Obviously long gone are those days when birthdays were a celebration with a coloured cake with faux cream and a candle, enjoying a party with the neighbours’ kids (none of whom were in the same age category by the way). Also gone are the madness of reaching the legal limit to drink and therefore drinking yourself silly and taking pictures that you still hope don’t surface in some corner of the world 10 years later.

Birthdays are no longer the day when you wait at the stroke of midnight to see which of your friends or boyfriends’ or girlfriend’s is the first to call. Facebook makes sure no one, even the person you hardly remember anymore wishes you on your “page” which for one day in a year is a proof of how many “friends” you have.

So I decided not to think about what growing another year older and most certainly none-the-wiser did not mean but what it definitely did mean

It meant another year that I went without talking to the friend I thought I wouldn’t spend a day without talking to

It meant another year where the number of shoes I bought is more than the number of times I saw my family

It meant another year when I applied, more number of times for jobs which I didn’t love than take a single step towards what I really want to do

It meant another year has passed since I packed that bag and passport and travelled to the next state even

It meant another year had passed without growing at all.

 

To write or not to write

To write or not to write

All those who live in the mostly free world have the freedom of speech and expression which means we can write about pretty much anything. I am not going to go into the art of taboo writing as my knowledge in all things that require a lot of research is limited. However, in general I can write about anything from the sesame seed that has been stuck in my teeth since Friday after I had that questionable sushi or the woes of public transport which to me means nothing since I drive a car and live in a small town. But what if I am not really confident about my writing skills, what if I really don’t want my Facebook friends, majority of whom are classmates, seniors or juniors of my English literature major days, who will not only be worthy critics but in most cases published bloggers themselves. Why is it that I can’t write something, just anything and want it to be read (widely of course) while remaining anonymous. Apparently the best way to make your blogs read is to ask your friends to read it tag them on Facebook and twitter and other social media that from my sheer ignorance I am unaware of. Why on earth would I want my friends to read anything unless the rest of the world has given me the stamp of approval that I am a good writer?

 Why can’t I hope to scribble my musings on a piece of paper and hide it only to be found years from now by an anonymous person whose bought my house and realising the gem of a creation rushes to the nearest (I am not sure what happens to the rest of the story) and makes me immortal posthumously.

Why can’t I write long emails to a dear friend of all things that disturb or trouble me (the I-can’t-believe-I-married-that- guy husband) the I-cant believe- I- work- here job and the I can’t-believe-no one-understands-me life and expect them to be pinnacles of post-modernist literature  when my dear friend realises that the world deserves to read them.

Why can’t I write about the joys of falling in love for the first time or in hindsight the foolishness of all things teenage in my little diary and hope for it to be found in an OpShop by a publisher browsing for all things used.

Why can’t I write about an end of the world saga that is not distopic but a world where all things apocalyptic clear away, greed, lies, global warming and climate change are thing s of the past and the human race has become so much wiser and hope the manuscript makes it way on a misplaced satchel to a Hollywood director looking for the next big thing.

Why can’t I just write without worrying about links and taglines and publishing ingenuity?

I guess the path to success through writing is not about writing at all, it is an entrepreneurial adventure where you need to be ruthless to succeed and if you don’t have the acumen (business and IT) you may want to resort to being a closet writer whose writings are most likely to be lost by a corrupted motherboard.

I know which kind I am.

 

Little Boy’s First Story

Its not fair you know

To understand you have made a mistake when you are knee deep in it.

How does it make sense if you want to do it right once again, you are out of chances.

That is all life is, a series of chances

You miss one; you miss two but make sure you don’t miss all

Because once you are out of chances you can never undo it again.

So the little boy that stood with his heart-broken will never find a way back

No matter how much you wish for.

Chances are limited so use them while you can,

But how do you know when they expire

No you can’t, not until they are all over

And then you wish you could do it all over again

To find the little boy who stood with his heart-broken

Except he is not so little anymore, he is a grown man with a heart of stone

No signs of the tape on the broken seams coz its been so long, it is a fossil now

So you do with only a pile of memories, every so often a word or a sentence

 a time-machine

Chances are sadistic little buggers, when you have them you don’t know

And when you don’t, you know

Its okay little boy, you are spared, because it would take only one more chance

To kill you

I will not seek you out anymore.