Food for 'Thought' - 2

Yo people..!!! Ok the 'Yo' is not some-confused-slang which I have learnt, just coz I am living abroad for while now (which again is not blowing my own trumpet, phew!!! ), its just an exclamatory statement! (Like this one).

So, after a pathetic start to this topic (a total useless statement), let me get straight to another irrelevant note, 'yes, I am back, baby!' And there it is, yet again 'nth' time, me returning, trying to keep this space alive. Looks like most of my posts are full of 'this' crap, than the other ones. Nevertheless, moving on..!!!

Just a briefing so far, I have been living my professional life in Linz, Austria, which is quite a beautiful city, with all the landscapes, the lakes, the sunbathing scenes(ahem..!!! ), I mean sunny scenes!(Oh well, too much of information) Visit to find out for yourselves. And most importantly, this stage has made sure that I stay alone by housing me in a comfortable studio apartment and it sucks!

Now we get to the topic, it is about food. Last week, I found myself completely abandoned by the 'Food Luck'. Not once, twice but thrice, I had my food burnt. The worst part, it was the same food, which I burnt thrice, so you could feel the pain I had to bear to eat it. Ok, the option why I didn't throw it is, its just that I hate to throw food, I'd rather wait till it gets completely spoiled and inedible before I decide to throw. I remember eating breads which were cultivating fungi on the half surface (ofcourse I didn't eat the fungi part). And it was not even a complicated one, just simple rice and dal. Well to a major extent its a side effect of the FAD (Facebook Addiction Syndrome). So I thought I had enough of punishment for burning food, but the 'Food Gods' had other plans, this time freaking me out.

 I was casually hogging on the most important meal of the day, Breakfast (Oh yeah, I make sure to have routine meals!). I had two slices of bread, omlette, apple, pear and a few dates fruit. As I was eating I saw a small insect crawl on the plate near the dates, I just removed it and continued to eat. A few minutes later, I saw a small white worm, yes worm, around the same place where the insect was. It was in the larva stage (if I remember my biology), moving around. Now that freaked me out a bit, I started looking in the bread, apples and pear, everything looked fine. The plate was also clean. And then I cut open the dates, voila, I discovered it! The dates fruit providing a very beautiful home for the growth of these insects. And then it struck me, the dates fruit, WHICH I HAVE BEEN EATING FOR A MONTH, providing a nest for these insects! I felt nauseated, for a moment. It was a 250 gms package, I had eaten almost upto 3/4ths of the package. Well whats done is done, its been 2 weeks now, I haven't had anything weird so far, other than my mind playing games with weird crawling sensation throughout my body. I still keep my fingers crossed though, that all those worms (if any), should have dissolved as proteins, and nothing else. Now I have started praying to 'Food Gods' to bring me more 'Food Luck', as in no food with such kind of worms or burnt food, just normal food. Actually it'd be cool if I got some kinda super power through this, become a worm-man or something, but that'd be just disgusting!!! (And I know I have been watching one too many super hero movies).

P.S. - Oh BTW, read at your own risk of getting nauseated. The writer shall not be held responsible for any such kinda feeling setting in...!!!

Many food luck and happy hogging to all. Till next time - signing off..!!!

Food for 'Thought'..!!!

One of the biggest experiences of living an independent life, on the negative side, other than returning to an empty house (home is too good a word for this dorm..!!), with no one to talk, etc, is the fact the one has to enter the kitchen asap, to prepare the ingredients, for the 'thought' process to work on. Ironically, sometimes the neurons give out the impulses so late, that you enter into an empty kitchen at 9pm (the stores generally close by that time..!!!) after a tiry day giving you no other option than to go to bed with as much water, to dilute the HCl in the stomach, as food. And then you also have these days.

So the other day, after returning from work, I decided for some royal hogging night. Since my room mate, Ganesh (GB), had been taking care of quite a lot of cooking during my exams, I thought of giving him a break and doing everything by myself. One of the easiest of the side dishes, which goes with any vegetable, any number of vegetables and rice and chapathi, and even bread, is Rajma and I have been making quite a lot of them. So yet again I chose to make Rajma, with a mix of all the vegetables that I had, carrots, potatoes, peas, capsicum, etc (cant remember if I'd put anything else..!!). The aroma was quite good and the taste was even mesmerizing, I know this is quite a lot of yapping, but the words carry their weightage here. So with the side dish ready, we just made some rice, as the idea of chapathi meant we would have had dinner at midnight. After a royal dinner with 2 servings of royal hogging, and quite a full stomach, after a long time for me, these were the words from GB, which just furiated the HCl in my stomach to digest the food within a second and the taste of the Rajma turned into oblivion.

GB: Machan, 'Sambhar' super da..!!!
Me: @#$%^%^&$#@#@@#%%$^%^&, and the curses never ended till I went to bed..!!!

Striking irony, there was not even an atom of Sambhar powder in it..!! hmph..!!!

Halaal (Bhai) for an hour..!!

Now, its the 10th month of independent life stage going on for me (with respect to living alone..!!) and the journey so far has been nothing less than exciting. Not that I don't miss my folks back home, which forms the only part of misery I have to go overcome, but the thought of a new tomorrow suppresses them. So I carried out one of the explorations today of cooking non-vegetarian dish and thought of trying out a complete chicken. Earlier I had a bad experience with Tuna but a good one with Prawns. It was chicken's turn now. So got a full chicken, not cut, just with the proper dressings. The first look at it, was pretty satisfying, which was short-lived, when Vamsi and Eb (both good at non-veg cooking!) chuckled saying that this was the most difficult as it would take hours to cut it into pieces. How did they know, they fell for it too :D.




Not the kinda feedback I would ve liked to listen, nevertheless, I couldnt return it now, so had to do something about it. An easier option would have been to soak it in spices for sometime and shove it in an oven, but our dorm doesn't have one. So had to go the tougher option. As I started, with every cut, my respect for the halaals (bhais in tamil) only kept increasing. I had to take be extra careful not to cut myself (already there isn't much part of my hand left without a bruise!) and the fact that the chicken was slippery, didnt make it much easier. It took not less than hour to finally cut them and start cooking and finally after 2 hours, I was able to hog on to some chicken delicacy. Oh yes! they were delicious :)..!!

A pic of the same..!!

Rendezvous with Kitchen..!!

My Mom's word's still echo in my ear, " Dei Harishaaa, come here, and atleast see how to make this Sambhar, I don't know what the hell are you going to do there(in Ulm)?" and as usual I'll go, "Mom! chillax, I will manage". I used to feel silly sometimes at those continuous recursion of words from Mom, and they always used to end with a warning, "No one will be there to cook something for you when you return from University, so better listen to me!" and evidently, I have never regretted those words more than now (Well, Mom also used to tell that, you will regret it there!). You are in a country, where there is only one Indian shop for selling Indian food and only one Indian restaurant, which sucks big time and the worst, you are not earning, so money management needs to be absolutely precise than those of the Chartered Accountants. Damn, these stats should have hit my head in India. Nevertheless the rendezvous had to be done someday.

The first day I arrive here and check out my room, the Kitchen appears as some alien land, with some hot plates. Oh boy, here we go. However, the first month somehow I managed, as mentioned before, with Bhuvan the saviour, who's an amazing cook. Nevertheless, the guilt finally took the better of me and I told Bhuvan, I can take from here mate. Hell I was ready. only if I could have foreseen, that huge disasters awaited me. I can't even think of those days of experimentation, which my stomach was put under, it would not surprise to see the stone get dissolved as some edible stuff making me burp! Everytime I would be talking to my stomach, consoling it, making it ready for the food. Suddenly for a brief moment the lunch at the Uni, who provided only-salt-spiced-German-'special' lunch tasted like elixir. The fact that I had no job till the first 4 months made it even difficult, as my brusque brain would calculate faster than a Casio 991MS for the spendings and we would provide the Indian shop with all the profits, who still enjoys his monopoly here.


Finally, in the month of June, the job came calling, for once something went right, and the first thing I do, get some great spices, though cooking lay in genesis. Incourse of time, I was getting better at combining the spices and my first decent-tasting-dish turned out to be noodles (not maggi!). For the next 2 weeks, noodles would be the main part of my menu with all sorts of combinations, with vegetables, egg, tuna (another disaster!), etc. However, there was a new problem now, with the exams creeping upon, the cooking would squander 2 hours atleast, if the work load at the Uni was not enough. Everytime I would enter the kitchen, Mom's words would automatically playback, as if someone forgot to change the record (I almost ended up playing music the next time!). Towards the end of July, finally I make something good to taste (ok, this is relative to me!), Pulao, what was even better that it would take a maximum of an hour and a half to finish it, and this time decreased subsequently. Now I can't say that I am good at it, but I can make something edible (very positive from my perspective!). Mom's words still echo, but feels good, makes me feel at home.

The Warrior's Scar..!!

Taking a piece from Biology, of what I know, skin is a layer who's basic function is to protect the internal organs (ahem! bioligists need to stop laughing at the naive description of skin). Its not like I don't know the other functions, but its not related. So when there are damages, the skin has a change of colour, from its normal colour, due to dead cells on them. Ok this post is not a scientific one. Just to make it sound fancy and not painful, right from my childhood, whenever I got hurt, my dad used to call them 'veera thalumbu' (Warrior's Scar), in telugu. Now one of the most common 'battlefields' (wanting to sound fancy!) to get them has to be the kitchen. I remember seeing numerous of those brown marks, on my mom's arms. Everyday, I would witness atleast one new scar on her hand, boy, never realized how painful would that be, until I started cooking. Right from the smallest, it would go upto around 6 cm in length, atleast the longest I have seen. Every time I used to tell her, just be careful, which she always is, but somehow they sneak upon you. My battle started with small cuts with the knives, again its not that am careless, but again they somehow sneak upon you, and yesterday had the fierce battle with a hot pan of oil, spilling over my hand, and thanks to my roomie who was quick to get a cloth and wipe it off and I spend the next 15 minutes keeping my hand in a pot of cold water. Something really funny happened then, the water was cold, but I felt it hot for sometime on the place where oil spilled. I tried switching hands, wondering if I had turned the tap in the wrong direction, it was correct. However, it was good to see that my senses didnt go crazy, as I started feeling the cold water in a few minutes. Those brown marks did appear by evening. I didnt know if I was happy or sad with the scar on my hand, eventhough it kept on burning for sometime, nevertheless, I have another of those 'Warrior's Scar' on my hand. Returning to the battlefield (kitchen) I did have the last laugh, as I always will, because the food was as delicious as it could be.