EFML:Experiments in the kitchen
Warning:I've got sarcasm in my blood these days and this is going to be a hopefully humorous diatribe on household chores.:P There,you've been warned.Now consider it precedent enough to commence reading:D
Ah,where do I begin my woeful tale?Now's as bad a time as any.
I'm in the kitchen with Beethoven's Ode to Joy on loop(ironic isn't it?).Vessels line one side of the counter,vegetable peels and cut vegetables the other.Two cookers on the stove that confuse me by haphazardly whistling and making me lose count.A vessel filled to the brim with milk(well obviously because foolish me underestimated the volume of milk while picking out a vessel:P) that threatens to spill over every second that I don't look.A chapati griddle that's over-heated and is doubtless going to char the roti that's currently on it.A washing machine buzzes from somewhere and I can't recall if that's the end of the wash or the rinse cycle.In the midst of the chaotically regular threads of staring at the milk and the pressure cooker and the griddle,I need to keep rolling more rotis to replace the ones being made.If my brain came with an OS,it would be blaring warnings in red:Process table full.No room for a new process.Cores overheating.Or something to that effect.Maybe halt and catch fire:D.I'm too tired to get the technical metaphors right tonight--my sincere apologies to anyone who's overtly technical and reading this.
This should give you enough idea about the situation I'm in right now.Let me tell you how I landed up in this miserable predicament.My Mom decided to head out of town on Wednesday--to be fair to her,she's usually considerate about my schedule and only goes out when I'm free enough to take over.Honestly,she hardly ever goes out--it's definitely less than five times in the last twenty years:o This time too,she asked me if I would prefer her going on a weekend.Ah,curse the foolish over-confident me for saying nay when I should have said yay.I'm old enough to handle cooking a few dishes.The truth is that I haven't cooked for so long that I've forgotten the tedium it involves:P
So,I was handed over the reins to a perfectly maintained house in the wee hours of Thursday morning--probably because I was still sluggish enough to realise the catastrophe that was beng handed over on a platter to me:P
I leave for work at 7am.And in those two hours,I realised what a herculean task it is to handle all the chores of the day plus cooking before you left to work.
See,don't get me wrong here.Cooking,by itself,isn't that bad.When you have time,it's like an experiment.You throw in whatever you like in random quantities(Yes I don't know the proportions--don't roll your eyes at me--they say cooking is an art,not a science;so it's fair enough that you treat it like an art:P),and if you have a good sense of what you're doing,the result will be edible.Tasty,even--if you're lucky!
Now, cooking for other people is the next level of complexity.It requires you to keep in mind their tastes as well.The standards are slightly higher here because unlike the cook who's forced to eat whatever he conjures,the audience expect something.They will not eat anything you make.Trust me.Been there,done that:P Sometimes,even if your food is good,you'll hear complaints.But even this is tolerable.
Let's go the expert level.You have two hours to cook for a family.I'm talking full-fledged immersion here--serve coffee at the break of dawn,breakfast soon after,pack your own lunch,get other people's lunches to a warm-up-and-eat state.You have to do it from scratch.Bonus tasks are washing clothes,dishes,folding yesterday's clothes,making the dining table presentable enough to eat at and a hundred other tiny annoying nuances.(no brownie points for these)
If someone's who's born prior to the 80s is reading this,I'm going to get abundant eye rolls from them:"You know what,every woman does this.There's nothing great about it."Thankfully,noone that old is reading this or so I presume--and therefore you will empathize and sympathize with me when I say that this is just short of impossible.:P I say just short of here because we all have our very own mothers who manage to effortlessly accomplish this mammoth of a task everyday.I swear I have no idea how.I officially proclaim that this is impossible for the people of my generation.Hear all Hear ye!
Back to the present!
The sulfenic acid(or its derivative, I forget which) is exercising my lacrymal glands to the fullest whilst I try to chop blindly.My Dad offers to help but I'm reluctant.He's a double-agent.While his chopping skills are way better than mine ever will be,he's doing this to get inside info of what I do inside the kitchen.My Mom has probably instructed him to specifically do so and give her daily reports.The information(basically the mistakes) so meticulously gathered will be stored in a database with elastic search capabilities so that it can be used against me as evidence for incidents of future insubordination:P Ah,but I'm too clever for this.
Ten minutes later,I don't care.The torture techniques of Allium cepa were too much for me and I have surrendered to the inquisition.My Dad is standing there meekly chopping onions.I stand beside him like a supervisor.Not that bowl,you were supposed to put this onion in the other one.I told you already.Two in the first bowl.One in the second.One in the third,I screech.He glances sideways at my phone that's blaring music and then at me.I'm sure today's report is going with the headlines:Subject lost marbles.
Here's where I explain the three bowls before you too,conclude that I am mad:
After numerous such stints of cooking and working in parallel,I have come up with what I deem a good scheduling algorithm.It comes with a three staged pipeline--evaluating system requirements,pre-processing and execution.Before I scare people away,let me explain.See,today's Friday--so today I cook for three days in parts--Friday,Saturday and Sunday.I chop the vegetables for Sunday,cook the vegetables for Saturday and prepare the dishes that are due today.You might find the idea laughable,but I assure you it has its merits.I hear all the skeptics going This is equivalent to cooking an entire meal from scratch.Why are you complicating it? Hear me out.
You come home at 7pm after a long day's work.Going by your method,you'd have to start from scratch.You're going to end up making dinner at 9 and you'll be dead by then.Go by my book and you have dinner ready by 7.20.While you're eating, the second stage of pipelining is happening on the stove without you having to bother.Finally,you can sit down and cut some vegetables or knead dough while you soothe yourself with soft music.I'm done by 8.30(a lot calmer than you are and a lot less tired too) and lo and behold,I even have stuff ready for the next couple of days.Now tell me,whose idea sounds better?This my friend is the magic they call concurrency--it gives you the illusion of parallelism without more cores. :D
Back to the present again.After having deployed aforementioned scheme with satisfactory results,I sit down to eat my meal--ah pardon me,Dear Reader,but I have one last digression to make.Last,I swear.
Cooking robs you of freedom to choice in food.See,I made a perfectly good gravy and served it with rotis this morning.Guess what I ate? The one roti that got marginally charred and yesterday's leftover chutney.Now for dinner,I've made this amazing chutney that the rest of my family is happily devouring with dosas.Want to look at what I'm eating? Rice from the afternoon mixed with gravy from the morning and palya from the afternoon.When you cook,you get to deal with what's left of it as well as the parts that go bad.It's like committing a crime,you know.You're the perpetrator,so you bear the punishment and collateral damage.:D You could serve the bad parts to someone,but yeah,I can't bring myself to do that:(
Ah,where was I? Yeah,just about to eat the not-so great-meal that's my dinner--well I'm past caring about what I'm eating.In fact,I'm too tired for any of this.Not writing though.Never writing.It's my love.:P I forgot to mention,I took pictures of all that I made."Social media" my family laughs at me." 'Course not.This is exhibit A for case of insubordination when these very people who ate my food will pretend to have forgotten about and be intentionally vague about my cooking skills.I need evidence for then:P
So I take my spoon to my mouth when I hear my name being yelled from upstairs.Ayee,there's no water in the taps.You forgot to pump up the water to the overhead tank today.
For a minute,I'm very tempted to swear "F***ing switch it on yourself." I've been on my feet since 5 am.Now,when I'm finally about to relax,you(being upstairs) want me to come all the way up to flip on a switch?
And then,this weird thing happens.This scene plays back in my head,perfectly lucid.Ma,there's no water on the table.I'm really thirsty.Get me some.
I demand of my mother who's come back after 16 hours of work while I'm watching some inane TV series.
So this is karma getting back at me.I deserve every bit of this:P I bite back the curse,put down my plate and trudge my way upstairs.
The maid is looking at me with newfound respect of late.It's like she thought I was a lab assistant and now I turned out to be doing postdoctoral research.Oh she can cook.She can take care of the house.I like her.She's not so bad.She smiles at me widely every morning.
Finally,I call my mom.Any chance you want to come back early? I could cancel your tickets and re-book you know.I whine,sounding like a petulant 5-year old.Fed up already?Don't worry,I'll be back on Monday.She laughs.
Monday...God.That is sooo far away.Hmm okay...my voice trails off.I've been doing this for more than 35 years now.And you're acting like this for five days.She finds my entire distress laughable.
35 years of cooking.Not to mention dealing with horrible people like me who never lend a hand:P I wonder how she still doesn't hate me!
Merciful God in heaven.I should build a temple for her.
Friday...Saturday...Sunday...Monday....God it's so far away.I'm going to die by then!
P.S:This post started off with mock humor and somewhere along it transformed into vehement anger(anger that I didn't even know I had:P) .And now,it ends on a note of reverence.Fitting,I think.
Anyway,I'm too tired to write more.This was an outpouring of words.I should proofread it.Hell,I don't care.It's going online now.And, I ,am going straight to bed.
Ah,where do I begin my woeful tale?Now's as bad a time as any.
I'm in the kitchen with Beethoven's Ode to Joy on loop(ironic isn't it?).Vessels line one side of the counter,vegetable peels and cut vegetables the other.Two cookers on the stove that confuse me by haphazardly whistling and making me lose count.A vessel filled to the brim with milk(well obviously because foolish me underestimated the volume of milk while picking out a vessel:P) that threatens to spill over every second that I don't look.A chapati griddle that's over-heated and is doubtless going to char the roti that's currently on it.A washing machine buzzes from somewhere and I can't recall if that's the end of the wash or the rinse cycle.In the midst of the chaotically regular threads of staring at the milk and the pressure cooker and the griddle,I need to keep rolling more rotis to replace the ones being made.If my brain came with an OS,it would be blaring warnings in red:Process table full.No room for a new process.Cores overheating.Or something to that effect.Maybe halt and catch fire:D.I'm too tired to get the technical metaphors right tonight--my sincere apologies to anyone who's overtly technical and reading this.
This should give you enough idea about the situation I'm in right now.Let me tell you how I landed up in this miserable predicament.My Mom decided to head out of town on Wednesday--to be fair to her,she's usually considerate about my schedule and only goes out when I'm free enough to take over.Honestly,she hardly ever goes out--it's definitely less than five times in the last twenty years:o This time too,she asked me if I would prefer her going on a weekend.Ah,curse the foolish over-confident me for saying nay when I should have said yay.I'm old enough to handle cooking a few dishes.The truth is that I haven't cooked for so long that I've forgotten the tedium it involves:P
So,I was handed over the reins to a perfectly maintained house in the wee hours of Thursday morning--probably because I was still sluggish enough to realise the catastrophe that was beng handed over on a platter to me:P
I leave for work at 7am.And in those two hours,I realised what a herculean task it is to handle all the chores of the day plus cooking before you left to work.
See,don't get me wrong here.Cooking,by itself,isn't that bad.When you have time,it's like an experiment.You throw in whatever you like in random quantities(Yes I don't know the proportions--don't roll your eyes at me--they say cooking is an art,not a science;so it's fair enough that you treat it like an art:P),and if you have a good sense of what you're doing,the result will be edible.Tasty,even--if you're lucky!
Now, cooking for other people is the next level of complexity.It requires you to keep in mind their tastes as well.The standards are slightly higher here because unlike the cook who's forced to eat whatever he conjures,the audience expect something.They will not eat anything you make.Trust me.Been there,done that:P Sometimes,even if your food is good,you'll hear complaints.But even this is tolerable.
Let's go the expert level.You have two hours to cook for a family.I'm talking full-fledged immersion here--serve coffee at the break of dawn,breakfast soon after,pack your own lunch,get other people's lunches to a warm-up-and-eat state.You have to do it from scratch.Bonus tasks are washing clothes,dishes,folding yesterday's clothes,making the dining table presentable enough to eat at and a hundred other tiny annoying nuances.(no brownie points for these)
If someone's who's born prior to the 80s is reading this,I'm going to get abundant eye rolls from them:"You know what,every woman does this.There's nothing great about it."Thankfully,noone that old is reading this or so I presume--and therefore you will empathize and sympathize with me when I say that this is just short of impossible.:P I say just short of here because we all have our very own mothers who manage to effortlessly accomplish this mammoth of a task everyday.I swear I have no idea how.I officially proclaim that this is impossible for the people of my generation.Hear all Hear ye!
Back to the present!
The sulfenic acid(or its derivative, I forget which) is exercising my lacrymal glands to the fullest whilst I try to chop blindly.My Dad offers to help but I'm reluctant.He's a double-agent.While his chopping skills are way better than mine ever will be,he's doing this to get inside info of what I do inside the kitchen.My Mom has probably instructed him to specifically do so and give her daily reports.The information(basically the mistakes) so meticulously gathered will be stored in a database with elastic search capabilities so that it can be used against me as evidence for incidents of future insubordination:P Ah,but I'm too clever for this.
Ten minutes later,I don't care.The torture techniques of Allium cepa were too much for me and I have surrendered to the inquisition.My Dad is standing there meekly chopping onions.I stand beside him like a supervisor.Not that bowl,you were supposed to put this onion in the other one.I told you already.Two in the first bowl.One in the second.One in the third,I screech.He glances sideways at my phone that's blaring music and then at me.I'm sure today's report is going with the headlines:Subject lost marbles.
Here's where I explain the three bowls before you too,conclude that I am mad:
After numerous such stints of cooking and working in parallel,I have come up with what I deem a good scheduling algorithm.It comes with a three staged pipeline--evaluating system requirements,pre-processing and execution.Before I scare people away,let me explain.See,today's Friday--so today I cook for three days in parts--Friday,Saturday and Sunday.I chop the vegetables for Sunday,cook the vegetables for Saturday and prepare the dishes that are due today.You might find the idea laughable,but I assure you it has its merits.I hear all the skeptics going This is equivalent to cooking an entire meal from scratch.Why are you complicating it? Hear me out.
You come home at 7pm after a long day's work.Going by your method,you'd have to start from scratch.You're going to end up making dinner at 9 and you'll be dead by then.Go by my book and you have dinner ready by 7.20.While you're eating, the second stage of pipelining is happening on the stove without you having to bother.Finally,you can sit down and cut some vegetables or knead dough while you soothe yourself with soft music.I'm done by 8.30(a lot calmer than you are and a lot less tired too) and lo and behold,I even have stuff ready for the next couple of days.Now tell me,whose idea sounds better?This my friend is the magic they call concurrency--it gives you the illusion of parallelism without more cores. :D
Back to the present again.After having deployed aforementioned scheme with satisfactory results,I sit down to eat my meal--ah pardon me,Dear Reader,but I have one last digression to make.Last,I swear.
Cooking robs you of freedom to choice in food.See,I made a perfectly good gravy and served it with rotis this morning.Guess what I ate? The one roti that got marginally charred and yesterday's leftover chutney.Now for dinner,I've made this amazing chutney that the rest of my family is happily devouring with dosas.Want to look at what I'm eating? Rice from the afternoon mixed with gravy from the morning and palya from the afternoon.When you cook,you get to deal with what's left of it as well as the parts that go bad.It's like committing a crime,you know.You're the perpetrator,so you bear the punishment and collateral damage.:D You could serve the bad parts to someone,but yeah,I can't bring myself to do that:(
Ah,where was I? Yeah,just about to eat the not-so great-meal that's my dinner--well I'm past caring about what I'm eating.In fact,I'm too tired for any of this.Not writing though.Never writing.It's my love.:P I forgot to mention,I took pictures of all that I made."Social media" my family laughs at me." 'Course not.This is exhibit A for case of insubordination when these very people who ate my food will pretend to have forgotten about and be intentionally vague about my cooking skills.I need evidence for then:P
So I take my spoon to my mouth when I hear my name being yelled from upstairs.Ayee,there's no water in the taps.You forgot to pump up the water to the overhead tank today.
For a minute,I'm very tempted to swear "F***ing switch it on yourself." I've been on my feet since 5 am.Now,when I'm finally about to relax,you(being upstairs) want me to come all the way up to flip on a switch?
And then,this weird thing happens.This scene plays back in my head,perfectly lucid.Ma,there's no water on the table.I'm really thirsty.Get me some.
I demand of my mother who's come back after 16 hours of work while I'm watching some inane TV series.
So this is karma getting back at me.I deserve every bit of this:P I bite back the curse,put down my plate and trudge my way upstairs.
The maid is looking at me with newfound respect of late.It's like she thought I was a lab assistant and now I turned out to be doing postdoctoral research.Oh she can cook.She can take care of the house.I like her.She's not so bad.She smiles at me widely every morning.
Finally,I call my mom.Any chance you want to come back early? I could cancel your tickets and re-book you know.I whine,sounding like a petulant 5-year old.Fed up already?Don't worry,I'll be back on Monday.She laughs.
Monday...God.That is sooo far away.Hmm okay...my voice trails off.I've been doing this for more than 35 years now.And you're acting like this for five days.She finds my entire distress laughable.
35 years of cooking.Not to mention dealing with horrible people like me who never lend a hand:P I wonder how she still doesn't hate me!
Merciful God in heaven.I should build a temple for her.
Friday...Saturday...Sunday...Monday....God it's so far away.I'm going to die by then!
P.S:This post started off with mock humor and somewhere along it transformed into vehement anger(anger that I didn't even know I had:P) .And now,it ends on a note of reverence.Fitting,I think.
Anyway,I'm too tired to write more.This was an outpouring of words.I should proofread it.Hell,I don't care.It's going online now.And, I ,am going straight to bed.
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