A hubby's view: how cooking blog changed my life

When we first moved to UK from US, my husband started writing a blog about our experiences. I used to enjoy reading the posts and so did many of our friends we left behind in US. It kept them in a loop. As for the new friends we made here, they liked reading our perspective of the life we are leading in their country. But then after a year of writing he suddenly stopped. My every attempt to inspire him to write failed. So I asked him to do some guest posts in my blog. He keeps saying he will.. Did one for me when I was in India. One recipe to rule them all. This is his second one for my blog. Thank you dear for all the nice words. I am assuming there will a post from you next as to how it has 'affected' our dining experience.

Off to his post.. Enjoy!

The first and most obvious change in my life is that I get to eat all the delicious stuff you see on this blog. Stuff that is mouth wateringly delicious, stuff I wouldn’t have tasted otherwise. Most of the times, the dinner I am going to eat is a surprise for me – I just look forward to the moment that I come home, walk into the kitchen, open the pot to check what’s inside – usually there is something new in there. Now, a surprise every day isn’t a bad deal – won’t you agree?

Secondly, I don’t have to come up with dinner ideas. This is how it used to be 8 months back.
Day: a random weekday
Time: 7 PM
Roshni: Please, please give me some idea for dinner today.
Me: Er… how about Aloo mutter, aloo palak, mushroom mutter, dhal palak…. (basically any variation of this recipe - One recipe to rule them all)
Roshni: Stop. I will figure it out myself.

Needless to say, it usually didn’t end very well. Nowadays, I am not expected to give these ideas. She just gets inspired from one of the other blogs, an event or a blog hop (no clue what that is). I still get asked bizarre questions – just the other day I was asked to give an idea for a recipe with nutella and almonds (I am very serious here), I just laugh it off as just some kind of joke and get on with my TV time.

Third and the most importantly, Photography. I tell Rosh these days - I don’t know about your cooking, but your photography skills have definitely improved. She had a fairly good idea about cooking before, but knew nothing about photos. I used to be the photo snob – the one that attends courses, knows about all the controls in the SLR camera, can talk about exposure control and depth of field, but is really bad at executing them. When she started, she used to ask for my help in taking photos. I don’t know about you guys, but when you are hungry and there is a tasty looking dish in front of you, the last thing I wanted to do was to think about the correct lighting and a creative background. She stopped asking for my ideas, went through a lot of the other blogs and seems to have learnt quite a few tricks. It is amazing how much you learn when you are inspired.

On the flip side, this sucks up all her time. It takes a tremendous time to find new recipes, shortlist them, prepare them, photograph them, write them up, follow other blogs and plan for events. She lives and dies by the feedback she gets. She frequently asks “why am I doing this”. My wisecrack answer “it’s the journey that matters” or something along the lines doesn’t usually help (I should think of a different line now). So ladies, if you liked or even better, tried something from her blog, please please let her know. It makes her day.

To summarize, I think I got a good deal. Now if you will excuse me, I will have to go check what’s for dinner today.

One recipe to rule them all

This is a guest post from my husband. He is on his own for 4 more weeks while I vacation in India, so I was worried what's happening to my kitchen. He promised to enlighten me through a blog post, so here it goes.

I was 22 when I went to US and managed to keep myself fed for 7 more years. I have one trusted recipe that I used consistently during all those years, which is coming handy now. It is extremely simple. It will be useful for someone who is terrified about turning on the stove. Conversely, it's unexciting and extremely useless for someone well versed in the art of cooking, especially if you have a cooking blog of yourself. You are not going to find pretty pictures or detailed description for this recipe - you don't need it.

What you need:
Onions, Tomatoes, Cauliflower (Gobi), Frozen peas (mutter), oil, salt and chilli powder.

Preparation:
1. Chop 1-2 onions into fine pieces. You will get faster and better at this as you do it frequently. Don't worry about the tears in your eyes, it will go away.
2. Heat a pan and pour some oil.
3. Stir the onion till the pieces start turning golden brown. Many times you won't get this colour. Simply stir them till you get bored of it.
4. Cut 1-2 tomatoes into small pieces.
5. Stir them with the onion.
6. Add salt and chilli powder, stir the pan till you get a thick mixture.
7. Cut Cauliflower into pieces and add.
8. Microwave frozen peas for about 4 minutes and add.
9. Pour some water and cook till they are done.
10. Remember to turn off the stove - this may come back and bite you sometimes.

That's it. Eat it with rice or store bought chapathi.

I believe this onion-tomato-veg curry is simply the best thing invented since sliced bread for the following reasons:

1. It tastes better than most curries you eat from Indian restaurants. For some reason, stuff you cook simply tastes better. Don't know why.
2. It is extremely healthy. Just watch the amount of oil you put in.
3. It takes less than 30 minutes to cook - less time than picking up something from your friendly neighbourhood Indian restaurant.
4. Remember, I didn't call the recipe "Gobi mutter recipe" - it's a generic recipe. You can make 20 different curries with this one - Mushroom mutter, Mutter paneer, Palak paneer, Aloo mutter, Dhal palak, Aloo palak, Aloo gobi, Aloo gobi mutter - you get the idea. Start experimenting with dhals (channa dhal, masoor dhal, moong dhal, green moong dhal, toor dhal) and legumes (chick peas, rajma). You need to soak legumes overnight and cook them in a pressure cooker. The possibilities are endless and mind boggling.
5. You don't need any fancy ingredients (believe me there are some fancy stuff out there. You just have to open my kitchen cupboard to see 48 boxes of stuff - I am not kidding). You need to go to the supermarket once in two weeks to buy some veggies. Go to Indian store once in two months to replenish chilli powder, salt and dhals.

Bottom line - cooking is not hard, if you are looking to just survive. If you get tired of eating this, I can't help you. Go read a real cooking blog post or find yourself a spouse who thinks cooking is great.