Confessions of a wannabe cook - Part 1

The Background : Ok, I confess...i've slowly starteg getting interested in cooking. I dont know if this has anything to do with my mental metabolism changing as I get older and grey, because it is a known fact that all through my college years and till a few years back, I have never been able to identify the difference of taste between a cookie and cuurry. Eating to me had always been an act driven by necessity and never an act of pleasure. Things change, and I guess so have I.

Today's Breaking (Eggs) News : Today’s motivation was to cook some 'Scotch eggs' with a twist for the weekend brunch .They were supposed to turn up as follows. Wonderfully perfect full boiled eggs fried and baked inside a wrapper mix including minced meat (or chicken breast minced), onions, salt/ pepper/ seasoning and rolled in bread crumbs. Imagine surprising your wife with this homemade fresh scotch eggs , some French bread and cheese on the side in the morning, on a lazy weekend. Ummmmm…not bad, what say?

So off we trooped to the neighbourhood supermarket. Picked up our stuff, cleared my wife off the kitchen …placed four eggs to boil. Got around making the chicken mix for the wrapper. We’re all set with the chicken mix on one hand, bread crumbs and flour on the other. I get around to breaking the shell of the eggs…and a classic wannabe Scotch Cook error happens..


Ready to begin – I started to shell and peel my eggs one by one, and here’s where the hurricane strikes…the wobbly bobbly soft boiled egg, perhaps slightly underdone was like a thing alive as I struggled to get all of the shell off, then it happened, a fissure opened in the white, and the whole thing started to collapse. I controlled my agony and continued. It’s ok, I have another three…. and then the same thing happened to the next one..AND THE NEXT ONE....AND THE NEXT ONE!!!!!!!!

…sigh!

I'm rethinking..maybe the guy who said ' Happiness is a bowl of cherries, and a good book to read, sitting under a tree" is not quite off base either....

Honey’s Cuts!!!

I went to this new barber (he calls himself a Senior hair stylist) earlier today, and all I had on my head is a shock full of hair waiting to be cut short and neat. I give him my instructions and to my dismay, he comes back to me with a zillion other questions – should I cut from the sides, would you like to keep whiskers, would you like your back line (whatever) shaped in a square or U, when you want the hair to grow back, they may change style and was that ok…

I had answers for some of the simpler questions, but they just kept getting tougher and tougher..i mean who ever had an answer for do I want my whiskers jagged or in an incline (I wondered if he was pulling my leg, seeing my ignorance). I was also in two minds to ask him if he could only cut off the grey hair on my head and not the black ones, but I decided against it.

Anyway, in all this frenzy of questions, I forgot to notice that the hair stylist was wearing pink pants under his white coat and had floral painted finger nails...I felt a cold chill go through my spine. I mean…is it legal to allow these kind of guys (or whatever genre they fit into) to roam around free ...and that too in a men’s hair salon!!!

To get the nervousness out of my system, I decided to engage in some small talk with the individual in discussion. I looked up at his name tag and it read ‘HANY”. So I said, “Hi Hany, nice weather over the weekend, isn’t it’ . She/ He smiled and replied “Oh, I cant get why you guys have to pronounce my name like that, My Name’s pronounced Honey…honey, you know the syrupy, gooey sweet thing..not Hany”

I fainted….

Behind the name lies this...

It was only when someone commented recently asking me why I have such a complex name for this blog, did I realize Nebuchadnezzar is a complex word to remember!!! I mean, seriously who in the right frame of mind, does not remember the name of the hovercraft captained by Morpheus in the movie Matrix. Ok, stop staring at me, I confess that I’ve probably seen the movie trilogy a zillion times over and remember every small detail in it.

But I must also tell you guys, I was a bit confused when I heard this word the first time around. For several years until Wikipedia made us all instant experts on all subjects under the sun, Neb was nothing more than the hovercraft that went in search of Neo (The one).

Nebuchadnezzar is the name of one of the most illustrious Babylonian king. Credited to the construction of one of the original seven wonders of the world (hanging gardens of Babylon). He conquered Judah & Jerusalem and sent the jews on exile (some of my friends should like this blog more now, and it has nothing to do with the fact that they’re Arabs in ethnicity :o) There are also some quirks in Neb, that he is said to have gone insane for seven years with ego of his power, roamed around in jungles like an animal and then finally came back to take his throne and discovers the God in him; hmmmm…..

Oh and just in case you want to type Nebuchadnezzar in a word document, don’t worry about the spelling, it’ll get taken care off in a spell check :o)

Anup sits back and thinks, the journey goes on…

The best gift ever...

Adi's gift to mom and dad on VALENTINE'S DAY 2011