Food! Glorious Food...

I am not much of a foodie. I do like to eat good food, but I'm more a person who eats to live rather than live to eat. I can survive on 'dahi-bhat' or 'metkut-bhat' or just 'tup-guL poLi' or even cheese/jam sandwiches for days if left to my own devices. I suppose it is a spin-off from not liking cooking very much. It doesn't come to me naturally. On a given day I can eat whatever is at hand without bothering about whether the individual components complement each other. Suits me fine. When hungry, I go to the fridge, look for leftovers if any, pick up a bowl of curds, a fruit or two, and my lunch is done. There is always something from yesterday's dinner, the morning's breakfast or the packed lunch. This way, I tell myself, the food doesn't go waste.

Let me think about the different meals in the day.

Breakfast is normally a very filling affair, and a must. I don't like any shortcuts there. It can be anything from idlis /dosas /parathas, stuffed or otherwise /thalipith /poha /upma / porridge /eggs-omlettete or scrambled /cornflakes. The last when we're reaaally rushed for time. But there is no ditching a good, heavy breakfast, with an addition of milk for A.

Lunch. On schooldays, I pack lunch for A and the husband. Myself? As I have said in the beginning of this post. On weekends? Ah, that is a very different matter altogether. As I had said in this post, the husband is a much better cook than I, and also more enthusiastic. As Emily Post has famously said, "woman accepted cooking as a chore but man has made of it a recreation."  We have a good collection of cookery books (what else do you expect?) so these are scoured every weekend for interesting recipes, the ingredients listed and bought, and the item cooked. I am usually the underchef at these times. Not complaining. I love the whole activity and we do get to eat some really tasty stuff. We sometimes have had to adapt the recipe to our liking by reducing the fat /chillies. We have experimented a lot in this, and found quite a few gems worth repeating. These days, we even google search for specific foods we would like to cook at home.

Dinner is again usually my turf. I prefer to cook wholesome Maharashtrian food for dinner. PoLi-bhaji-varan-bhat-dahi-fruit. Since lunch is a packed, cold affair, I like to make a hot, square meal for dinner. Sometimes, on weekends, when we have had a heavy haute cuisine lunch, we prefer to make just khichadi-kadhi-papad-salad or pithla-bhakri.

When the husband is travelling, I cook vegetables, dal, roti, etc.(read healthy food) only because of my guilt about feeding my daughter with junk food. Sometimes we eat dosas with curds and chutney with plenty of fruit and/or salads.

And junk food? Yes, we do have our pizza-pasta-noodles. Even those, when made at home, are with whole wheat products and plenty of veggies.

Eating out is once in a blue moon. A does not like Indian food at restaurants, and would much rather have fancy recipes tried at home. She does like kiddy food though, and a visit to Pizza Hut /Macdonalds /KFC is part of any mother-daughter outing, but only then.