It was the morning after my night of resolutions. Every two months or so, I introspect, find my life devoid of meaning, and realise that the secret to a healthy existence, is learning to make candlesticks, or ravioli.
Amma always has her fight face on everytime I enter the kitchen with a determined look on my face. She’s the kind of person who has this little black book where she jots down all your previous misdeeds so she’ll never forget. And there aren’t so many really. There was the time I blew up the mixie, but that was my sisters’ fault for not supervising a kid. And then there was the time we melted chocolate on the stove and it had to be professionally cleaned...ok, so its not exactly a
little black book.
My skills in the kitchen are limited to an excellent malai kofta curry, and a delicious chocolate sponge cake. But that, I maintain, is only because I haven’t tried making anything else. And like any other obnoxious, stubborn 18 year old, I am confident that anything I want to do, will be a piece of cake. Or in todays case, an omelette.
Being the obnoxious, stubborn 18 year old, it is obviously highly frustrating when people try telling me what to do. Whatever happened to creativity and experimentation? And why should I follow kitchen rules, when noone listens to mine? I have quite a few actually. Like cookie dough must be sampled by dipping fingers into the bowl before baking, pretty aprons must be worn, and under no circumstances is the cook supposed to clean up once the dish is done.
Amma is sort of unreasonable that way. She doesn’t respect artistic temperament at all. Creative minds can’t focus on one thing for too long, there are statistics somewhere on wikipedia to prove that. And even if you aren’t remotely imaginative, how are you supposed to remain interested in an egg for more than 15 minutes?
This was no ordinary egg I was dealing with though. If I lived in a cartoon, this would be the egg with the closely knit eyebrows and the red slits for eyes.
Needless to say, my efforts resulted in something which did taste like an omelette, even if it didn’t look like it. Perhaps with a little less salt that usual.
I think the capsicum pieces were supposed to be in the omelette too.
Amma said she wasn’t feeling too hungry.