Who says Cooking is easy?

Today, though a holiday, my brother had gone out with his friends [oh, poor me!] So I thought of cooking my lunch [Actually I dint have an option, but never mind]. I started looking around for raw materials (vegetables/ pulses/ onion-tomato/ etc etc). I had soaked channa y'day night for making "sundal", something special for Vijayadasami. It was in proper form, how lucky! [ya, you have to be lucky everytime you enter the kitchen, for, you can never guarantee that what you intend to make is what you land up making!]

There was half gobi. The other half I cooked yesterday. That's a biiig story in itself... I started cooking and the electricity went off in the middle [see, one of those lucky aspects was missing then] and I couldnt see a thing properly. I had turned off the stove as my hunger was killing me and I couldnt wait any more. The dish was all fine, except that I wanted to make a Gobi fry and it turned out to be Gobi gravy! But believe me, it tasted heavenly!! mMMmm.... Hey, I'm deviating from the topic... where was I?

Han, there was half gobi. I determined to give "Gobi fry" a second attempt today! Now, what will I do for the main dish? The maidservant had not come today and half the utensils were unclean [Again those lucky stars playing around with my kitchen!]. Thank god, I had not used the cooker yesterday :-) Okie, I would make jeera rice then! Wait a minute, but doesnt that require some kozhambu (means gravy)? How many items will a single person single handedly make to have a single lunch? Uff! Hey, dint I say the channa was in good form already? :-D So that became the "Jeera-Channa-Rice". [Oh did someone say your creativity is at it's height when you are in the kitchen?]

First I started with the Gobi, coz it takes more time to cook than rice. So when it is all prepared and set on stove you can lesuirely work on the rice part! [I call that "time management" tactics]. Finally I got both the dishes set on the stove. By the time it gets cooked I thought of taking a break. So I sat down at my computer and was browsing through blogs... The cooker was warning regularly with it's whistles. When it was time, I promptly went to switch it off and oh, what was that? The gobi fry was already spreading burntout smell! OMG!!! My lunch!!! :-(
Good that the vegetable had not gotten burnt yet, only the vessel was pitch black. I had to remove the dish before it absorbs the burning odour [You have to act real fast when in a rescue operation] And there I was with a plate of gobi fry and jeera-channa-rice! :-)

With so many tactics, lucky stars and hidden parameters involved, when you say you had cooked something and it came out good, it's a very big achievement! Now, who says cooking is any easy job, huh?