A flour story

Marriage brings in loads of responsibilities, one of them being cooking. Before marriage, mom used to keep telling, see how I cook and later when you start cooking independently you will have an idea how to go about it. And I used to wonder, what’s the big deal with cooking. My first morning as a cook and I decided to make chapatis for breakfast and give some to my hubby for lunch. My first task to make it round or at least make it look somewhere close to chapati. First turned out to be Australia’s map. Never mind. Second turned out to be Maharashtra’s map. Fuming but Never mind. Third turned out fine, as in somewhat oval. I was looking at it and feeling so proud of myself, and thought, what’s the big deal! When I started roasting the chapati it became hard, so I thought it would become soft once it absorbs all the steam in the hot plate and made some more and roasted them. When we sat down to have breakfast, and he opened the hotplate and took a chapati, my hubby said, “Can we go to the beach and play Frisbee?”. Yeah they were so hard, that you could actually hear the crackle while eating it. Felt bad as I couldn’t eat them and had to stay hungry. My hubby ate as if he is relishing khakras. That made me feel more bad. I asked him will you take this to office. He didn’t say anything and he laughed. I imagined he sharing it with his friends, by throwing it in the air like the Frisbee and saying, “Hey catch, My wife made”. And I laughed with him. All that what mom had told came back like a flashback and in a fit of rage I blamed the flour. From next day, I started making dosas out of that flour, not thinking about making chapatis. Come on, I was depressed. Dosas turned out good, but you can’t take them to office, as they taste best when hot and fresh. That meant no tiffin to hubby dearest. So, after a few days I bought flour of a different brand. This one gave out little soft chapatis. And I stopped using the old flour. Recently, my hubby saw it lying in the container and asked should we try this again and don’t know what was I thinking, I said yes. Later, when I went to sleep, I wondered whether we will take tiffin tomorrow. And I went off to sleep. Morning when I woke up, I took out the dough from the fridge. And you won’t believe it, the dough seemed soft. Not being too happy with the flour, I thought what’s the big deal! When rolling out the chapatis, they turned out so soft. And after roasting them they continued to be soft. I was sure they would turn out hard once I open my tiffin in office. When I opened my tiffin, assuring no one was noticing me, the first thing I did was touching to ensure they are not hard and they weren’t. now I didn’t know what was the reason. Probably, the flour wasn’t so friendly with us initially and behaved like a teenager. After staying with us for so many days, it realized we are so sweet, instead of discarding it, I was making dosas of it. I am sure that’s the reason, else there was nothing different that was done in making the dough. The other reason I can think of is that during the initial days it didn’t get these my beatings like it gets these days. Who said beatings don’t give the desired results, but it was true in case of the flour. Yeah, I agree I didn’t prepare the dough properly and blamed it. Just like the saying goes, “Naach na jaane aangan teda”. Sorry, Silver Coin, I didn’t mean to blame you but I had no clue why you turned out like a Frisbee and I accept I didn’t know cooking initially, but what proves is that now I know cooking.

A flour can make you realize whether you know cooking or not.