Food and my childhood

Vanakkam and welcome to my blog. This is my first blog and I thought it would be nice for me to pen down my thoughts on my childhood and food.

I grew up in India. We lived in a big two storey home with a huge garden that had veggie plants and fruit trees. I lived with my parents, grandparents and pets. I was the spoilt one in my family… so I never got to do any chores. No cooking, washing dishes, sweeping, mopping, laundry etc. We had domestic help back in India for all that.

My Dad was a commercial airline pilot and traveled a lot. My grandma was an extremely picky eater and so she made very authentic and tasty food. My mom was no exception in making super delicious food as well, she also made sure we got in our daily vegetable intake.

Food was made fresh right before every meal, there was no refrigerating left overs. We did not have processed food. Everything was fresh and made to order. As an example, the milkman would come to our gate every morning to deliver fresh cow’s milk, we had to buy wheat and take it to the grinding/ powdering shop to make wheat flour for chapatis, my mom and grandma made butter at home from which we made ghee for our food and we had to go to the footpath vegetable vendor or go to our garden to get our fresh vegetables for the day. We only went out to eat once in 3 or 4 months, and that too only on special occasions or invitations for functions or weddings. That’s how it was in the 80s and early 90s in Chennai, India.

I did not like to eat!!! Unbelievable right, but that was the truth. I only liked very few dishes that I kept eating over and over again. Dosa, Idly, Ghee rice, Yogurt rice, Paruppu rice, Beans curry. My parents used to force me to eat vegetables… so I could not avoid those. I loved Indian snacks… again these were made from scratch at home (ribbon pakoda, mixture, murukku etc).

I watched my mom and grandma cook everyday but never thought once that I should learn how to cook from them. I was not into cooking or into food at all.

The very first thing I cooked was Dosa. The batter was already made so I just had to master the art of spreading the dosa on the pan before it got too hot and stuck to the hot pan. That was not too bad. But I still did not cook anything from scratch.

Next I learnt to make Upma in 2004 when my mom had to go to the US to take care of my new born nephew. I had to make food for my grandfather and he had Upma every morning.

My Dad knew how to cook and I knew how to make rice in the rice cooker, so he and I managed to make lunch… some vegetables and sambar or rasam from pre prepared mixes my mom made at home. And.. there was always yogurt rice to fall back on.

It was not until I got to the US after marriage in 2005, that it really struck me that I had to cook everyday. In fact I was so bad that my husband did not know if I had made tea or coffee. The tea was too thick and the coffee was too watery.

Initially I was not working, so at 8 am when my husband went to work, I would start cooking lunch and would finish cooking only at 1 pm when he would come home to have food (His office was 5 minutes from our home in Vermont). Again would start preparing for dinner around 3 pm and finish right before dinner time. This was because I would make one dish at a time. I had to follow a recipe and remember to put in all the spices and seasonings needed and repeat it again for dish number two.

To add perspective now… I am proud to say that I can cook a full South Indian meal for 20 people easily in 3 hours, from prepping, cooking to cleaning up and serving all the dishes.

I’ll stop here for now. More about how I got passionate about cooking in my next blog.

(I added Dosa as the picture for this post since Dosa was the first food I learnt to make.)