A revolution to save tradition

This post is not about saving traditional outfits (In my college, guys were not allowed to wear jeans and t-shirts… I was never able to understand why!). This is about saving a much more important tradition which is always neglected by the right left and centre parties – Food.

“There are some people who eat for living. But there are many more (like me) who live for eating (good food)” – The quotation is mine, no prizes for guessing that! 🙂

If you ask your grand mother, she would say “My mother used to cook so much more variety and they were much tastier”. If you ask your mother, she would also say the same thing. So, the rich cooking tradition that we have developed and the variety of dishes that we skillfully mastered have been reducing with every generation. With the nuclear families of today and mother and father both working – we are at the brink of a great disaster. Realistically, 2012 might be the end of all cooking in homes! Since the women are so busy these days, it is the men who ought to be spearheading this revolution to save the most important tradition – cooking.

After my initial path breaking finding and confession before a year, one thing was sure to me – this was not going to be easy! One thing you don’t want to try when you are so new to cooking is to read a cooking blog and trying to cook based on the theoretical input you gain from there. No, you can’t even take the first step that way. Generally, we have sufficiently insufficient vocabulary of the cooking items. So, reading a cooking blog might be like reading an Arundhati Roy’s book – you just can’t understand any word other than is,what,was,where,why and a few more adjectives and verbs. If you are lucky, some nouns 🙂 So, if you go to a shop for buying some cooking items (after making notes from the cooking blog), the following conversation would ensue:

Enna?
Do you have mustard seeds?
Ennathu?
Well, coriander leaves irrukka?
Aaannn?
Astodaphedia?

Everybody around you laughs, but no one translates it to the local language! Considering you have a lot of such foreign words in a bit paper, you concede defeat in your mind but say something like “shopkeepers don’t even know English in this place” and run out!

Then you blame destiny, and spend some more time hoping that some other door would open – after all, a revolution doesn’t die because of language barriers. If you are lucky (like me), the house owner’s son might know to cook a bit. He at least tells you what mustard seeds are, which oil to buy and if you are even more luckier, he brings all of it from his house and actually shows you how to sprout the mustard seeds in oil – That is the most important hurdle to cross. Once you have done that, atleast you become mentally prepared for everything to follow! Then he shows how to cook rice in a pressure cooker, and you use all kinds of podi’s and pickles and curd packets to eat with it, for a couple of months. Then you become bored.

At this point of time, you need to use the expert technique used by the British – Divide and Conquer.

“Grandma, you know what mother said about your cooking”
“What did she say?”
“She said that there was no better cook then her”
“But that’s not about my cooking”
“How can she say directly? What does she mean by that, think no…”
“I have been cooking since she was a small kid, and she says my cooking is no better than hers?”
“Yeaaah…”
~Grandmother fuming~
“I asked her to teach how to cook tomato rice”
“And she didn’t?”
“No Grandma………”
“Come – I will teach you”
“Ha, Ok… ” 🙂

If you go to any family function, and want to make the women in the family get tensed, just write a blog post like this and say that you have written a post on cooking and are following a few cooking blogs (at least know one url) – and then see their reaction 😛

Ok, now the call for action – Let us (men) take up the challenge of learning to cook a huge variety of dishes and hence save the rich tradition of cooking, that is being neglected by the younger generation nowadays. Let us take on the women in their home front – the kitchen and prove that we can be good cooks too. After all, most of the five star hotel chefs are men! I have already taken my small step – Tomato rice made by me 😀

Yummy Tomato rice

Destination Infinity

20 thoughts on “A revolution to save tradition

  1. msr

    Did you write this before consuming that thing you've posted a pic of?
    Reply if you are alive :p

    Ha Ha, the internet is not advanced enough for people to taste things from a blog – Thank God!!

    1. Indian Homemaker

      He hasn't replied????!!! I guess he's writing another post in response 🙂

      I am not skillful enough to write back to back posts on cooking 😉

    2. Solilo

      Hahahaha

      Hmmm… 🙂

  2. Sandhya

    Hing, perunaagaayam, asafoetida!

    You guys know women's psychology more than cooking or boiling water! Kadugu vedikkum…mustard splutters! Can't stop explaining things, esp. about cooking …mothers! We are not very good at other things, you know!

    My family too 'lives for eating'! Don't know about the next generation, though!

    Add some groundnuts with the tomato bath…add while garnishing…thaalikkarachche! Whether you enjoyed cooking and eating or not, we enjoyed reading about your episodes! And Vimmuuu's 'boiling water' episode with so many step by step photographs…!

    Groundnut is added… I add ground nuts even for lemon rice and puliyodharai – I like them very much. Actually, nothing like cooking and eating your own cooked food – but if you don't get it right (tasty), you are bound to be upset! But in Coimbatore, I am having much lesser hassles – so many tasty messes here (That picture was taken in Bangalore) 🙂 😀 🙂

  3. Man of Roma

    It is terrible that THIS is happening also out there in India. Here too. It is a disaster. But I wonder what we can do about it. We SHOULD do something!

    That's why I am setting an example by starting to cook… but not sure if I will continue as in the place that I am currently staying, there are some very good eating joints where the food tastes so homely cooked (called mess) 🙂

    Thanks for visiting my blog, DI.

  4. Ashwathy

    man, what is with this series of men bloggers taking up cooking – be it in big or small way?? 😀

    anyway it doenst hurt to have a few recipes down one's pocket… helps for one's own survival without being dependent on others… as simple as that 😉

    It also helps if women are not jealous of men cooking 😛

  5. sakhi

    i hope the grandma of yours was your "maternal" grandma 😉 😉 😀
    What's the difference, in this case it was maternal grandma, but I could have played the same trick in the other place too 😉
    and that tomato rice looks yummy… now i am hungry!! boo hoo…

  6. Nita

    wow, thats great, tomato rice! 🙂 I love tomato rice. I rather like what you wrote:

    Since the women are so busy these days, it is the men who ought to be spearheading this revolution to save the most important tradition – cooking.

    So instead of blaming women, who poor things don't cook much because no one gives it much importance, you are being proactive. I laud your effots!! 🙂
    On a serious note, I agree with you on the declining importance of cooking and a time will come (it has already happened in some countries) when people will simply buy food. Consider yourself lucky that you are not born in 2020! 🙂

    I was so vexed of the hotel food that I started cooking slowly. Not sure if I will continue since I am in a place now where I can get tasty food in some very good messes here. Need to fight laziness and continue my revolution! But yeah, you can count on me cooking after 2020 for sure 🙂

  7. B K CHOWLA

    It is time that men took cooking seriously.Women are becoming more independent.
    Incidentally,what is that dish in the picture?

    It is called Tomato rice. Its basically tomato with some tomato curry kind of a thing. I just love anything made of rice like lemon rice, tamarind rice, carrot rice, mango rice etc. Trying to learn all one by one 🙂

  8. Indian Homemaker

    Ha ha, thank God you thought of it. I was worried about this too 🙂

    Worried about the extinction of cooking? Not till I am off this planet 🙂

    1. Indian Homemaker

      Ha ha 😆 Thank God DI 🙂

      Actually I like to eat food cooked by me best 🙂 I think what we might see is a lot more buying of chopped and ready to cook veggies… but with easily available of domestic help in India, we can easily continue to eat homecooked wholesome meals. In my family all four of us can feed ourselves well.

      Actually cooking is not so difficult but it is time consuming. That is why I am not able cook more these days. You are right – we can afford domestic help in India and hence we are better placed to cook our own meals.

  9. vimmuuu

    LOL, cheers to you buddy !! Way to go !! We men should start a joint cookery blog !! What say ??? 😉

    ROFL @ cooking vocabulary. True ! I dont understand a thing when they specify a vegetable by its name. They should show a snap for me to realise what they were cooking with ! 😀 😀 😀

    So, you made your first whatever ! Hmmm…I think I should try a few more dishes then 😀 😀

    Btw, thanks for linking my post ! Im glad atleast one of you found it useful ! 😀 😀 😀

    Joint cookery blog – If that day comes when men start one like that, consider my revolution to be a grand success then 🙂

    1. Solilo

      DI, that looks yum.

      Vimmu, you will only boil water and end up taking credit for other guys' cooking. 😀

      Vimmuuu, I heard is an inspiration for a lot of guys to start…. to atleast boil water! 🙂

    2. Indian Homemaker

      DI Vimmuuu will contribute by submitting recipe for boiling water 😉

  10. Quakeboy

    divide and conquer.. haha

    It can also be interpreted as divide the work and conquer the hearts 😉

  11. kanagu

    so atlast you graduated from Lemon rice to tomoato rice in 10 months 😀 😀

    and started the revolution 🙂 🙂

    In another 10 months, I want to learn carrot rice and mango rice… let's see.

  12. Reema

    looks so yummy!!!

    That's the advantage of pictures – you can only look at them – but this one was tasty though

  13. Indian Homemaker

    My new comments are here!! 🙂 I thought they were lost!!! 🙁

  14. Princess

    Hey good to know that You started cooking, and how was the taste? keep us posted about more cooking ventures

  15. Sanjai

    //Did you write this before consuming that thing you’ve posted a pic of?
    Reply if you are alive :p

    Ha Ha, the internet is not advanced enough for people to taste things from a blog – Thank God!!//

    hahaha.. i love this comment.. 🙂
    is it tomato rice or tamarind rice? :))
    btw.. nice post..

    Aaah, after I have clearly mentioned it is tomato rice in the post, still this question is being asked! I think there is some problem with my cell phone camera – it is not able to take clear pictures of the near-by items 😀 And outside the scope of this discussion – even far away items 🙂

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