What's cooking?

Of late, I am noticing that the number of cooking blogs being posted on Facebook is growing by leaps and bounds each day. There are days (which happen to be almost everyday) when the news feed overflows with pictures and recipes of food, food, food and more food. Breakfast food- check, lunch and dinner food- check, mid office snack- check, desserts- check, Indian- check, Asian- check, Continental- check, Mexican- check, and the list goes on. No, I am not at all against cooking blogs or posting food pictures on social networking sites. On the contrary, the amount of effort, patience and creativity put into cooking fascinate me to no extent. And ofcourse, it leaves me salivating, putting 'Pavlov's dog' to shame. 

I, perhaps, am the worst cook in the whole world. No, not even the worst cook. Far below the worst. In the last two years that I have lived alone, friends and colleagues have made futile attempts to make me cook. They have made fun of me, threatened me, forced me, tried to teach me. But nothing has worked. I have nonchalantly ignored them and continued eating salad and bread for breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner. To be honest, I am quite okay with it. More than okay for that matter. People have often wondered how I never crave for home cooked Indian food, given that I always claim that eating is a part of my soul. Agreed, I love to eat. Eating IS a part of my soul. But then there's something else that defines me. Lyadh! Lyadh (which when translated means the highest degree of laziness), is, according to me, THE path to Moksha. Hence, the effort needed to keep the other part of the soul happy has got lost somewhere. 

Having said all that, I can as-a-matter-of-fact make four things. No, not CAN (as it might mean that I am good at making these). I have managed to MAKE four things in the past. Chocolate/Vanilla cake (blindly following the easiest-recipe-on-earth from Ma),  pasta (after being spoon-fed by the guy), Chili Paneer (with cottage cheese, that took me three hours instead of the usual 30 mins) and Aloo Dum (again from Ma, and super-simplified given the Lyadh). I am not proud of any of my achievements. Infact I feel nothing but sorry for the person who has been on the receiving end of my cooking expedition. But then, isn't love all about pushing tasteless food down the throat and making the 'wow-it-was-so-good' face? :D

Enough self-loathing done, this post needs a face-lift now. And what better than to end it with a proper food picture from my stock! Two months ago, I made Luchi for the then-room-mate. It is a traditional Bengali flatbread made of flour, to be had with curry on a Sunday morning. In the beginning, I was all excited at the prospect of making my first ever Luchi. However, by a cruel twist of fate, just before starting I figured that the rolling-pin essential to make the dough was missing. When all attempts to acquire/borrow/buy/.. a rolling-pin ended in disaster, we decided to invent our own method. The end-result: A hilarious looking Luchi, prepared, using a bottle of red wine instead! :D