Bad Habits

This is what comes of staying awake all night, reading other people's blogs and pilfering their ideas. This post is a result of this post.
For it got me thinking. Not just that Indian men expect their wives to be virgins. Just that the whole world does too.
Actually, for most men and women in any normal middle-class Indian family, there is no other way of thinking. The-alternative-does-not-exist.

Yes, some of us might not agree, saying that India has progressed, its not so in the big cities, etc. etc.
Well, sure. Maybe not. But that is how it is in the tens of thousands of towns and cities and mindsets. Its such a blanket mindset that I cannot even begin to explain how ubiquitous it is.

And this promulgates such that most men/women in/on the marriage market(that is how we do it in India) take this mostly as a given. If even a whiff of the fact that the girl ever had a boyfriend/ was seeing someone/ talked to guys (ok, slight exaggeration here ;)) fell into the prospective groom's family's ears, the match was doomed. No one but a pristine bride for our son, thank you very much!!

Its such an integral part of our culture (?). Indian girls do not drink, sleep with/touch men, have opinions or other such bad habits. Oh God, who will marry them otherwise?

Yikes, why did I start on this? The diatribe shall not end once I get started.
I have opinions on this. And other bad habits as well.
:)

Tweet

Love and Chocolate Cake

I so wanted to bake a cake. SOOOOO wanted to bake a cake.
Every pore of my being craved to bake one!

Don't ask why! Lets call the reason love :)

Okay, now this might be a perfectly natural craving for some of us, but given that
a) I had never baked (Once- but had set the cake on fire)
b) I had absolutely NO ingredients to bake a cake.

I still wanted to do it. And Yes, the reason was Love.
:)

Anyway- I did manage a pretty good cake, with nothing to begin with. Improvised every step of the way. Love brings its own inspiration :)

Here's my first recipe on this blog:

The "Crazily-in-Love" Chocolate Cake

1 cup Aata (Thats normal everyday flour)
1.5 cups of Oil
1 cup of sugar

I kneaded all this together.

7 Oreo Cookies
Chopped them to a powder in the food processor
(that was my only source of chocolate)

15 Cashewnuts
Chopped coarse in the food processor.

Added the above to the dry batter.

NOW- the big question.
I had no idea what to do next.

NO EGGS. NO MILK.
I did not know how to make a batter with all my dry ingredients.

Inspiration again.

I took out the remaining one-fourth tub of Strawberry Ice-cream. Put it into a plastic container, added some water. And microwaved it.

Viola! I had milk.
Mixed it into the flour mixture- and my smooth, fine batter was ready.

Added the baking powder (actually, 1 spoonful of Eno) and that was it.

Poured the batter into the baking dish.
Any I had my perfect chocolate cake after an hour.

No, not really- it did break when I took it out of the baking dish.
But it made me immeasurably happy.

I was listening to these absolutely cheesy 80's-90's romantic Hindi movie songs while cooking (the kind you don't want to own up to even being in the same room as). With this mushy smile on my face. For all those stupid silly soppy songs suddenly made sense.

Happy :)

For doing this kind of corny cooking. For doing it to make just one moment special.
(Obviously, later both would be too drunk/ asleep).

:)
Happy First Month Anniversary to ME!!!

Tweet