Honey, What's Cooking Tonight?!

I often used to cringe, whenever my husband asked me this question every evening!

Back from work, fiddling with kids' homework, and ironing their school uniform for the next day and side by side preparing their glass of favorite milk shake, when this question used to be pitched in front of me (although lovingly!) I would only mutter angrily – "nothing… just order something on phone".  My kids would be too glad as they would be saved from the home made ‘daal’ and would be treated with butter chicken or chicken Tikka or delicious daal makhni.  Husband also would be secretly very happy with this idea…. but would show his resentment only to be silenced by my request to help me out with the house hold chores before he created any further fuss.  See, as time passes in a relationship, we tend to boss over our partners, especially when they are too lazy to help in domestic chores!

For last few months, it became a way of life to order food for dinner from outside (although breakfast and lunch HAD to be homemade).  Right now, I won't delve into the issue as to why Indian men are so shy/uninterested/ ignorant/ clever/lazy or whatever to avoid house hold chores, especially in front of their wives!

Let's talk about food, baby!

But, the issue in hand is that while the food inflation is bothering us and with eating out ie., dine and wine getting more and more expensive, what to do? At some stage of your family life, you realize that you have to put a little comma if not a full stop to spending money ordering meal from a nearby restaurant.

After a lot of reading, experimentation, and experience I realize that planning your food is the first step towards cooking wholesome meal for the family.   A few steps towards planning and organizing your kitchen cabinets and fridge helps in a big way, especially when you have kids at home.

A combination of fresh and frozen foods, a combination of ready to cook processed foods and ingredients which help cook up a quick meal and a combination of ready to use packaged 'masalas' and whole masalas at home can save you big trouble.  Common ingredients like cottage cheese, boiled potatoes, curd can save you a good few hundreds which you would end up spending ordering a dish from a nearby joint.  If you belong to the generation who lives on instant noodles, then do have a look at the next post.

I intended to write about a few of my quick recipes and some useful ingredients and tips for managing a kitchen of a working mom, mom of small kids, or of a bachelor-pad alike.  But since, the post has already become so long, I break it here and will write about them in the succeeding post.

So, what's cooking tonight? A quick one or you wanna go the whole hog ( silly!! what did u think?!)

RESTLESS