The ''Just Married, Please Excuse'' Contest

Yashodhara is a very witty person, her blog makes me laugh quite some and I had agreed to do a post for her contest a while ago.

Today I realized that time was just flying and so had to pen down this story.

 

My mom’s and my MIL’s cooking styles are vastly different. My mom cooks food with mostly fresh  herbs and coconut. Her food has the Kokan (coast of Maharashtra) influence although she has spent her entire life in Hyderabad. My MIL on the other hand uses all dried spices and pastes in her cooking. Her cooking is very spicy and salty too (masaledaar). As a newly married person I had not worked out this difference, but at the same time the food was very different tasting to me and so I had started eating very less unbeknownst to me. My MIL was concerned about this and she voiced it to us all but nobody paid any heed to her concern.

 

We were invited to a relative’s place for dinner one night. This was a small get together especially for us as me and my husband were to leave for the US in another few days’ time.  We started eating and the lady of the house and my MIL were having a conversation and then suddenly there was a din in the general chatter and my MIL said a little loudly, I do not know why but she is not eating well and everybody turned to look at me and at that instant I was at the dining table trying to serve myself some more curry on an already full plate. My Husband and BIL both burst out laughing and everybody present joined them – except the 2 of us -  both of us were embarrassed as it looked like she was making a mountain out of a molehill and me for holding such a loaded plate. I get teased about this even today.

 

Another noteworthy incident for me is during my next visit to India, my MIL assigned me the task of churning butter using the grinder. Now I was not exposed to any cooking or cooking related tasks prior to marriage as my mom is of the strong opinion that once you are hungry you will learn to cook. So we had set base in the US and I was cooking some random things, but churning butter was not an activity I was used to doing. I did not want to ask for help either and so I started this task and kept at it for a full 20 min and the buttermilk just refused to change states. My MIL inspected it a couple times and kept saying there is no reason for it to take so long and said just keep trying. After a few more attempts I realized nothing is happening so decided to dump the butter milk back into the container. As soon as I did that I realized that I had not screwed the blade to the jar of the grinder and for this reason the motor pulse was not reaching the butter milk. Dang! I immediately screwed the blade, gave it a couple pulses, the butter separated. I cleaned the entire operation and walked away without uttering a word to anybody.