To do as they say and to get what they get

To be forewarned : In this post I will be complaining about my disasters in the kitchen(fortunately with no pictures to prove), thanks to the dishes posted by food bloggers that make it so easy, simple and quick to make, that tempt me endlessly to dare to attempt.....errrr not so much!

I love following posts from food bloggers. I am terribly impressed by the hard work they put in, their unflailing enthusiasm to participate in blog events, to untiringly innovate and simplify. Yes, this Thanksgiving, I had wished to submit my humble thanks for all their efforts. I bookmark some of the interesting(and simple sounding) recipes on ye faithful del.icio.us(how wonderful a coincidence is that! food posts bookmarked on delicious!) and try them at my leisure. Some are successes and I immediately leave a comment thanking them for producing such gems, some are disasters like this following episode. But none the less, my rss aggregator is alive on a daily basis with posts from these master chefs. The ones that probably will read this post are two of my favorite bloggers Jugalbandi and Asha. Of course, who in food blog world, has not heard of them? So I will stop mouthing eulogies about these two greats.

Coming to my story. After I returned from my India trip, while I lovingly unpacked the myriad podis and thokkus, sorted them into containers, refridgerated, stocked, air-sealed, I unwittingly launched into a pantry audit. You know those times when you have no clue what ingredients co-exist in your own pantry and some fancy sounding recipe calls for a particular item and you go and buy them instantly, dish gets done and you realise you had two packets of the same item languishing in your pantry after all? Has this happened to you too? No? Well I must be the only inefficient homemaker. So thus I cleaned the containers, made a pretty list of all the items that I do possess, whats in excess, what is needed and so on and so forth.

So, cutting a long story short, I found 5 of these containers. I am sure each of these items were bought with a purpose....one or another recipe that I oh-so-desperately wanted to try. Now I dont remember which recipes those were, or how the dishes turned out. But in this country, with having to buy at least a pound sized bag of anything....I have 5 bottles of "whole green gram", "split green gram", "whole black urad", "moth dal" and "masoor dal".

Now my regular, weekly cooking consists of rotis, daals with vegetable(of the kootu/kurma fame), sabjis, salads/raithas and an odd dessert-like item. Since these 5containers dont hold ingredients that I need/use on a daily basis, the recipes that demand their use dont belong in my weekly repertoire of culinary projects, they've been idling in the pantry for as long as a year, if I remember right. I am now tempted to start a contest-challenge to these food blogger experts. To make a dish with these 5 items and show me a winner. So these items feel useful, and not gossip at night about what a waste and a terrible cook their owner is.

I do enjoy baking, though. For others. Like if someone's birthday is coming up, one would find me measuring and mixing and baking a decent tasting cake. But in general I suck at the decorating part. Most times, the receiver is disappointed at the sorry looking cake though will immediately rave about the taste....cos all said and done, it does taste good. And again, these baking recipes are all thanks to different food bloggers, whose recipes, their writeups and irresistible photos drive one to immediately don an apron and do the needful.

Cut to chase, our jugalbandi pair recently posted this d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s looking, simple-sounding cake. I mean, all said and done, it says its a war-time cake. No one stocks up on fancy ingredients right? So it must consume simple ingredients, be simple to make and hence an easy challenge for us types, right? Wrong, Wrong and Wrong. I have a good mind to parcel this to Bee herself, with my best season's greetings.

This is what happened, I mixed and matched, sifted and sorted, blended and pulsed...followed the recipe to the T...T-shirt I mean(the apron was in the laundry, so it all landed on my T-shirt, silly!). And then it all went into my prize possession...my 6-speed mixer....my one-stop solution for all well-rising cakes. After a good amount of mixing, it went straight into a well-greased baking dish, then into the oven....and all was left was a 30 minute wait for the wonderful warm aroma of "fruit-and-nut" war cake. A decent amount of good dried fruit and nuts had found their way into this creation.

40 mins later, when no smells wafted from the oven, I peeked. And what I saw was a disappointing, flat pancake-like thing! I poked a fork into it and it was quite done. I pulled the "item" out, left it to cool. Some hours later.....do you know how a cardboard mixed with fruit and nut would taste? I do....cos thats what my "cake" had turned into.

And the very next day, I tried out another cake, from another blogger lady. Needless to say, that was a disaster as well. Hence I will refrain from baking any cakes for the rest of the year. Most likely my cake baking jinx has been turned on.

Cookies though have turned out pretty well. I shall stick to these, while the going is good.

Footnote : You know, about those cakes....shhhhhhh......lets let the food bloggers continue to squirm....but it was really cos I mixed up labels for the "all-purpose" and "Bisquik-pancake mix" containers....yea, I know- I suck ;).

So, how YOU doing?