And thus I cooked...

I admit this came to me late.And that was owing to my (lack of) proclivity towards cooking as well as pure lethargy.One fine day, my mother declared her plan of visiting granny.This meant she would be out for a week's time. I had no inkling as to what this would amount to. as usually I experience a considerable "delay" in really understanding things happening around me :-) The day she started off passed normally as she had already taken care of the evening meals. The next day dawned and posed a daunting task of preparing the PoLi , associated with a deadline. ( Task reminds me of the tasks in Big Boss.. ;-)). I had a small experience with the PoLi and that was a relief. Nobody complained so I take it was a fair job.There was a glitch in the task though, as my estimate went wrong.Next day was a holiday but as I had to attend my friends engagement ceremony so the deadline was still there. With the fresh experience gained from day before, I did better. I do understand that the story isn't getting interesting, however the real excitement is not until the next day. That day mom called me up to enlighten us that tomorrow is the kartiki ekadashi. She of course did not suggest that we should fast or anything. (at times, She is quite nice, you know !)But that was sunday and it was possible to experiment with cooking. So I, with all the bravado decided that we will fast as we usually fast on this ekadashi.It would be useful to note that we don't interpret fast as the day when we don't eat but the one when we have food of a different type. My father wasn't exactly cheerful about this one and was all set to boycott the ekadashi upwas idea of mine. I ignored him and decided to go ahead with my idea,unsure of how I would cook the upwas stuff ( Had NO experience in this ! ). Because of lot of dawdling and dilly-dallying over the decision of whether to-fast-or-not we had completely forgotten about soaking the sabudana (The essential ingredient of 80% of the upwas recipes). The sunday morning started off lazily as usual and I had not shown any awareness that I had to do some cooking (within time for lunch) which I wasn't familiar with. Then I was again debating with myself whether to prepare the thalipeeth or khichadi.

Thalipeeth - Didn't know how to make,but is tasty,and doesnt need any pre-requisite
unlike sabudana khichadi.

Sabudana khichadi - Knew how to make. May not sound very interesting as its seen
often. But needs the soaked sabudana.

After taking up too much time then again taking my cousins help I finally decided to
soak sabudana as this presented less efforts. Then again some time passed away lazying around. At 11.00 it dawned upon me that I was getting hungry as was everyone else.so I slowly proceeded and roasted peanuts and grinded them.My speed is approximately 1/4th of my mom so I wished time would stop for me but alas ! it didn't have any mercy. Then as a emergency relief I prepared one instant item, the batatyachi bhaji. Then I prepared the sabudana khichadi and salad.
It was 12.30 already.I thought this was all about lunch.But I realized my estimate has again gone awry and the amount the preparation was less than my expectations. So I had to look at thalipeeth option (scary!) So I called up mom and asked her the recipe and made the dough according to her instructions.By this time I had lost patience. My poor(?) sister had to bear the brunt of this as I yelled at her for no reason,this blew some sparks between us. But then she came to my rescue and offered me help. I flattened out small pieces of dough in to thalipeeth and she roasted them by adding oil.Then my cousin came to help and she prepared shikaran. So finally we were ready with the grand upwas lunch (according to us)

Menu was:
Batatychi bhaji (Jeera aloo)
Sabudana khichadi
Salad
Thalipeeth
Shikaran

Then we all ate our lunch heartliy. It gave me some satisfaction that I had prepared it. I felt proud of myself as I thought I wouldn't be able to do it. I pondered, my mother cooks food everyday without fail.She never loses patience never yells at anyone. She is simply amazing..! It is true that to realize value of anything we need to have experienced lack of it.

All and all this sunday turned out to be interesting in more ways than one. :-)