Memories

I dont know why I remembered this but I did and I am blogging about it.

Some of my favourite memories of being in India is cooking with my mom with my siblings around.

My mom used to make all three of us help her cook. At the time, there were some days when I hated cleaning bags full of coriander or fenugreek. It sucked. But now that I think of it - it wasnt so bad. Usually, it was during summer vacations when all of us were home. Sometime around noon when the sun was high and it was too hot to even look outside. We would spend the afternoon, preping vegetables so that things were ready for the next few days. Or it was a Saturday or Sunday and we were just bored.

My favourite though was this crappy electric oven that my dad got from an auction. My dad was big on auctions. He would find all kinds of junk. He found this circular electric oven the size of big pan, and you had to plug it in to make it work. In India you dont have ovens - usually.

Anyhoo, the first few months that oven was there we made all kinds of things. Tea biscuits, cookies and whatnot. I think it was during summer vacations as my sis, my bro, my mom and myself would all sit on the floor mix the ingredients and cut it into various shapes and bake things. Once these cookies or biscuits were cooked we would eat them on the spot!

It seemed so fascinating at the time. It was fun. We used make the same cookie dough and put various food colouring in it. So in essence it was the same cookie just different colours. Hours were spent on this. It was so silly.

I think the other things that I remember is my dad cooking. My dad is quite the cook. Even though he would only cook once in awhile, esp on Sundays when he was home. He would make this vegetable rice - man it was good!

I think the thing that comes back from all of these memories is how much love there was in the house. How just spending time with each other doing silly things like chopping tomatoes or putting blue colour in the cookie dough was so much fun. How all the arguments about what the next biscuit should taste like seemed so big back then and now seem like they were stupid but fun.

I guess what I am thinking is as little jublet will be born - if I can even create something like the atmosphere that I had growing up I know my kids will be okay. I remember very clearly we didnt have much growing up. Not many expensive clothes and access to the latest gadgets and so on. But we had enough of attention from our parents and tonnes of silly stories that I will always remember. If I can give even half of these to my kids I will be happy.