Recipe Books, a Microwave and Cakes

The new microwave has created quite an interest in cooking. We’re saving on usage of cooking gas and at the same time creating good, wholesome, microwave convection-cooked food. A chicken curry was the second guinea pig dish tried after the no-frills veg pulao. The result: we don’t miss the oily tari floating on the curry, the chicken cooked just as well without frying it first and then cooking it in gravy.

These two successes made me look over the recipes in the new cookbooks that my sister chose as a gift for me on two of my favourite themes – Thai food and Pasta. The Pasta cookbook has a baked section…wonderfully photographed and just moving you to the point of imagining it melt in your mouth. There’s enough cheese to put 10 kilos on without even eating it at one go…has enough to mount the calories in your system as your eyes take in the crusted cheese on pies and the melted cheese squeezed out of the lasagnas and cannelloni tubes also filled with yummy mince meat or dark green spinach leaves. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to pore over this section on an empty stomach…and I only had a glass of milk which lay forgotten until I forced my eyes to look up at the clock over my desk.

I need to not indulge at this point – I’m not saying I must diet, although that’s probably a good idea but very hard to keep up – and stay off the rich food. Which is extremely hard when you’ve also got to celebrate this month. My parents have their thirtieth anniversary today – amazing amount of years. I hit my first wedding anniversary this month’s 30th. There’s a wedding at a posh club I’ve been invited to and I already have a saree picked out for the occasion. More than anything, wherever I get invited to, I’m always interested in the food they’re going to serve. Which is very unfortunate for my figure: traditionally-built.

While reading Ramotswe (No. 1 Ladies Detective Series), I noticed that full-figured (or sometimes, even fat) was the meaning indicated by the term traditionally-built, which describes the leading lady’s figure. Traditionally-built meant how women used to be before the scales tilted towards the idea of thin as beautiful (also perfect). I realized how women probably all around the world could describe their ancestors the same way – whether it be the Victorian age with its seductresses, or ancient India with voluptuousness admired in women to the point of describing the walk of one such a woman similar to the leisurely stride of an elephant. They probably looked similar too, else why would the poet think of an elephant in the first place?

I know such thoughts do not help and especially the part where she (Ramotswe) overcomes the pressures of dieting by biting into a slice of her friend’s home-made fruit cake. I almost felt the fruity insides of the cake in my mouth. Now, I long for a good, rich plum cake…rum added would not be a bad notion.

I now need a very easy, non-fussy cake recipe to bake in the microwave. But it must taste just as good, something to give up a diet for.