BUCKET O NOODLES

“uppu seri illa, karam seri illa”. These are some common comments which we pass at the dining table. All we can do is just wait at the table for hot food and complain “this is not fine!” at the dining table, (still ending up with a full stomach and an empty plate.). We have even heard a few girls scene potufy by saying “Heh, I know only to make hot water in the kitchen pa.”. But have you ever been a part of a “cooking” team? Have you at least been to the kitchen to cook something? It really takes more to spend a day at the kitchen. Ya, you heard it right. It was altogether least expected, but it happened and I spent some time cooking in my kitchen. continue reading...

The Karnataka state government had called for a bandh on Monday for the cauvery tribunal verdict, and all shops were meant to be closed on Monday. With a heavy schedule in the past week, I missed out on buying something to eat on Sunday night. We (me and my roomies) foresaw the bandh and planned to buy bread or something for the next day. But as it happens every time, we forgot. And when it hot our minds again, it was ten thirty in the night already and we managed to buy only some noodles (maggi , ofcourse). We got up early (in the afternoon) and decided to give a shot at the hotel nearby. But, just like we had expected, There was not even a “e” “kaka” on the road.

So, hungry boys returned home. The kitchen we have house is currently used as a store room, for daily newspapers, old covers and more. We go there every time only to drink water or use the big collection of cleanser, skin moisturizer, shampoo, hair moisturizer, talcum powder, after shave, a big collection of perfumes every morning. There was not a single piece of utensils, spare one spoon, which I use for chawanaprash. Now we have two magi noodles packets in our hands, and two hungry stomachs, but no gas stove or vessels to cook with. With the bell ringing heavy in our stomachs, we had to do something very quickly.

I took it a challenge to eat the noodles (not raw..) somehow. Bulb glows and an idea hit my mind. We brought a bucket and filled it with water, and dipped the immersion heater in to it. With great luck, we found a plastic bowl on the loft. We broke open the noodles, and “adan gokkamakka”, there was no drinking water in the house. So we had to boil bathroom water and pour the same in to the maggi plastic bowl. After some time, when the water was more than tepid, we set up a apparatus where the bowl would float on the water but still be immersed in the water, enough to get the noodles cooked. We made the bowl float somehow and put on it enough weight to get it immersed. Again the “adan gokkamakka”. This time, very horribly, the power went off. It was too frustrating. All our work would go waste. Not a big issue, but I would go hungry. Too big a issue. Fortunately for us, the power was restored in fifteen minutes and I had to set up the apparatus again. Having no previous cooking experience in the kitchen, this was sort of interesting as well as challenging. I didn’t know how much water to use for one packet of maggi. So every two minutes I opened the bowl, added some more water. This was time consuming because, every time I did it, I had to switch off the immersion heater and remove the apparatus, add water, set it up and switch on the immersion heater again. The water in the bucket got heated, but still the noodles were yet to get cooked fully.

After a long process of waiting, finally the noodles were ready. Extremely fortunately, we had bought a couple of plates last week to eat parcel food, when we returned late from office. This came in handy. At last it was done and we had the noodles in two plates with only one spoon. As hunger wouldn know anything, the noodles disappeared in to our stomachs in less than a minute, wanting for more. Thank goodness, the bandh was only till six in the evening and at sharp six, we were out to eat.


This was really a great experience, but It would have been a lot better, had it been more packets of noodles. Any way, without that, it would have been toooooo worse. This challenge also aroused great interests in cooking in my mind. Mom and your kitchen, here I come!


tag: cookingnoodles