Dad and my culinary faux pas

It’s August. It was in August that my father had his birthday. I feel blessed to have known such a person. It’s nearly 20yrs since his passing but I remember him everyday. I prefer remembering the fun times we had of which there were many. Today I write about those. Especially the ones that revolve around my culinary experiments.
My father never told me that I had to do something just because I was a girl. He never had this bias. He would get up and make tea for all of us out of consideration for my mom,as he always said that the homemakers are the ones who worked the most. He did want us girls to learn cooking, not because we were supposed to but for survival. Ofcourse I had absolutely no inclination toward anything culinary. No motor co-ordination in the kitchen and I took up homescience. I am telling you that I am an adventurous person.
In college, I learnt cooking the scientific way. I was very eager to show off these new found skills at home. So I decided to start off with a very simple receipe. The potato bhaji. I mean what can go wrong in following this receipe. I took out the weighing scales and my granny almost fainted. She was like, who ever measured potatoes to make a simple potato bhaji. I told her, well this is how I have been taught. So she just gave me a wide berth and left the kitchen. I got down to making the potato bhaji scientifically. After going about the receipe, I found that half the bhaji was yellow and the other half refused to turn the same colour. I fail to understand, how when I had added the exact amount of turmeric, the bhaji refused to turn yellow (or rather half of it refused to). After adding more turmeric, same result. When I served this double coloured vegetable, my dad only said… “oh good, you have taken care of the ones who can eat the normal yellow bhaji and also the ones who are fasting in one shot.(cos the white variety of potato bhaji is made for the ones who are fasting).
After this episode I didn’t venture into the kitchen for quite sometime. When I finally did get my nerve up enough to go there, I decided that this time I’ll try a non-veg receipe. I picked the kadhai chicken. It had tasted pretty yummy when I made it in college. Again I followed the receipe to the T. Ofcourse, it totally escaped me that I should taste the receipe for the hotness. I added the exact spoonfuls of chilli powder. It never struck me that, in college, we used kashmiri mirch which is a mild variety of chilli powder. At home we used the normal red chilli powder which is pretty potent. Ofcourse I never tasted it myself. Pretty pleased with myself I asked my dad to taste it. My dad put a spoonful in his mouth. Then he asked me “should I call the fire engine now or would it be better to call them when everyones mouth’s on fire. My mom had to put in nearly a whole coconut in the chicken to make it palatable. So what started as a north Indian dish finally ended up in the south!
I was pretty much disheartened, though I didn’t give up. I decided that maybe the normal cooking was not my forte, but what could go wrong with a cake. So for my dad’s birthday, I decided to make the coffee cream sponge. It had looked absolutely delicious in college. I got all the things ready. Made the batter and put it in the oven. For the first hour it never rose, after that it wouldn’t stop rising! My dad was patiently waiting. In fact we all were gathered round the oven collectively watching the cake. It had a mind of it’s own. Finally, I got the cake out from the oven at about 11 o’clock in the night. After which I had no enthusiasm left for decorating it. My dad told his colleagues that his daughter baked a cake for his birthday!
It’s sad when his daughter finally got her culinary motor co-ordination he wasn’t there to taste the fruits. Whenever I make the potato bhaji I end up being nostalgic about my first experiment, and about my dad who never rubbished any of my efforts. He was able to make me laugh about my faux pas...... which I really appreciate.