30 Vegetables in 30 Days:

Due to some peculiar circumstances (I found my servant lady stealing money and stuff, and I terminated her services), I am finding that I have to cook food on my own. Since I enjoy cooking, that is not a problem, even though cleaning after cooking is a bit tedious. 

Of course, I also enjoy cleaning the vessels and keeping kitchen neat and clean. So that is not a problem.

However the problem is that I have just about two hours in the morning to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner. I prepare Dosa, Idli or Upma for breakfast, all are easy to cook and doesn't demand your constant presence in front of the fire. Dosa is nothing but South Indian Salted Pancake, Idli is Rice & Lentil Dumplings and Upma is.... Well, Upma is something.

I am not to talk here about Dosa, Idli or Upma. I am here to talk about Vegetables.

I prepare vegetables for both Lunch and Dinner. Since time is a constraint for me, I need to prepare Vegetables for both lunch and dinner in the morning itself. I prepare Veggies, take some to dinner and have the remaining for dinner. 

My vegetable preparation should meet the following four criteria.

1. The food should be palatable

2. The food should be cooked in fire. Salads do not count as vegetable preparation

3. Potato is not counted as a vegetable. Potato preparations, where Potato is the main ingredient, will not be considered

4. It should use only the following spices. Mustard, Jeera, Dhania Powder, Jeera Powder and Turmeric Powder.

5. The preparation should be healthy. Meaning, very less oil

6. The preparation should take less than 15 minutes

Some of you may say that I am talking about the ideal vegetable preparation, that this is not attainable

Let me try.

The other day, I was preparing Beetroot fry. That is when I hit upon this idea.

For the next month, I will prepare 30 different vegetables, one each day. I will write a blog post, for each vegetable preparation. I will write my emotions and feelings as I was preparing the food, I will write the recipe and I will also back link to the source recipe, if I have found the recipe in the web.

Please note that the recipes that I post in this blog are for men. Let me explain.

Women are naturally gifted with cooking skills, it is in their genes. They can easily navigate between table spoons, tea spoons, 5 mls, 10 mls, sprigs, splutter (as in mustard) etc. They also understand the difference between high heat, medium heat and low heat in the gas. Ladies also know the difference between Power Mode and Quick mode in microwave...

Difference between Tawa, Kadai, Ladle and Chipple? No  problem, they know.

Vegetables? Ladies know about all the vegetables in the world, I think. You know Cauliflower, Ladies finger, cabbage, tomato, onion...

Men also know all those vegetables. So there...

Ladies also know about multiple types of these vegetables. They know that there are at least three types of onions, Sambhar Onion, Pink Onion and White Onion. They prefer 'English' carrots to 'Desi' carrots.

Ladies also know about Jinga, Green Chilly long, Green Chilly Small, all kinds of Gourds - bitter, snake etc, yam, jinga, Kundru, arbi, Bartha Brinjal, Small Brinjal, long purple Brinjal, long green Brinjal, pumpkins...

Gosh...

Ladies also know of all spices in the universe. They know of Dhania, Jeera, Aamchur, Red Chilly, Kashmiri Red Chilly, Black Pepper, White Pepper, Garam Masala, Chai Masala...

(Sorry foreigners, I don't have the time to explain all these terms in English to you. Google the words that you do not understand.

Shall I tell you a secret? The fact is that I don't know)

They also know of exotic spices like Jalepano, Oregano, Olives etc. They really know !!!

Men are not like that. Other than the vegetables mentioned above, only thing they know is the difference between pinch, dash, whiff and dollop when it comes to solids and pint and quarter when it comes to liquids.

Which means....

that  the recipes for men should be simple and intuitive, as in teaching kids. That is what I strive to achieve in this project. I will demistify cooking in terms that men understand. 

I will also rank my preparations based on the taste. I will also try to provide the nutritional value of the preparation.

I have already completed three days and three different veggies, Beetroot, Carrot and Cabbage.

Wait for the further posts.