When you turn into a weekend chef

Let me begin by confessing that I like to cook and I am not a staunch feminist who looks down upon housework or kitchen queens. I merely don't don the chef's hat often enough because I'm a working woman with fluctuating work hours. Hence, I have happily chosen the faster cooking methods like buying chapatis from the canteen in office, instead of toiling with the dough at home and keep a steady supply of ready-to-eat gravies/curries, and eggs of course which come really handy in dishing up a complete meal.

Mind you, I do love my dal chawal, rajmah, kadhi, aloo tarkari, koftas, palak paneer and cook it regularly (even on workdays) to tickle both my husband's and my taste buds. It's not always a short-cut for me.

PS: I don't have a servant to do the cooking because I prefer to eat a fresh hot meal. And plus, I like cooking, as mentioned above.

Coming back to the present, weekends just like every professional human being are much-awaited days for me. Pardon me, but I lust after a leisurely Saturday morning or an equally lazy Sunday morning so that I can sip my masala tea, have a late brunch and watch some inane tele-serials. Weekends are meant to lounge around in your shorts and uncombed hair, and have chips & Pepsi or Maggi or whatever you wish for that matter.

But if you have in-laws (or for that matter any elderly relative) over (and if they aren't used to your lifestyle) then everything has to be underplayed. Saturdays turn into days when elderly guests expect you to be out of bed and get in the kitchen. And then begins the day-long cycle of tea, breakfast, brunch, lunch, evening snacks, tea, cold drinks in between, and then dinner. Not to mention, a sweet savory to complete the day's routine. All this while, there is an additional task of making sure that the grocery and vegetable stocks are maintained to battle out another grueling day and that's Sunday.

It barely matters if you are a post-graduate or even more qualified woman. You are the mistress of the house and you are expected to be in-charge of the kitchen.

Sunday's are another nightmare. While you are battling your hiccups about a working Monday, your guests at home are wondering what new cuisine they will get to sample from your kitchen. And mind you, there's not much of a choice that you get when guests innocently ask you, "We heard that you can cook some really nice Indian fusion." You have to click your heels and get back to kitchen and think what fusion you can come up with on an erstwhile lazy Sunday.

How I wish I had married a chef instead of an investment banker, at least he could have been of some help in cutting and chopping piles of onion, garlic and tomatoes.

As I have confessed right in the beginning that I am a lazy bum on weekends, thus I find the 'mentioned routine' very tough to embrace. I admire the homemakers who do these tasks efficiently. I am really not beguiled by the charms of spending my weekends in kitchen, sweating away.