I am a reformed man after my India trip. Before a few of you start snickering … I am only talking about the part of me starting to cook!! Well putting on 10 pounds in a week will make any person start thinking about their heart and arteries. Does anybody realize how hard it is to cook specially good Indian food? You wouldn’t believe the amount of preparation that goes into it. Now I know why men in India look for a bride who can cook. And before the feminist brigade get on my case let me reiterate that I do not discriminate against women who can’t cook, but I do like a lady who can whip it up in the kitchen (hint hint).

Believe it or not it takes more than three rounds of grocery shopping before I have all the ingredients to make sambar (Curry to those who don’t know ‘Indian'(Tamil)). Even then the sheer amount of time and patience it takes to make the simplest side dish is mind boggling. Got to bow down to all the mom’s out there !!! Also to the girl friends that make cookies for their boy friends and their boy friend’s friends!!!

Frankly I ain’t too bad at cooking only that I am too lazy for it. So far have been bad only on two of six times I have cooked. Before I forget a friendly warning to all attempting to cook Indian … disable the smoke alarm. The first time I cooked it went off and I had to ripe it out to stop myself from going crazy. The day the put in a new one, I cooked again but this time I was prepared, so I was able to disconnect it without ripping it apart. So much for the smoke alarm! That reminded me of the story of when couple of fire engine’s showed up to a Indian student’s apartment at FSU because of the smoke coming out of his kitchen!! He was really whipping it up in the kitchen!

Now that my whole blog has spoken about how hard ‘Indian’ cooking and cooking in general is, just wanted to share with you all that my youth group has learned its first Tamil chorus which they are going to be performing this coming Sunday. But believe you me that its harder to teach monolingual people a different language than cooking (Indian cooking included)!

I have been quite irregular with updating this blog this month … blame it all on work. Have been working weekends for the past two weeks and even this week. Though I then do get to spend the next two weekends with friends and family. Florida and California here I come!!!

On the topic of cooking … I thought I would show you guys the real way to drink “tender” coconut water and eat the “tender” coconut, also show you city folks what a coconut tree looks like … So here you go!!!

“Kissing don’t last: cookery do!”