Last night I got down to doing something that was months in the offing. A friend had 'rustled up' - note, this is her term not mine; with me anything that requires making any eatable substance edible is cordon bleu cooking, not rustling - Stir Fried Vegetables. After the first seven and a half minutes of tasting one delectable morsel my enthusiasm waned. (My numerologist has told me that my number is not culinarily inclined so it's no surprise.) But I accomplished much in those few first moments of unchallenged interest. I got her to write down the recipe on Post-its and stuck it to my wallet. I was going to wait till inspiration struck me again. And what do you know, it did! One fine evening six months later my mother asked me if I would accompany her for a spot of veggie shopping. I was super delighted and agreed with a Whoop! This was going to be a great adventure. My unfortunate self belongs to that sad lot of people who are grocery-challenged.

We proceeded to my mother's fave vegetable vendor. I spied IT. 'Breaking News' said my brain. I would make the Vegetable Stir Fry. I lunged at what seemed an over-sized cucumber and cried, "Zucchini!" The vegetable vendor enlightened me that that was indeed a mere cucumber and held up the most wanted zucchini. It was a beautiful, shiny, dark green. I already had visions of the mouth-watering stir-fry. After that first prized possession I was unstoppable. The little helper boy quickly realizing that here was one idiot-on-the-make, soon held up an exotic purple cabbage and then a bag of tiny, cherry-sized tomatoes. I expressed wondrous amazement at both and grabbed them without any clue as to what I was going to do with them. My mother refusing to suffer any more embarrassment (to her utter mortification I pointed to a turnip and asked what it was) and dents to her reputation as an astute veggie shopper zipped through her purchases and hustled me into the car.

My triumph was short-lived for one look at the recipe after I went home told me that I had but one of the nine ingredients. The zucchini was in but not so the purple cabbage or the cutsie tomatoes. I now needed broccoli, mushrooms, corn, red peppers, yellow peppers, Parmesan cheese, garlic cloves, basil and thyme. Defeated again, my enthusiasm. I moped and forgot about the Stir-fry.

A week later I noticed the zucchini in the refrigerator looking cold and forlorn. Feeling deeply for it I decided to shop for the rest of its partners in the stir-fry. It was seven-thirty in the evening by the time I got home. After a quiet panic attack at the amount of slicing and dicing that had to be done I bravely propelled myself into the kitchen.

The broccoli had to be cut into 'florets' and 'par-boiled'. What in the heck is par-boiled? My mother conveniently went missing. I said a prayer and stuck the florets in a saucepan of water and covered it. It worked. The good Lord works in mysterious ways. I chopped the peppers, diced the mushroom and quartered the zucchini. I delegated my emotionally blackmailed father to finely chop the garlic and onions and grate the cheese.

Then I got to the actual cooking. The recipe required three lashings of olive oil. I forgot to mention that that was the other ingredient I already had. Let me tell you that olive oil does not age well like wine though both kind of come from the same regions of the world. This particular olive oil had traveled back with my father from one of his trips to Italy. He doesn't remember when so it must have been a while back. Well anyway when we ate the stir-fried vegetable we realized that the olive oil dated back to the previous century.

Unknowing of this ageism that plagues olive oil I 'lashed' (remember the recipe required exactly three lashings of olive oil) the vegetables with it and stirred and shook the wok adding the herbs. To go with it I also made basmati rice, which had to be tasted at varying stages of boil lest it be served crunchy and undercooked or reduced to glutinous pigswill.

Finally all I can say was that the colours were admirable. Quite poetic, really. And olive oil has an expiry date. My parents were most supportive of my efforts and tried to praise each vegetable individually. Suitably encouraged I have set my culinary sights on spaghetti next.
Warning: main(commenter1.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.barton/nsigamany/zine5.com/archive/lalita38.php on line 117

Warning: main() [function.include]: Failed opening 'commenter1.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/.barton/nsigamany/zine5.com/archive/lalita38.php on line 117