When I rediscovered my love for cooking

Some serious badminton fever is doing the rounds at work. So every evening around 6 30, people creep out of their various rooms and hit the volleyball court. Except, we use it to play badminton. I didnt realise how rigorous and energetic badminton was, and now Iv really taken to it, seeing as how waking up early in the morning to go for a run or get some exercise seems like a distant faraway dream. Iv decided that something is better than nothing, and badminton seems to be the way to go as of now. Its pretty addictive and Im loving it!

The downside (isnt there always a downside?) is that invariably we finish at 9pm (sometimes 10!), which leaves me oh-soooo-pooped by the time I get home that fixing dinner is easily substituted with a quick meal at Soft Rock before we head home and crash. As a result last week featured four Soft Rock dinner. And almost all featured chicken fried rice and chicken in black bean sauce. Its like Iv found the perfect Rice Bowl equivalent of my life in Bangalore. I <3 Soft Rock. Its my Goan Rice Bowl and chicken in black bean sauce is the new schezuan chicken. So heart warming, so homely. So come weekend, and I realised how much I have missed my kitchen this week. My repeated efforts to cook regularly have failed miserably. The biggest challenge is that with just about 16-17 waking hours on hand, its a tad difficult to squeeze in everything I want to do on any given day. So I can either have a good round of exercise followed by a good nights sleep, or I can have home cooked dinner and a good nights sleep. I cant have both. Tragedy of my life. But I have decided to just accept it. Im no superman. Trying to be super efficient gives me sleepless nights. Anyhoo, to give myself some good kitchen time, I decided to skip going out for the various possibilities of dinner last night, and stay in and make my version of Meaty Pasta. Inspired by Sandhya and some pasta tricks Iv seen on Smitten Kitchen, I decided something needed to be done.

It also helped that we had a bottle of this to be opened:

And this is how excited VC was:

Neither of us is on-the-rocks-brave so he had his with water and ice, and I had mine with Pepsi.

And diner turned out to be this:

A creamy, cheesy tomato-ey, red-winey pasta with a simple Balsamic Vinegar dressed fresh salad.

Half way through dinner, I stopped to tell VC how much I love cooking. I really do. When I cook, I feel like myself. Its me time. Its my thinking time. It gives me joy to labour over chopping things, putting them together, not following a recipe pat, throwing things in as I go along, and seeing what happens. When the result is spectacular (as it was last night), its like affirmation for that love for cooking. And I had that epiphany yesterday, as I was chowing down my pasta. I paused for a moment, soaked in in and thought to myself: its wonderful what having your own home and your own kitchen can do for you. And I highly recommend it :)