Too many cooks....

...spoil the broth. Full marks for your amazing knowledge of kindergarten proverbs.

Let me tell you by my experience - all this stuff about too many cooks is utter rubbish. Nonsense with a capital N. Balderdash. Poppycock. There can never be any such thing as too many cooks. And I'll show you exactly why.

I decided to cook one day. The stuff they pass off as food in our canteen is enough to make even the most seasoned pig puke and I am but a mere mortal. I figured if I can manage to eat the canteen food, I will definitely manage to eat my own cooking without dropping dead of food poisoning. So I enthusiastically go to the supermarket and buy some vegetables, some flour and some salad items. I come back home and the nightmare starts.

I want to cut open the flour packet. Damn thing is stubborn, but me, I have the muscles of a Rambo. I tug viciously and finally open it. Unfortunately, in this process I spill half of it over myself. My dream of being fair and lovely has just been fulfilled. The other half is lying on the floor and the platform. The remaining that's left (yeah yeah, forget the math will you) I carefully scoop into a bowl and start kneading.

I end up putting too much water.

Then I put more flour to nullify the effect of water and end up putting too much flour.

Then I add more water to make the mixture smooth.

I repeat these steps for about half an hour till all the flour's exhausted and suddenly decide that the mixture is perfect anyway. I cover and keep it aside to soften.

Out come the veggies now. Let's see, is it going to be ladyfingers or potatoes? I think for a while and pick on the ladyfinders. Green vegetables are good for the skin, or so they say. I wash them and look for the knife. Damn. I could have sworn it was here someplace. I look around my kitchen intensely but fail to spot it.

I open the cabinets one by one and start digging around. Half an hour later, I am exhausted. I close all cabinets and decide to lie down for a bit. To my dismay, the kitchen is littered with the stuff I had forgotten to put back in the cabinets. Oh well. I put things right and suddenly hear my phone ringing. I run to my bedroom and see the knife right next to my phone. How the hell did it get there in the first place? Anyway I politely tell the telemarketing fellow to get the hell out before I beat his brains to pulp and get back to the task of cutting the vegetables. Another half an hour and a few nicks and cuts later, things are finally ready to be cooked. I put the vessels on the gas and start the task.

If you have never cooked ladyfingers, let me tell you there's still time to hire that maid. Nothing, but nothing takes about as much time to cook as ladyfingers. I darkly wonder if the word "lady-fingers" had been meticulously thought up after studying women's behaviour patterns, especially in the putting-makeup-on department. I stir and stir and stir and still no sign of it getting cooked. I decide its high time I took that 5-minute break and walk to the sofa plonking myself down it with a huge sigh. I pick up an Archies and flip the pages. Suddenly I smell something burning and rush back to the kitchen in alarm. The food is, well, cooked. Slightly overdone, but cooked nevertheless.

I now start with the rotis. With agonizing slowness I roll the roti to something resembling the island of Bora Bora. A circle is a boring shape anyway. I cook it and finish with the rest.

Believe you me, at the end of this "simple" task of cooking my dinner, I was so exhausted, my kitchen was in such a mess and my hands were so like the war ravaged Serbia that I decided enough was enough. One person alone can definitely not manage all this mess. It will need about four and a half people to be able to cook a dinner deftly.

Now its back to the canteen for me.