My experiences in the US kitchen :)

Like most city girls, I too was not a great cook. My visits to the kitchen were very limited. My mother was a very lenient person; never insisted us to cook. She used to ask us to study or go to some useful classes and encourage us in everything but cooking. And we too never found time - lots of playing as a child, tuition and special classes while in 10th and 12th, then college - unfortunately I ended up being in a first batch and we were treated like school kids and then a career demanding unusual work timings and long hours of work. Of course I know these are lame excuses because one can always find time for something that they are interested in. So basically I had little interest in cooking and hence I was in kindergarten as far as cooking was concerned and used to cook only if need arises or when I find some recipe really interesting.

Then I got married, had to live so far away from home and had to cook myself! Thanks to Skype and my sweet amma - she used to tell me one recipe per day and I used to note down meticulously every thing she said. But for her, I never could have cooked so many yummy dishes. And these days I also refer to the net for new recipes. There are good sites with videos too. I got very inspired from all these sources and now I have developed keen interest in cooking. I also discovered that the secret to good cooking is a good recipe, lot of time and patience.

But let me tell you some of the experiences I had while in the kitchen. Here there is no gas stove but the heating source is an electric filament. It was very new to me. I used to keep forgetting that it is a stove. Somehow without real fire or flames, it didn't appear to me as a "Stove".

One day after grinding, I just kept the small mixie jar directly on the stove. Only when the plastic melted and the smell of burning plastic came out, I realised that I had kept the jar on the stove. The stove wasn't on but it was hot. I felt so bad because I didn't have my little jar anymore. And we had brought it all the way from India. Similar incidents are - plastic jars, spoons loosing their shape as I had kept them close to the stove.

There are four stoves and even if few are not heated, the radiation keeps other stuff on those stoves hot and I once ended up burning my fingers by touching a plate on another stove which was not at all turned on.. but was very hot as the stove next to it had very hot oil in a kadai.

Then we had purchased wooden ladles for cooking. I washed one to use for tempering/seasoning. As you know for seasoning the oil will be hot and the ladle should be dry, otherwise the oil splutters. I felt the ladle was too wet and thought I can dry it by keeping it in the oven for a few seconds, but it turned out to be a bad idea.. it got burnt and the ladle broke. The oven was filled with so much smoke. I got very tensed but acted calmly and cleared of everything.

Another incident was like this.. quite of stupid of me though ; I tried to melt the butter along with the butter paper wrapped around it and it started burning. I panicked but I quickly turned off the oven, put off the fire and cleared up the mess.

That is how I had successfully filled the oven with smoke and fire. And after that I learnt to be more careful with the electric stove and the oven. I am very cautious when keeping stuff in the oven. I also keep the cooking area clear and with lot of space so that I don't have to end up keeping stuff on or near the stove.

Thus ends my experiences rather experiments in the kitchen :)