What is cooking?

So, nowadays, I've started following cooking blogs and trying them out before AB comes back home. No, I'm not working towards a surprise. See, if I start something at 10 AM, it takes me until 4 PM or after to actually finish cooking the dish, clean the place, and throw the stuff if it does not work out, and act as if nothing happened, or if it has come out well (not happened, so far) act like it was just whipped up ;) in the last 10 minutes. You ask, what got me interested? I'd say, love for food. I love watching cookery shows, Rachel Ray is my fave, not just because she makes it sound easy, but actually, really because, I like the amount of noise she makes on the show. AB feels its cacophonous (do not be a spell checker) Rachel Ray cannot stop talking when she cooks, and she does things fast. Just like me. No, I do not do things fast and well. I do things in a haste. And I talk more than her, and louder than her. So, I feel good when her show is on. Let me get back. I love cookery shows because I love food. I love salivating over food. So, I imagine I cook them in my dreams, and watch these shows. Food Network, currently is my saviour.

Oh, coming back to blogs, I looooove food blogs. I really started reading food blogs thanks to her. She was my colleague back when I worked and she is my ready made cookbook, always available :) Thanks you! People out there are SO talented. They can take marvellous pictures, cook well, and serve their husband/family and everyone else they wish to so effortlessly. I love it when they discuss recipes through comments in each other's blogs, while I read them without quite understanding what they mean! Some of the blogs and the things they do are indeed heartwarming. Someone started this whole 'let's send what we cook to some other blogger we know' event. I somehow cannot remember the name. They do have a name. I loved the idea. Imagine receiving a batch of chocolate cookies from someone you do not know! ( I know, the trouble is in returning the favour!) I loved this idea. Also, these food bloggers are extremely well-knit, send each other recipes, know about each other's lives without really knowing each other, cook something in their homes and then remember some food blogger and dedicate the post to them. Apart from all this fun and heart-warming comments on each other's posts, there are those much-participated events. Someone hosts an event where everyone has to send in recipes using a particular ingredient. Wow! So, all you have to do as someone who cannot cook, but can afford to buy ingredients is look for the ingredient and you have an array of recipes. With pictures, and tips to make it better in the comments section, so much to change your life :)

However, I did not realize until recently how serious food blogging is. There were two reasons. One, I found that a lot of the food bloggers are women who live in the US and either hold a job, or do not have one as yet. So, all that they can possibly do is spend time by cooking for their families. For those holding a job, its probably relieving to come home and cook. So, it ends up with all these women learning to use the Internet, learn of its advantages, take pictures, using Photoshop and what not! See, how much one learns from something one already knows. Two, this is a movement. Really. I read recently in one of my food blog-hopping sessions about how Yahoo! India plagiarised content from these food blogs for their different language portals. The blog I read spoke of a revolution. A seemingly silent one. All these food bloggers and their friends wrote about Yahoo!'s disgraceful act and condemned it. It seemed like a movement in the online world. Ordinary women who probably knew nothing of fighting big corporations, some of them being the so-called 'docile' home-makers that all of us so love to ignore, actually wrote to Yahoo! asking for an apology which they did not receive initially. They fought a little more, wrote more, spread the word, did all they could, all so silently, and Yahoo India actually apologized. I was amazed. In fact, as I read the stories surrounding this protest, I was so pumped up. I was so proud of all these women across the world, who know each other only by their blog names, their recipes, and a shared bonding over food. I was talking about this to AB, and telling him how we could probably change the world we live in , this way. Its certainly not easy, but well, it certainly gets people thinking, and that is all we need, sometimes! So, go, bloggers! Also, go women! If anyone can change the world, we can :)

However, I do not understand one thing. How, how in the world can you wait to take that picture before you dig into what you cooked so well? How, tell me how?