To cook or not to cook.. that's the question

A  long forgotten space... hoping to keep this a regular space henceforth. Fingers crossed..

I have had the luxury of employing a cook for the last year and a half. My frequent travel schedules and the fact that my better half would probably be eating unhealthy food and indulge in some easy to fill my tummy methods ultimately helped in making the decision to have a cook.

Little did I realise that when we employ a cook there is more work than you bargained for. Decision making for one, what to cook????? The most challenging question of them all. One may ask that the decision has to be made anyway but when I cook I tend to take the easiest way out and make sure I cook stuff that I cook 'marginally well' ( which are so few by the way) and so the choices are reduced by half. But we want to make full use of the person employed  and therefore use our grey matter a wee bit more (that tires me out). 

Next, are we happy with the quantity of oil, dal, sugar etc that is used by our cook? The answer is a big NO. Considering the increasing prices an increased use implies increased expenditure and who wants that now!!

Cleaning after the cook is not easy. I never realised that oil and tempered mustard seeds get into such tiny places and over a period of time over 100gms of spluttered can be found behind the stove. That is a lot of scrubbing. I am so paranoid about this after my trips because it means that I wouldn't have scrubbed my kitchen in over 10-12 days, I tend to do it as soon as I enter my house unmindful of my waiting husband or child. 

This is just the beginning of the many questions that keep coming to my mind. And all this seems to have been resolved today, when I made the rare appearance in my kitchen because my cook had to attend a family wedding. Despite my lack of practice off late I turned out palatable food that we all enjoyed on a Sunday afternoon. This begs the question, should I turn a blind side to my husbands eating habits when I travel? I think I just might do that and give a few healthy options like requesting my mother in law to help him with lunch and my parents for dinner.

So get ready family to have a fixed menu week after week but made with a lot of love and much less oil!!