American Cuisine

                                                    American Cuisine

            When I first got to the US, I was just fascinated with the novelty of American food. The new smells in the restaurants and the numerous  herbs with unique names were so intriguing. I pestered my friends to give me recipes from their cooking  magazines and followed them to the tee. Had no idea of substitutions, no idea that I could buy extra groceries and put it in a pantry. Got what I needed at the store and that was that. Definitions of cuisine terminology were not a given with my Indian metric system upbringing- measurements in quarts and pints and ounces, and cups and tablespoons  seemed to limit my imagination or creativity but if I wavered, how would I know how the dish was supposed to look or taste? So I stuck with it.

            New names were another torment..... like casseroles......I had once made a sweet potato casserole for dinner. That was  it. Nothing else. Nobody told me you needed meat to go with it or a salad. We just stared into that dish all evening!

            I slowly dawned on me that no matter how Americans agreed or disagreed on Hispanic immigration laws, I realized they all loved Mexican food with a passion. Vegetables were optional. Pizza was not. Lettuce was zero calories but the salad dressings were not. The one, big lesson for me-weight gain was easy, weight loss was not.

            I loved being introduced to a built-in oven.  In my hometown, we did not have ovens, we lived in one. So seeing one below the stove gave me a kick. Amazing how you put everything in and dinner is done in an hour. WOW! That was  a welcome surprise considering  the  number of  hours we log in, in the kitchen, cooking our lentils and rice and curries. Since almost everything in Indian cooking is water based, almost all the dishes need to be supervised to avoid getting them burnt.

               With the new oven, came the discovery of boxed cake mixes..... With baking came humility. You wouldn't think they'd go hand in hand but the first time I made a batch of cookies, I looked in the oven when the timer beeped and saw they were perfect, so I closed the oven, turned off the stove and walked away.......so we could eat those yummy cookies when they cooled down. HUGE mistake.... Note to self, remove cookies from oven when done unless you want them burnt beyond recognition.

                An oven and a dishwasher, to me was joy on top of freedom!!! But the dishwasher story is for another day.