Of slow cookers, pots and pans

It was a few years ago that I first heard the expression, “slow cooker.” Since I had started cooking when I was well into my fifties, I thought the expression referred to someone like me, somewhat like a child who does not start speaking till age three. However, of late I have been hearing of the wonders of slow cookers, how bachelors have survived for months just putting in their meats or veggies and coming back home to a perfectly prepared meal. Sort of makes me wonder what the ideal tam-brahm bride would do, if she got married to a man who already had a slow cooker. To be brides from India, searching for a match on the internet, make sure that the man does not have a slow cooker. It may put to nought the skills that Amma has honed in you.

For those not fully familiar with the terminology or technology a slow cooker is aka crock pot. You put the raw food in, set it on low, go away, take a drive to Belleville or Niagara, depending on your preference, and, when you come back your food is done

Anyway, for a few months I have been eyeing different types of slow cookers. My daughter had one, and, on the few days she actually felt like cooking, would put some channa and masala and come up with a very tasty channa-masala. I had not ventured to acquire one of these slow cookers, though the thought had crossed my mind. So, this morning when my daughter’s friend called from Canadian Tire and said that slow cookers were on sale, 40% off, I said ‘Go for it…”

While I waited for the booty to be delivered I searched the internet, and, thanks to Google located a site giving slow cooker recipes for vegetarians. From there I selected a cauliflower-potato-lentil soup which is now being slow cooked as I write. This will be dinner for Lakshmi and I, tonight. Later in the night I plan to soak some chick peas, and, copy Geethu’s recipe for tomorrow’s meals.

These days when I go to the supermarket I go to the pots and pans section looking for cookware and other kitchen aids. The other day, as I bought an onion chopper, I remembered the first ‘mixie’ that my mother got, a Kenwood grinder. There is a bit of a family story behind that grinder.

My elder brother was very good at playing the football pools in England where I grew up as a child. Somewhere in 1953 or so he won Fifty Pounds (a princely sum of money in those days) and went and bought a Kenwood grinder for my mother. That evening when my father came home and my mother showed off the grinder to him, my father asked the pertinent question, “Where did he get the money from ?” When my mother told him that her darling son had won the money playing the football pools, my father was livid that his son was ‘living off the earnings of gambling’ and that my mother was encouraging it. Needless to add my mother had her way, and, notwithstanding the somewhat tainted funding of the Kenwood grinder it stayed to serve up many a delicious meal, full of ground coconut and masalas.

For many years my mother had a particular stainless steel vessel in which she cooked rice. Even after pressure cookers became common she would cook the rice in that particular vessel. For her there was an emotional attachment to it, something like the ‘akshaypatram’ (the vessel that cooked unlimited food) that the Pandavas used during their exile. She used to tell us that as long as the akshayapatram was there, there was no shortage of food in the house. When my father passed away and my mother closed down her kitchen the stainless steel vessel she cooked rice in, passed to my eldest sister-in-law.

When it came to food, my mother had several rules. The most important of them was that there should always be food in the house to serve an unannounced visitor. She taught her daughers-in-law never to cook to exact proportions. Her theory was that the Goddess Lakshmi (the Goddess of Wealth) often made her rounds unannounced and if there was no food for Her, the family would suffer. Needless to add, there is always enough and more food in the house, and, often during my college days, friends would come home with me, and, be surprised that there always was food available for a couple of ‘growing boys.’

These days, when I find that I have to retire a cooking vessel, I feel that I need to acknowledge the contribution it has made to our kitchen, in serving up food. So, I was very happy when my nephew and his wife wrote to tell me recently that the Sumeet grinder I had gifted them for their wedding seven years ago, had just retired (a dignified way of saying it had gone kaput…sounds more respectful).

Such and other are the thoughts that come to my mind as I wait for my new toy, the slow cooker to cook the cauliflower-potato-lentil concotion that I have placed in it.