My first independent try..

I would like to share my experience on my first dish I made. I was not new to stove cooking as I used to help mom now and then in kitchen; but I was new to making an independent dish on my own. This was sometime when I was 15. I decided to make poha upma (puffed rice upma). It is a simple dish, but the tantrums I threw at home was way too much! - boasting around to almost everyone around ; infact I called up a few of my relatives and friends and told them the news.

I started off around 4pm (dish was planned for dinner!!) I cut required onions, soaked the puffed rice in butter milk and waited for sometime. I heated oil in a pan, spluttered mustard, added turmeric, chopped green chillies and onions, sauteed for sometime. Added the soaked puffed rice and garnished with chopped cilantro. The dish came out beautifully in perfect texture. I couldn't wait to taste it.

I wanted my sister to try first and gave her some. My God! Till today, I vividly remember the expression she gave me! She couldn't speak! But I sensed something was wrong. I thought I made it very spicy and kept asking her if so. She rushed to spit it out and was busy rinsing her mouth! Scared to try it myself, I asked dad to take a taste. Fully aware of the danger, he agreed to taste as he loved me a lot..But he too reacted the same way as my sister!

Confused, I decided to test it myself. When I did, initially, it seemed OK, but after 2 seconds, I could get a strong smell which was very disturbing. It started percolating wildly making it difficult to speak. But I was sure I was familiar with the smell. Later all four of us (dad, mom, me and sister) tried to find out what was wrong. Within minutes, mom found out that I had used hair oil for tempering!!! It was dandruff and scalp treatment oil and was very strong in odour..

The highlight of this was my sister answering calls from my friends and relatives and gave them the full story of the disaster and not to forget the advices I got from everyone on how not to use hair oil for cooking!! (As if I did it deliberately!)