Saturday, 11 October 2014

What a cheesy disappointment

“A KG of parmesan costs fifteen hundred Indian rupees, ma’am” he says. Of course, he is warm; he attends to me like he does with every other customer. The professional niceties are so cold yet so warm. I look him in the face, and I try appearing as sharp as the cheese.
“Well I never! The last time I checked, it cost twelve hundred bucks.” I tell him.
He tries arguing with me and I leave him narrating the familiar porky pie of the price rise to himself. I hear that from the vegetable vender, the fruit vender, the food joint staff, and I need an increase in my own pay as well. Why am I blaming him?
I promptly decide to make cheese at home; the basic Asian cottage cheese if not the Italian Parmesan.
I buy milk on my way home, just a couple of liters to begin with. Yes, this should do. I quicken my pace, god how do I contain my excitement?

*

Okay, let’s begin. I leave it next to the oven overnight for it to ferment.
“Hoping and praying for you, my little baby” I whisper over the opening of the dish. Yes. A baby it is. I’ll give it all the care it asks for.
I run into my room, back to my regular perusing of the interwebs, hastily looking up web address after web address, dissecting recipe after recipe. It’s too cold outside and the interiors of my little apartment are also beginning to chill.
I cannot… su-su-ppress… ya… ya…. Yawwwwwwwwwwwwn… gosh the huge yawn!
I am exhausted. What a long Sunday of chores! I put on my cozy bed hour jumper, dim the lights, and lay in my comforter with my singing earplugs on “I lost my train of thought, when you called me ‘my sweet cheesecake’”.

*

Do I really have to get out of bed? Mondays are always jinxed. Happiness lies in retrospect. Hmm. I shut my eyes again. I hear a streak of music so close. Darn it I fell asleep leaving my IPod playing “I lost my train of thought, when you called me ‘my sweet cheesecake’”!
I kick out of bed, the cold moves me but the cheese matters more! I run into the kitchen.
I scream. Not a dainty one. The cold has the audacity to freeze a human like me, and the milk sits there with ever resolving strength in its liquid state! Then it hit me, I completely forgot to add the vinegar. And I had to put it in the oven, not by the oven.
I feel the morning hunger envelope my tummy. I pick the bowl containing the milk and bottle it.
I slowly lift the mouth of the bottle to my lips and whisper “cheese”.
Too much milk for breakfast!