From Childhood the daughters of the family are trained for their future life - that of cooking and household management. It is interesting to observe a mother or grandmother teaching a child at play how to knead a little piece of dough or to see them encouraging her to roll it out in the form of a flat bread. For , the sooner the girl learn the better, since much of her life will be devoted to the daily tasks connected with food preparation and home management.
Without many of our Western appliances and devices the numerous household duties are very time consuming, so the Indian girl must readily learn how to manage efficiently before her marriage.
As the girl matures, her lessons increase, particularly with regard to food preparation. Each type of dish is taught over and over, until her knowledge and technique are perfect, so that as a cook, the Indian homemaker, quite naturally, is second to none and views restaurant food with great disdain. It can be easily understood how the best food in India is that found in the Indian home.
In preparing the family's food, the Indian woman finds a fulfillment for which she has been groomed from her earliest childhood, not to mention the admiration of others. For, in her cooking she brings into play all of her creative instincts which result in a work of art on the table - using her pot as the canvas and her spices and foodstuffs as the medium. Thus we see that the Indian homemaker is truly the goddess of the hearth.
Referred from the book
A Taste of India
- Mary S. Atwood
Posts
0 Comments