EXPERIMENTATION AT ITS PEAK

This is my 50th blog post, I can't believe I have come this far in just seven months. When I first started off, I thought it will be a journal so I will probably write a few and forget about it. But my passion for cooking as well as writing shone through. In this blog post, instead of sharing a recipe, I wanted to share my motivation for this whole project. This is going to be a long ride, so brace yourselves.

Starting from the beginning, my cooking experience started when I moved to Japan for work. I wouldn't have called myself a complete novice back then, since I tailed my mom around the kitchen throughout my childhood. The mere glimpse of my mom's tenacity in the kitchen was utterly captivating. Taking notes of her efficiency, her precision and her techniques were all the more reasons to be by her side. Although I spent most of my adolescent period memorizing her techniques and culinary skills, I barely got the scope to master them. Apparently kitchen was my mom's special place and messing it up was no less than a crime. And, it didn't take me long to realize that knowing the techniques and mastering them were on two different levels.

So back in Japan, feeding myself became especially difficult, since Japanese cuisine is more of an acquired taste for a Bangladeshi girl like me. And since I couldn't starve myself till I acquired it, my cooking journey took an abrupt start. I can't stress enough on how skeptical my friends, parents and I myself were at the beginning. But remember how I memorized my mom's techniques, interestingly that played an important role in boosting up my culinary skills in such a short period of time and almost nullifying my need to seek YouTube's help.

Fast forwarding to a year later when I moved to the US with my hubby. By that time, I had my basics mastered and I started exploring like a crazy scientist. That's when I decided to blog my culinary journey. Initially my motivation was to just document my experience with dishes I learnt from my mom as a tribute to her journey in culinary arts and her impact on me. But as I started blogging and noticed my love for cooking, I started experimenting with ingredients I never had before and accommodating those to my cuisine. You will find vegetables that aren't often used in Bangladeshi cuisine, being used in my dishes, be it ভাজি (stir fried vegetables), ভর্তা (mashed vegetables), আচার (pickles), curries, kichuri and so much more. To be honest, this is just the start. Recently, I have been trying out other cuisine and their unique flavors too. And as per to my uncharted territory (as you may have noticed), baking and sweet dishes aren't my strongest hold but I am slowly giving them a try too. I haven't gone to the point to actually blog about them but I do share them in my social media once in a while. Below I have all the experiments that I have done in the past year and couldn't blog them due to lack of time. But I hope to give my blog more time and effort in future, sharing more of my experiences. After all, I believe every other amateur cooks experience what I experience.

Not to mention, I am also working on my writing skills and exploring it, I can't believe I tried blogging in Bangla. Since I was born and brought up outside my home country, my expressiveness in my mother language is still very shaky but soon after moving to Bangladesh, I made sure to learn my language as much as I could. The credit does go to my family, friends and my hubby. My family made sure I loved my country and my language, my friends helped me with my fluency and expressiveness in my language and finally my hubby took the responsibility to expand my vocabulary in Bangla. I was hesitant to post my Bangla post but the immense views and support I received in the first blog itself, I am definitely going to explore that arena too.

Hope you all enjoy my future blogs and do subscribe to my website to get the earliest notification.