What's cooking?

Have you ever wondered how someone can look forward to doing something that they do day in and day out, more than at least once a day and have been doing for as long as they can remember? This quote from Voltaire says just enough to make sense - Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. What God had to do with it or not is a discussion I am not prepared for.. but you get the idea! 


I was never a connoisseur of food myself.. at least not until recent times :) But I recall having enjoyed cooking from when I was in high school.. I guess success is a great motivator. Had my very first dish been a disaster I may not have attempted another one until it was out of necessity to feed an empty belly. Fortunately for me, it turned out to be a good one the very first time and then there was no reason to stop and not show off my newly acquired culinary skills. Long story short, I have improvised quite a bit over the years and can definitely be counted upon to whip up a decent (actually delicious) meal and it wouldn't take a hungry person to say that! 


Though I have been successful in making many a great meal, there has not been an awful lot of 'my own' in the methods.. the closet I have got to innovation with food is doing a mix-and-match of mom's biriyani with paaty's biriyani and athai's biriyani and then making one that tastes better than them all (:P) or the like with multiple other recipes. So I've always wanted a reference to start with.. something that I could build upon. And thereby the need for a cookbook (in the days of lore) or the laptop on my kitchen table that is the start to every session at the stove! After multiple attempts at trying to compile and put together a list of tried and tested recipes for a quick reference, I decided to make a food blog and try my hand at some creative writing too. So that's how My Cookalicous came to be and here's welcoming you into my kitchen for recipes that go back a long way :)