Offering verbal appreciation on her cooking; for what? Why? When?

“Cooking needs to be like ..... a reversible reaction. When done with love; should get verbally appreciated in return to maintain the state of equilibrium in relationships”. This is how I personally feel.

A woman starts her journey of cooking as child’s play and ends as adult’s joy. It’s pathetic that most of us, the women, fail and fall apart in the middle of this journey. As a person who analyse various family relationships under many social statuses, I do feel this condition is resulted with a certain kind of desperation within ourselves which is hard to explain. May be because we lack something.

Lacking what? Lets find out...

Basically relationships rely on the level of commitment that each one shows. The level of commitment depends on the performance of duties and responsibilities. Though we identify duties and responsibilities as tasks assigned to us by the society, actually they are tasks which we should assign to ourselves. Further we need to fulfill them compulsorily and continuously.

Cooking is also such a task which we ourselves should identify as our own duty. In both living and non-living world, everything functions expecting an outcome. If so, will not cooking deserve something in return?

You may simply think, food in return fulfills our hunger. Yes exactly food in return satisfy our huger. But what about cooking? Here someone is committing herself to perform the same task over and over again throughout her life? So isn’t there a fair reason for her to get fed-up and give up????

So the break point is that your partner should get something in return for the monotonous task of COOKING. It could be simply the verbal appreciation. But the tragedy is that most of our men in the society fail to do so. Showing appreciation to each other is one of the secrets of healthy relationships. Appreciation in cooking is not all about seeking for the heavenly taste. It’s the recognition and enjoyment of the efforts put by your partner to make the relevant dish.

For an instance when your partner serves you a new dish, simply imagine the efforts from the point she decides the dish up to the point she serves it for your dining. Just shoot out some words of appreciation so that your partner will start feeling her efforts have amounted something. If not she might feel all her time was spent for nothing.

Appreciation always results in positive emotions which help us envision more possibilities. Our family members can be fed with healthy food when cooked at homes. Happy cooking can lead to psychological benefits such as feeling of relaxation, self-esteem, self-confidence, feeling valued etc. Under social health aspect, happy cooking can strengthen our family relationships.

Happy cooking for happy relationships; Here are some simple things that you can do to appreciate your partner’s cooking:-

1. Use your words of love language to admire her efforts.

2. Share how happy you are to be blessed with a partner having cooking skills

3. Give your positive compliments before she asks for feedback by herself

4. Just encourage her cooking skills very often.

5. Try to gift her tiny kitchen utensils

With this sweet massage, here is the recipe for Watalappam_ Sri Lankan dessert dish....

Watalappam dish by creative kitchen girl@yummy.pots

Things required:

· 350g of Jaggery

· 150g of Caster Sugar ( this can be altered based on your sweet taste requirement)

· 1 cup of Full cream coconut Milk (Taken from one whole scraped coconut)

· 10 Egg

· ½ cup of Water

· 1 ½ teaspoon of Vanilla

· 5-8 Cardamom

· Pinch of Salt for your taste

· Cashew nuts & Raisins for decoration

Here we go…

1. Heat and liquify the lump of jaggery by adding half cup of water. Allow it to cool completely.

2. Add the eggs, cardamom & vanilla in to a separate bowl and beat well. Then add coconut milk and continue beating.

3. Add liquified Jaggery in to the beaten egg mixture and mix well.

4. Sieve the above mixture in to the bowl containing sugar and mix well. Add salt and give a final mix.

5. Add the mixture in to a butter greased bowl, cover it tightly using an aluminum foil and steam under medium to high flame for about 30 minutes.

6. Hey! Watalappam is ready to be served. Now you can sprinkle cashew nuts & raisins to make your dish stunning.

By creative kitchen girl@ yummy.pots