What's for Breakfast today?

When my mother asked the airhostess for a portion of Upma on the flight, I was surprised to hear the excitement in my husband’s voice about the dish. He even went on to request a bite from her and I noticed how happily he consumed a spoonful of it. He insisted it was yummy and that I will love it. I refused to spoil the taste of caramel popcorn in my mouth but finally took a bite on my mother’s insistence but immediately regretted it. After all, how tasty can Upma be on an Indigo flight? Definitely not more than the caramel popcorn.

As the Upma melted in my mouth and I popped in a few more popcorns to clean my palate, it transported me back to another time. I went back by about seven years, to a time when we were just the two of us. A newly married couple, both working, with no kids. We had a part time cleaner and a cook who made dinner for us in the evenings. So naturally, the task of making breakfast for us was on me. If hubby would have had his way, he would not have entered the kitchen at all in the morning.

I knew, that before I became his wife, he used to wake up at 7:45 AM, snooze till 7:50 AM, get ready in twenty minutes flat and be out of the door by 8:10 AM to make it in time for breakfast in his office cafeteria. He never even bothered to open the curtains or windows to let in some fresh air. His wet towel and dirty clothes were usually left on the bed and the floor respectively which dutifully waited for him to return in the evening. Oh! and the bed, never needed any making anyway. I learnt that bachelors are mostly notorious when it comes to changing bed sheets.

Unfortunately, my office was not so generous when it came to offering breakfast and I had grown up drinking milk and having breakfast at home before leaving. I needed some fresh morning air, a glass of milk and the newspaper to fully wake up and get started for the day. I felt the need to leave the home in a decent condition, to make the bed etc. so that I could return home to a neat and clean house. These were of course of no importance to hubby dearest. Those were the early days of marriage and I was slowly getting to know the man I had married and how different we really were. I was also painfully realizing the true value of my Mom (the hard way).

Every morning, I made breakfast for us, mostly consisting of fruits, some form of sandwich/ Maggi/ Pasta in white sauce and occasionally Upma. I had never really learnt cooking anything from my expert mom and usually made things based on the instructions off the back of food packets or online recipe pages. Now, Upma…the innocent little dish made of Suji is simple to make, but can be tricky in the hands of an amateur.

Every time I made it I missed something or the other, once I forgot to put salt, another time, I made it too dry and once too tastelessly gooey. The Upma on the flight reminded me of the several fiascos we had with it in the early days and how hubby would usually gulp it down with generous helpings of tomato ketchup and I could never take more than a bite or two. It finally ended up badly for Upma since it got permanently deleted from our breakfast menu and I developed a hatred for it, which is likely to stay for the rest of my life.

Thankfully for me, hubby was kind enough never to complain and gulped down whatever I made, even if it meant adding in some sauce, bhujia or crackers with it. Thankfully for him my culinary skills  improved over the years and the consumption of tomato sauce with breakfast gradually reduced.