Meet the "Step-Mum"
- The Ladle of Love
- Jul 27, 2020
- 3 min read
My papa’s other half is one of those people with a megawatt smile… you can almost hear a cartoon style “ding” whenever she beams it at you! She is a really smiley, giggly person so it is actually good that the “ding” doesn’t happen because it honestly would hardly stop! I think the only person who might disagree with that is one of my adorable (step)brothers who is blessed with an equally wonderful, contagious smile. Every now and then, they have (little) disagreements with each other and her smile vanishes temporarily… even though she can be upset, these disagreements tend to be quite cute for us to see or hear about. I pretty much always take his side (siblings stick together) and Papa stays neutral but gently talks with her until a truce is reached and their rooms light up again because all smiles are restored.
Like my Welsh step-dad, she has been part of my life for a very long time now and brings even more diversity to my family unit by representing both South India (Kerala specifically) and Malaysia. I love this , initially, mainly because it should have meant better access to even more flavours of the world. In terms of “value-for-my-greediness”, she should win at opening up the culinary world as Malaysian food is so diverse because of the Malay, Indian and Chinese populations there; add onto that the tastes of South India too and we have such a broad flavour profile happening that we could travel a nice chunk of the world without ever leaving the kitchen.
Unfortunately, where this all fully unravels is via my Papa, whose food tastes are so firmly North Indian (and some traditional British food too) that these other exotic flavours she brings have ended up either as rare treats or, far worse, dishes she tells me all about but that I never get to taste! Over the years, she has tried to persuade Papa (who doesn’t like his food to be chilli-hot at all) that using more than one chilli when cooking a dish isn’t going to result in us all becoming accidental fire-breathers. . . she also tried (and failed) to get tofu on the menu at home but was met with looks of such concern and suspicion from him that she soon gave up. When Papa has tried the food, with an air of true stoicism, he declares “that was quite nice actually” even though he looks thoroughly depressed about it. Thankfully, mainly due to her patience, there are lots of delicious things that she makes which he really loves… predictably, none of them involve beancurd.
One thing that is for certain is that they are poles apart in relation to their chilli tolerance! Papa’s tolerance is about a 3 out of 10, mine is probably a 7 out of 10 but hers… she just looks at the “10” and laughs. . . she’s easily off the scale on a solid 20+. . . to the point that she often nibbles on raw chillies with her food to bring it up to the heat level (approximately volcanic) that she likes. I actually have read a few articles which say that hot chillies can actually trigger increased levels of happiness in us. . . perhaps that is why we all get to see that megawatt smile from her so often!
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