Cooking

Cooking is a great timepass. And ppl who cook know that its a great stress buster. Food and Sex are the two things that keep a man going in life. Another point to be noted is no matter how much and how good u eat the last day u feel hungry the next day. Eating food the next day is as pleasurable as ever again. We should be really thankful to god for giving us this Hunger.
We can talk of hunger on many levels. Hunger for knowledge, hunger for fame. Its all very good. But then in limits. But thats not the point. The point is that it comes back and thats what is good.
A friend of mine was a great enthusiast for food. But he was more into quantity. :P. He used to say, if a man loses his apetite, then theres nothing left in him. But of late I have appreciated good food a lot. Having eaten in a lot of restaurants in a lot of places has given a lot of exposure too. I have also had the opportunity to try out various cuisines. And I still keep Indian cuisine in high regard. Very high in fact. And a very big BOO to all those indian (which canonically means North Indian :D ) restaurants who make it greasy. Make your food good and tasty. Dont add oil and butter to complement that. I (and many more ppl I know) would rather have un-deilicious food than greasy food.
But again the point to which I was coming was subtlety is a big big issue in cooking. Adding flavour to food. There are only a couple of basic ingredients in an Indian dish but there are many more flavours on top of that. First there are so many spices, then there's garlic, onion, ginger etc which is added in varying quantities dependin on taste.
Americans on the other hand dont know the concept.
This opinion is based on the three foods I ate in one day, which in fact infuriated me enough to write this, so blame it on the bad food:
1. An egg salad sanwich. It just had bread and egg. No salt no pepper no nothing. They are true to their word. Not a thing more.
2. A pizza on which I requested an extra topping of sundried tomato. It had layers and layers of it. I had to dig into tomatoes to find what else was there. And it was yucky.
3. A garlic flavoured potato chips. Now garlic is something which is used in small quantities. for the smell and the flavour. . I wish I could make the guy who cooked this eat a whole slice of garlic and tell him: Dude its a spice. U dont make someone have a dinner of garlic!!
So All in all I would say that subtlety is missing in the american cooks. Italians on the other hand have a better sense. But again not as good as Indians. I am not comparing food here. Just the art of flavouring things with multiple flavours in small amounts.
Which is also similar to what they have done to the english language. It had "flavour" in it. But then they removed "u" out of it. It wasnt really required there. "o" was the main thing. But "u" added a special flavour to it. (sidenote: having "u" really adds flavour to life itself :D ). (sidenote: "u" also adds "colour" to life). The americans got rid of the flavour and now its just flavor. And u know what, it doesnt smell or taste that good now.