My mom is a successful business woman and a person so proud of her cooking skills that she hardly makes anything magnificent and truly tasty until she thinks that we, me and my father, her family, truly deserve it.

And what do you know! My father and I, our whole lives, have acted, every single day, like we deserve it: for which my mother always rewards us with her best recipes.

And I am so proud to share three of them here.

A word of advice. (Actually it’s a bit of a ramble, but here goes…)

• If you are listening to the audio-version of this story, do not even try to listen to my mother’s recipes backwards. Trust me, it’ll sound like Satan singing you a lullaby.
• Also my mother is dangerously diabetic. So if you are a diabetic, I’d advise you to not follow her recipes because I’ve yet to meet a diabetic who has had a positive influence on a person of their kind.

 

1

TOLDJA SOUR CHUTNEY

Ingredients:

• Toldja leaves – a handful.
• Bile from a resentful person.
• Someone with a wounded ego.

(For a killer variant, add a few crushed yellow oleander seeds.)

Preparation:

The key to make a mean TOLDJA SOUR depends on two factors:

• The leaves: they must be as sour, spinous and acrid as one’s vindictive personality. Luckily, my mother’s passive aggressive soul has been nurturing its very own luscious Toldja leaves from the time I hit puberty. Completely organic.
• Knowing when to serve; timing is crucial. Until the time is right, let the handful of Toldja leaves marinate in bile spewed fresh from your resentful person. And when the person with a wounded ego is beaten down and vulnerable, simply transfer the marinated leaves in a blender, grind it to a coarse paste and serve it cold on their plate.

Testimonials:

Here is something my father had to say when we once went completely broke from credit-card debt: “I could easily swear my wife’s chutney is the best in the world because she always rooted for her TOLDJA SOUR to shine more – a wee bit more than the people who were really asking for it.”

 

2

HOT CURSE BUNS

Ingredients:

• Righteous Indignation – 3 ½ cups.
• Moral Uprightness – 1 cup.
• Bilious Resentment (for leavening) – 1 envelope, dry, radioactive.
• Just Cause – 2 cups.
• Passive Aggressive extract – 3 tbsp.
• Sugar (for coating) – 3 cups.
• One Unfortunate Soul.
• Box made out of the bark of Polite Concern.

Preparation:

I have to caution you that although the steps to making my mother’s delicacy is almost entirely similar to the recipe for the traditional CROSS BUNS, the ingredients, the intent, and the cost one pays to receive a box of CURSE BUNS from my mother’s own hands make all the difference.

My mother thinks that if filial piety, gender-stereotyping, philistinism, chastity and general moral uprightness were ever to triumph in a situation, it is a victory for people like her: the meek.

So you can do the mathematics (or the crazy American abbreviated version of it) when I say my mother fights injustice inflicted on her person and her convictions everyday by giving away for free the most exquisite CURSE BUNS (made from the dough of Righteous Indignation, Moral Uprightness and Just Cause, leavened by the volatile and radioactive Bilious Resentment) to anyone and everyone who gets in her way, hindering her progress in delivering Divine Justice.

The most fascinating thing about my mother’s CURSE BUNS is that the unfortunate soul who receives it is seldom offended or even feels threatened. This is because my mother delivers them in these special boxes made from the bark of Polite Concern. For instance, when I was seventeen, my mother and my grandmother had a fall-out when the latter said, ‘No one in this family has taken care of me like my son (my mother’s elder brother, my maternal uncle) has.’

And my mother’s response was the smallest and most potent box of CURSE BUNS I had ever seen her conjure: “I know he takes care good care of you, Mom. Still… I am here if you need anything.”

That was a curse, actually. Sugarcoating the Buns by seconding my grandmother’s claim, but then giving it a twist by declaring with polite concern (dipped in the nectar of filial duty) to be right around the corner when my grandmother needs help. So, not feeling threatened or offended, my grandmother, that unfortunate soul, out of basic human decency, accepted the CURSE BUNS.

A year later, my grandmother had a stroke. My grandfather had been broke since he was fifteen. So my grandparents had to come live with my mother for almost a year because my maternal uncle refused to care for his hemiplegic mother.

And the whole time, she was in our house, at my mother’s mercy, my grandmother had her daily dose of my mother’s TOLDJA SOUR with morning coffee, breakfast, lunch, evening snack and dinner.

My mother served them with her own hands.

True story!

Testimonials:

My maternal grandmother was long dead by the time I finished drafting this recipe for publication. But I am sure she would have had great things to say about it.

 

3

FLOGGED MISCHIEF SAUCE

Ingredients:

• Fruit of Mischief – 1 medium-sized.
• Father – 1, preferably ill-tempered.
• Child – 1, preferably dull-witted.
• Rattan – 6 of the best.
• Just Cause – 250 grams.
• False promises – a bowl.
• Delusion – a splash.

Preparation:

Before I elaborate on the making of the sauce, I’d like you to understand the significance of the Fruit of Mischief as an cornerstone ingredient of this recipe.

My mother, like any mother, hates the Fruit of Mischief. She thinks it is dangerous and poisonous to the mind and soul; and like any other prepubescent child, I loved it. Used to devour at least five or six of those succulent rascals everyday.

Problem was I was clumsy.

Very clumsy.

So clumsy that, to her perpetual disappointment, my mother always found out.

As the words from the Gospel of the Sauce-maker goes:

“…finding seeds of half-eaten Mischief sprawled all over the Child’s soul, sullying its spiritual integrity, destroying its moral fabric, making it unfit for eternal salvation and foreign immigration.”

Whenever my mother found out I had consumed the Fruit of Mischief, she’d deem my soul corrupted and poisoned and indulged in the recipe that in her opinion was the perfect antidote for the ailment.

That being said, there are three steps involved in the making of this sauce:

• Preparing the Child
• Preparing the Father
• Flogging proper.

Preparing the Child:

• Make sure the child is completely oblivious of your plan. Random acts of kindness or compassion like ice-cream or chocolate before a meal as a surprise helps. Some extra TV time makes things perfect.
• However, on account of previous traumatic experiences, if the child happens to find out your true intentions, serve a bowl of False Promises. Children always take the bloody bowl. It’s like they never learn and can easily be manipulated. Losers.

Preparing the Father:

• The right time to start prepping the Father is when he comes back from work, for he’d be too tired to make sense of what is being fed to him.
• Seizing the opportunity, add 4tsp of Just Cause and a splash of Delusion to the beverage he consumes.
• And while he is consuming it, plant the thought in his mind with the following words from the Gospel of the Sauce-maker.

“The fruit of Mischief has corrupted the child’s soul and the only way to get rid of its perverse hold is to flog the child and exorcise it.”

Flogging proper:

• With the thought planted in the Father’s head, choose six of the best rattan canes, place it in front of him.
• Six of the best would suffice; but you may add a dozen more if the flogger is psychotic.
• And while the canes are being sorted, recite the following words from the Gospel of the Sauce-maker, for it completes the Rattan Sorting Ceremony.

“And the Father shall bear the rattan, for he is cursed to bear the mark of Cane, and so feels obliged to exorcise the demon possessing the child that hath consumed the fruit of Mischief.”

• In a small empty room the size of a frying pan, place Father with rattan on one end. Summon the oblivious Child into the room and place it in front of the Flogger.
• Look the other way or step out of the room so as to avoid spluttering of the sauce from the child.

Testimonials:

People of my generation who were flogged as children – if we don’t hate our mothers as much as we love to hate our fathers for the flogging, I am sure our mothers have done an excellent job raising us.