Some of the best chefs in the world belong to the 'unfair' sex! Yet in many households male members are forbidden from entering the kitchen. After all no one wants a 'bull in a china shop'!
But here in UAE,may be due to the skewed demography, most of the kitchens are ruled by men!
That is how I acquired the kitchen kingdom for the last 3 years. Recently my wife went back after a short visit to Sharjah. She did not fail to notice the cluttered refrigerator and commented, 'why don't you de-frost it'?
Well, the very next day after she left, I promptly switched on the defrost button of the fridge, before leaving for office.
When I returned and reached for a cold drink,I could get some unsual smell from inside the fridge. On close examination, I found a dark liquid dripping from all over the trays, on the shelves, and inside door panel.
My detective brain started investigating it further. When I opened the freezer compartment, I found the entire frozen ice to have vanished but there lie an almost empty can of cola with its gaping lid. Now I could arrive at the scientific reason behind the whole episode.
I had left a can of coke bought from supermarket a month ago, inside the freezer compartment; may be to cool it faster. I had completely forgotten it. The ice got accumulated like a mound and totally covered it up. This was the reason for the comment from my wife before leaving Sharjah.
When I defrosted my fridge, the ice started melting. But when the outer ice melted away, the frozen can suddenly burst and the frozen cola erupted like like a volcano inside the fridge!
Science says, when water freezes, its volume increases by around 10%! The frozen ice around the can, earlier prevented the can from bursting, but eventually it happened when the surrounding ice melted away!
Kitchen science comes naturally to women where men fail miserably. My mother used to make a 'Rasam' (south indian soup variation!)using a vessel made of 'Lead'. She would caution everyone in home, not to keep the vessel directly in oven without some quantity of water in it. Unmindful of this, I tried to make some sweet dish, when my mom was away. The vessel started to melt immediately that I could not retrieve it from the oven. As a result, I had to hide myself under the cot, when my mother returned from her shopping!
Many scientific findings we learnt in classrooms are found to be used in day to day life, such as the litmus paper turning blue or red. This principle is widely used by womenfolk to welcome newly weds to their home, by mixing "haldi"(turmeric powder) with quick lime to make a red liquid, that is considered 'auspicious'!
Even today, you would find in villages, women folks dropping a golden ring, in a vessel of rice and water, to quickly separate stones from the grains whereby using the principle of increasing the difference of specific gravities between the solid and the liquid medium.
Now I understand why some universities have courses for "Home Science".
Well, even if you are not holding a degree in Home science, to enter the kitchen, you need some "Home sense"!
P.S:- I forgot to add the one more thing that happened:- the dosa flour kept in fridge fermented and bulged like a ball as shown in picture. I made a controlled explosion to open the same but still the dosa flour splashed all over and I had to do the clean up..
