Being a "Housewife" and Baking Shit

Even though my mother and mother-in law are both successful homemakers and I have immense respect for homemakers who are unsung superwomen, I still find the tag of a 'housewife' as my identity pretty insulting. Blame it to the spirit of feminism that arises from time to time to attack my poor husband or the fact that I had worked for five years at a stretch before marriage and had led a very independent life, I never thought that I could be labelled as a housewife. Alas! God had some different plans.

Early this year, moving to the U.S. on a dependent spouse visa made me the quintessential housewife. I bawled, shouted, and argued with my dear husband whom I held responsible for my plight. As if my feminist rants were not enough to torture him, I decided to exhibit my limited culinary skills to feed him, making good use of all the free time I had.

The Birthday Cake

August came and I started planning for my husband's birthday. When we were in a long distance relationship, I thought over meaningful gifts for him. It was different this time as I wanted to dish out a decent menu, including a cake. I called my mom-in-law to know the recipe. Knowing my cooking skills, she warned me about the pros and cons of baking a cake. The batter turned out well and I finished some of it while licking my fingers. I was pretty confident that the cake would turn out to be a success. While appreciating myself for the good batter, I messed with the oven temperature and duration of baking. The result was this:

To cut this cake, it needed to be hammered out (literally!). Needless to say, we had to rush to the supermarket to buy a cake as a last minute plan. And if you are wondering about the disastrous cake, it stayed in the oven for a week and my husband nibbled it when he could not find anything else to eat.

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