My Eggzacting Routine

As it turns out, I’m on a losing streak right now. Well, the word ‘streak’ here has nothing to do with the pace of my losing, because the pace is excruciatingly slow, but if I’m losing, I’m winning, because I am talking about weight.

My day starts at 5 a.m. My class starts an hour later and it’s no holds barred. “How much today?” demands the trainer, and I reply, not entirely oblivious to the other people around. The ‘much’ refers to the number of grammes I’ve lost since the previous day, and if I haven’t, the discussion moves on to what I’ve eaten the previous night, how much oil it was cooked in, and whether my bladder and bowel are clear. Whatever I say I’ve eaten is met with a raised eyebrow or a whoop of horror depending on the mood, and my requests/assertions that I will weigh in only once a week go unheard.

By this time, the others around get into the act, probing, analyzing, sympathetic, eyebrows raised or whooping in horror, as their predispositions might dictate. Gyms, by their very nature, have always been places to discuss figures, bodies, ailments, hormones, pimples, thyroids, hemorrhoids and other things biological, but the daily inquisition is a novel experience. All my exercising life, I’ve been told not to weigh myself everyday, here it’s the contrary. It also has to do, I suspect, with the trainers having to divest their wards of a certain number of kilos for their incentives to kick in, but maybe I’m simply being uncharitable and over-imaginative. My trainer’s face now hovers over every meal and morsel I have and I admit it has made me more vigilant than ever, and for that, I give thanks. Apparently, everyone in the gym has lost tonnes, even at their age, so why can’t I do it? Even as I, and you, ponder such questions, I present you with a recipe which I resorted to in the fond hope that it would be tasty and not too sinful.

As it happened, I ate three of them after breakfast (when I start cooking) and two of them for dinner, helas!!! My plan was to make patties and store them in the fridge to toast on the griddle as and when I wanted to eat them, but my assistant at home said, “Finish it off, ’ma, the batter won’t be any good if you put it in the fridge.” I didn’t argue, as they refused to form patties in my palm but did so in hers, and I didn’t want her to leave before I could deal with them!

Eggs, boiled, cooled and shelled - 4
Chickpea flour/gram flour/besan - 3 tbsp
Onion - 1, chopped
Coriander - a handful, chopped
Green chillies - 3, chopped
Garam masala - ½ tsp
Salt - to taste
Oil - v little

Crumble the eggs and mix everything else with them till you get a fairly dense dough - it shouldn’t lose shape when you fashion patties of them. (My assistant says the best way to do it is on a plastic sheet, a la vada batter.)

Put them on an oiled griddle/tawa and cook on either side till brown. Dribble a drop or two of oil off a spoon around the patty if necessary. This could take a while, and still taste of raw chickpea flour after you think they’re finished, so experiment with one first, taste it and then proceed.

I am sending this in to Sangeeth's Eat Healthy - Protein Rich.

I'll sign off by saying that I condemn the rampant and brazen plagiarism we're hearing of and seeing in the blogosphere, be it a large organisation that thinks it can get away with anything, a smaller one that thinks it can intimidate bloggers into silence and helplessness or just another blog like yours and mine that lifts pictures and posts to use, even without having an obvious commercial objective.

Egg cutlet Gym Losing weight Chickpea flour/besan/gram flour Humour