Cauliflower King of all vegetables

Winter season is almost incomplete without the regular servings of cauliflower in our meal as a main curry. When I was a child growing up in Bal Mandir, this was my number one favourite curry of all time. It was the time I used to like only five curries, but now I cant even remember, what were the other four.

Today, my list has been replaced by other curry as number one but it still has not been much down from the list of top five curries of all time.

They used to grow cauliflowers in our kitchen garden, which we used to call the statue yard. This particular yard offered plenty of space for us to play and ground was not tiled or paved. It had a lush green ground and was fun to spend time playing there. Not surprisingly, many of us used fall instinctively under the rows of full bloomed cauliflowers and get it some to eat it raw, just like that, without even running it under water.

Oh ! my God what a sight it used to be, when it full bloomed [ cauliflower ] and it kind of used to tease us come on ! take a bite of me, as if it was challenging us in a way to question mark, are you a child by heart ? I mean for real ? Oh, yes we did took that challenge and enjoyed the fresh cauliflower straight from the garden. It used to be so beautif and healthy that a piece of cauliflower, perhaps used to weight around 5 kg or may be more. Not a single piece used to be less than a kg. So not surprisingly, it used to be enough for more than two months for about 200 plus people, during the whole winter season.

Manju Didi, used to do all the needed work to seed and take care of all the vegetables garden. She was such a hard working lady, and her house can be seen just outside the Bal Mandir, gate where she lives with four of her children and her husband. She also was the full time staff at the school inside the Bal Mandir premises, where, I studied til seventh grade.

May be I was just too young to know this but as far as I can remember, most of the vegetables used to be grown internally, for us and very few were brought in from outside, like meat or dried beans.

Once, she is done in the kitchen garden it was our turn to water it and take care of rest of the things. Each of us was needed to bring four buckets of water before the evening meal and then we had to do this about thrice a week and rest of the day it was the boys turn to water it. The housemother Kedar Shrestha, used to keep vigil eyes on us for while we carry water. One or two person used to be there to with a mini watering pan to shower young vegetables. Besides we were also needed to pluck the unwanted weeds from the kitchen gardens, which of course happened, after school hours. It was not much of a hard work or toughest job for us. It just gave us some much needed free time from our daily boring schedule just study, study and study, as I myself as a child was not much of studious student.

The taste of the cauliflower used to be so good, we never said enough of this curry, and just like me it was the number one curry of so many others.

Occasionally, there used to be plenty of it, that they used to cut it, and leave it under sun to dry it so that we could eat it during summer, just like radish. But I prefer to have it fresh, I do not eat it even during off season. I just wait til the winter season to enjoy the fresh and healthy cauliflower and its freshness and season based is what keeps it, linger in my tip of the tongue and remain one of my favorite curry of all time.