Thursday, July 15, 2010

An ode to Maggi

Blog Marathon Post 15

She looked into the pan as her mamma crushed the maggi and put it into boiling water. Masala was added next and the mixture was stirred into perfection. She waited for that two minutes to get over, with her mouth watering over the thought of her tasty snack.

"Mummy bhokh lagi, bas do minute! School se aate dhoom machaate
Ek hi baat pe manaate, Maggi Maggi Maggi!" - A jingle that we all have grown up hearing.

Maggi had always been my favourite junk food. During my childhood days, it was eaten once in a while, as a snack or when I was hungry at the odd times. I have a story of messing up maggi when I tried to cook it for the very first time :) Can someone go mess up maggi too? Yes, I did :) I read the package instructions so thoroughly that I timed my maggi and it ended up uncooked. Mom had to cook it again to make it edible. :|

Some years later, Maggi became my staple food. I was doing my internship in Mumbai, and I used to eat Maggi everyday, read "everyday" for dinner. I tried to experiment with Maggi a lot those days. I tried adding different veggies, scrambled eggs, etc. to make more tasty/healthy :) I never got tired of it and it was always the safest option. You can't mess up Maggi really. Can you? Oh ok, everyone is allowed one mistake in life, right?

During my MBA days, I discovered a whole new facet of Maggi. The whole economy of my B school survived on Maggi. We had plain maggi, veg maggi, egg maggi, onion maggi, fried maggi, chesse maggi, tomato maggi and any other variety of maggi which you can think of. We had all the eateries in our campus competing with each other to provide as many varieties of maggi as possible. Had maggi not been discovered, I think many of our batch mates would have gone without food for days :) Fond memories of those days include going to have maggi in the nearby eatery as late as 3AM in the night(or morning, whatever you want to call it), skipping dinner all together so that we can have maggi late into the night and having maggi for lunch, dinner, midnight snack or whenever we feel like. I told you, the whole economy survived on maggi :)

After a long hiatus, I had maggi three months ago in US. It was late into the night; I was too tired to cook anything and hungry. I looked through the cupboards, and found a maggi packet up in the shelf. Viola, I cooked it in no time and my favourite 'junk' food was ready. While digging into it, I remembered my days in B school and internship days when I survived solely on Maggi. I was so happy that day, as a little child who found her lost toy back.

Maggi, no matter how many McDs/CCDs or Baristas come up, no matter how much McVeggie try his best to lure me, no matter how much more packaged/ready-to-eat foods market themselves, you will remain my favourite junk food. I promise, no one else will take your place. Three Cheers to You, may you continue spreading your charm in two minutes always :)

What is your favourite maggi story? C'mon, don't tell me you don't have a maggi story, everyone has one :D

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9 Comments:

At July 15, 2010 at 11:27 AM , Anonymous RM said...

Yup true even i feel every bachelor/bachelorette will have a maggie story. When me and my friend were staying together we always had to prepare two variety's of noodles one with all water drained and one with water. All the time we used to brag that one variety is better than other it was sort of a default fight we used to have all the time we eat it.Other time when i wanted to prepared noodles late night i realised that i misplaced the curry powder you get with it, finally i had to prepare noodles and eat them with a pickle it tasted awful but had no other option :)
Personally i prefer Top Ramen over maggie any time.

 
At July 15, 2010 at 11:29 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Three cheers for fried maggi of VS Hall Night Canteen and cheese maggi of Veggies!! Oh man....the memories are to be cherished!! Especially skipping dinner in order to savour the pleasure of Maggi....I have too many Maggi moments to choose one....but the one thing that I got to know last year was that Maggi and I shared the same year of birth!!! ;-) Happy Silver Jubilee Maggi - may we make the journey ahead together in arms ;-)

Pooj

 
At July 15, 2010 at 11:38 AM , Blogger Dewdrop said...

@RM: I always preferred the less watery one. Misplaced the maggi powder? Aww, maggi without masala? That wouldn't have been a pleasurable experience I guess :)
Oh, you prefer Top Ramen over Maggi? For me, it had always been Maggi on the top :)

@Pooj: Pooj, don't remind me of those days, Fried maggi of VS? My mouth is watering already :) Oh Pooj, doesn't that make me and Maggi also share the same year of birth? Yipeeee, you made my day Pooj :D

 
At July 15, 2010 at 11:51 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

The way you start is just real good and brought back my college maggi days. Never had so much maggi as a kid, but boy, did it not save my engineering days when I only, yes please read 'only' used to survive on Maggi. Was'nt that easy to make it too, crush the maggi into small small pieces add the masala, parallelly boil the water in the electric kettle (no gas, no kitchen in hostel room :-)), add it to the masaled maggi and now comes the most important and critical part of the process - 'Closing the lid of the plastic box, mostly some kind of a lunch box'. This step has to be real real quick, even seconds matter,
Loss of those joules = Undesired results = Longer wait.

Wow, boy you must have had a great time with such a lot to choose from, off the list I would first like to taste the Egg and Cheese maggi.

Well written aur aapka first "Maggi Mess-up" maaf kiya :)

Take Care
Keep Writing

 
At July 15, 2010 at 10:34 PM , Blogger Madhu said...

I guess you haven't tasted Top Ramen Smoodles.

I am part of "I prefer Top Ramen over Maggi' club.

 
At July 15, 2010 at 11:12 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Noodle mess up exciting, everyone would have committed it, its just dew you are accepting it.
Now Noodle preparation Update: Some days back i came to know these noodles contain wax. So while preparing them first of all one should put them in boiling water and after sometime throw water and refill it with fresh one and then cook till 2 minutes.

 
At July 16, 2010 at 12:28 AM , Blogger Kishley (Dolly Sapra) said...

lolz.. yay i have toooooo many maggi stories..
My messing up maggi story happened when i was about 10 or 12 yrs old. So, that day a cousin was staying with us and only my dadi was home. We decided to have maggi for lunch but my dadi din know how to make maggi :D :D
So we cooked it ourselves, putting a LOT of water. Needless to say even after half an hour, considerable amount of water was still left. We called Dadi to our rescue, and we tld her maggi doesnot hae so much wate, she took a soup seive and put our maggi in that to drain out excess water.. Lolz.. The maggi tasted BAD, prolly cos it was way overcooked and so much of masala went away with the drained water.. :D :D

 
At July 20, 2010 at 11:09 AM , Blogger Dewdrop said...

@anon1: Thanks for sharing your maggi experiences with us and for forgiving my maggi mishap :)Mera late reply karna bhi maaf karna. Keep reading :)

@Madhu: Really? You prefer top ramen over maggi? I dislike that. It had always been Maggi for me :)

@anon2: Noodles contain wax? Really? Does it apply for maggi also? I didnt know that. Thanks for the info anon.

@kishley: That was so hilarious Kishley. I think one mishap is allowed for everyone :) I couldn't stop laughing after reading yours.

 
At August 13, 2010 at 11:07 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

From anon (anon2): I just came to know so shared anyways they do taste almost same with change in preparation :). Anyways tried horlicks one they taste good so would keep on trying them till i get bored

 

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