I am a student of disaster management at my home where I prepare myself for all the cautious things that can take place inside a kitchen. For example not touch any utensil when it has been taken off from the gas stove just a minute ago, keep in check your pressure cooker every minute while making popcorn, else you may never know what comes out of that Pandora’s Box.

These examples are nothing but one of the mistakes that I achieve in my mother’s kitchen while making my snacks and desserts, so I do make mistakes and give birth to hot, burning, smokey, and firey disasters which are not always something to be proud of but it is fun to be part of this place I call kitchen or Pandora’s Den, one cannot guess what comes out of it today and the utensils and machines used in there are pandora’s boxes because they lead to the final result which comes out of the den.

So here is one of my Den stories: A month back came from Delhi after completing a baking course and as soon as I reached home, everyone started pushing me into the kitchen to make something that I learned during the baking course and show it to the entire family. Now the problem is I generally cannot afford to waste my made desserts in the wrong shape or texture so I tried to make crispy corn it is also known as corn nuts.

Their earliest ancestor was parched corn, a Native American preparation of dried and roasted corn kernels that were both nutritionally dense and light to carry. As with pemmican, parched corn was adopted by early European colonists and settlers. It was commonly packed in wagons for the journey along the Oregon Trail, so really, it was the original road trip snack, although they often used it to make soup instead of eating it as-is. During the Civil War (1861-1865), parched corn was a staple for soldiers; it could be ground into a substance called Panola, which might have been seasoned with salt or sugar but was eaten dry.

In 1936, Oakland, Calif. native Albert Holloway decided to sell his own version of parched corn—the kernels re-hydrated and then fried—to local bars and taverns, since the salty, crunchy morsels paired so well with beer. He marketed his creation as Olin’s Brown Jug Toasted Corn, which grew into a successful family business. At some point, the name was changed to the much catchier, if slightly muddled, CornNuts, presumably because the corn’s crunch was on par with (and far surpassed) that of peanuts. The name was officially trademarked in 1949.

Looking around for its recipe I finally got one with so appealing the crispy corn that I immediately went in the kitchen to make it and show everybody some of my culinary skills. I followed the recipe as it was given step by step but while mixing the boiled corn with flour I may have used water a bit too much so the batter became slightly slimy and sticky instead of becoming dry and flour stuck all over the boiled corn and the cherry on the cake was while frying them I expected to come out in golden color but the batter was getting away from the corn once they were put in oil. Due to this some corn came slightly crispy and burned with some of them completely burned. Then I seasoned them with oregano, salt, and pepper in a cycle of 3 in small amounts. It taste quite well at the end but most of the time, it didn’t come out as good as I expected it to be by its look and texture but the amount of time I spent in the kitchen while making it whether right or wrong, was not even second of my time was felt getting wasted back then because it’s a fun game to play where once you start playing you cannot stop unless you finish the game and it is my burden which lets me stay in the kitchen, it is my playground where I know I won’t be the best player playing the game but I will enjoy playing the game in present and freely without thinking twice.