I was playing outside under the sprinklers on a hot day in the summer of 1973 when my mother asked me to come inside and pose for a photo. A West Hartford News reporter was interviewing her, most likely for being a recent “exotic” immigrant to West Hartford. The reporter writes of my mother, “she sits relaxed in her native, elegant Pakistani ‘sari,’ appearing much more accustomed to her West Hartford home than one would expect of a woman who has been in the country just six months.”

It’s hard to read the text of this article, but in it, my mother holds all things instant in high regard. “This intriguing young mother and spicy cook finds life much simpler at this end of the globe, especially in the cooking department.”

“In Pakistan, a woman’s place is in the home,” my mother was telling the news reporter. I heard her talking about how in Pakistan a woman would spend all day in the kitchen preparing the dinner. Grinding spices by hand in a mortar and pestle, cleaning and chopping vegetables. This may be objectively true for many women in Pakistan, but I was fairly certain, even at the tender age of five, that my mother had not spent days in the kitchen preparing our food, either in Pakistan or Connecticut. She had household help to prepare our meals.

She didn’t even know how to cook when she and my father were first married. I think he taught her the first few dishes she ever made. Though she always took an interest in food, and eventually became quite a good cook, she was even better at delegating the meal preparation to the household cooks or to us, her children.

When we moved to Connecticut, she discovered the “joy of instant foods.” Instant garlic, and frozen chopped onions replaced the fresh garlic and onions in masalas and curries. And a little too often for my liking, we were served food out of a can or a box.

“I’m hungry,” I would say.

“Make yourself a Cup-a-Soup!” My mother would respond with a little too much enthusiasm, handing me a box of the dried soup mix that we would pour hot water over. I would look with amazement as dried pieces of chicken and vegetables turned into tender chunks before my eyes, in less than a minute. This was cooking? Chef Boyardee, Hamburger Helper, and Shake ‘N Bake became frequent meals too.

“One strange custom her husband noticed about American meals,” notes the article about my father, “is the amount of time a woman takes to prepare them.”

My mother elaborates, “We were visiting friends at their home from 5 until 7:30 one evening, and when we finally left, they weren’t even beginning to prepare supper.”

I don’t think my parents had discovered take-out and delivery yet.