I've had quite a few (one) people ask about the food here in India. Here is my response:
As with any type of ethnic food, there's the American version of it, the authentic version of it, and the actual food you eat in natives' homes. I had American Indian food at school at quite a few times, and I was kind of hoping the food here would be similar. Its not. Bummer.
We ate a lot of authentic food during the first couple weeks. We had a high-class Indian-style buffet in our hotels at least twice a day. The food was...downright difficult to eat. The thing about it is that if it's not too spicy, it's too...something. One thing I've learned in India is that "spicy" doesn't always mean "hot." It just means there's a lot of spice. So sometimes when you take a bite, your mouth will be on fire, but you won't know why. It's taking a bite out of stick (stick?) of garlic. Or taking a bite out of....a big pile of Indian spices. Other than that, much of the food is very very sweet, which is even harder to eat when your mouth is on fire from spices. All in all, every bite (no exaggeration) is a surprise. No taste could ever be guessed or assumed, and when you'd take a bite of something, by the time you went back to it you'd have completely forgot what the taste was. Its like being introduced to a huge crowd of people with names you've never heard of. When they introduce themselves, you're not going to know what the heck they just said, and consequently, when you come back to them you don't have a prayer of remembering what the name was. Not to complain of course...I ate it all. It was just very shocking...and difficult. But everything else was shocking and difficult at that time, so we made due.
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| Try to figure it out. |
Moving onto the food at home. Much simpler, as you would expect. We have pretty much the same food every day. Here's a typical breakfast:
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| Every morning there is toast (with jam), eggs (sometimes with peppers, as shown above), bananas (don't you dare leave the table without eating your banana! My host mom will...politely remind you to eat your banana), and every once in awhile chicken sausage. I don't recommend chicken sausage. The orange juice is really good though. |
Lunch is on our own at school, and I invariably get an egg roll. Egg rolls are a bit different here. They will mix dough and egg and cook it on an open grill on the street. Then they add in some sauteed chicken and peppers, add a few seasonings, ketchup, chile sauce, sometimes lemon. It's very good. Many discussions have occurred within the group about how to successfully bring it back to the states. Within a 1-mile radius of my school, you could probably find 9-10 egg roll places, including the cafeteria inside the school.
Dinner is also pretty much the same every night.
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| Dinner includes rice, dal (rice topping), fish (lots of bones), roti (the tortilla. You tear it off and use it to grab food), vegetable mush, another vegetable mush (typical vegetables include cauliflower, potatoes, beans, eggplant, cabbage, sometimes spinach), and a chicken and potato mixture. The chicken is extremely bony, which I think could shed some light on why Indians eat with their hands (hand). Its impossible to get the chicken off the bone with a fork, or with your teeth. I often use a fork, but I eat everything else first and then finish by eating the chicken with my hand. |
General notes about food:
-The other day, as a snack with my tea, I had India's Ramen. Its called Maggie. It was....I would love to say better, but I love Ramen so much. It was comprable. Definitely. It's also the only food I've found in India that costs the same here as it does in America. Go figure.
-They have Mountain Dew here. Its not quite the same....but man, it's important to have, in whatever form you can find it in.
-Kolkata is supposed to be world famous for its sweets. There are deserts on the table after dinner every night. Pretty much all of them taste like pure sugar. Like replacing pastry batter with the sugar from Fun Dip. You guys remember Fun Dip?
-One time we cooked for our host family (my roommate cooked for our host family. I...cut vegetables). We made chicken parmesan and spaghetti. We don't have an oven, but somehow we managed. I don't know, ask my roommate. The majority of my time was spent dancing with the family to the Beach Boys. We decided to play music while we cooked, and that was the happy cross-cultural medium we ended up on.
-There's a ton of food on the street here. One day I walked by a stand making some sort of potato thing, with tortillas ("roti") to eat it with. They told me to sit down for some lunch, and brought me a plate in a few minutes. I finished, gave them their plate back, paid them the 24 cents, and went on with my day. You can buy any amount of anything on your way to school. There's even a full blown fish market right by my house. You see a lot of places on the street that sell chicken as well, but they butcher it in front of you. I've never seen it, but there'll be a stand with a basket full of 10-20 live chickens next to it, so I'm making assumptions. Sometimes you see guys transporting the chickens. They grab them somewhere on legs and hold them upside so they can't move, string 10 or so together for each hand, and then bike down the street with them...just hanging there.
-Everybody eats with their hands here. We've all gotten pretty decent at it. It wouldn't be anything special, except that all of the food is in mush form. So when you're done, you just have to find a place to wash your hand. I'll demonstrate the next time I see you.
-There's a lot of Chinese food. So we eat Chinese food sometimes.
-At any given time on the trip I've been down 5-10 pounds from my playing weight (my weight at home). Its so hard to get enough calories when you walk several miles a day, it's always 90+ with 95% humidity, and the food is exclusively vegetables, rice, and fish. It's ok though, I'm comfortable with my robust 63kg. Love your body.
-One time I ate a super pepper, because I thought it was a green bean. I kicked myself afterwards, because I had consciously decided to eat that green bean as its own individual bite. Foolish. Always eat green beans with other food, if not for fear of secret peppers, then simply because green beans go well with most things. So I ate the pepper, and immediately knew what I had done. Tears started streaming down my face, sweat streamed down...my face, and steam blew out of ears. I tried to hide it from my family, by quietly keeping my head down and drinking copious amounts of water. They noticed a minute or so later, about the time when I grabbed my second napkin and wiped my entire face with it. They just laughed. Foolish Americans. Always eating spicy food. The second time it happened, I immediately excused myself, walked to the bathroom, and cried my troubles away, until I was fit to come back to the table.
-sidenote- In a few weeks we are taking a trip to South India, where people here say, "the food
is too hot, even for Indians." Hmm....
-I haven't eaten beef or drank milk in 2.5 months. My brother Thomas would be dead by now.
-Not getting seconds is like a sin here. These host moms are in charge of your well-being, so they will pump you full of food until they are satisfied.
-I could probably keep going, and they would all be as menial and pointless as the ones I've already said. If I remember something interesting I left out, I'll just send it to you in a message.
Thank you for the time. Go eat some french fries, and some beef, then tell me about it.
