“Do not be a person of your time
Daily Life
I realized we’d been doing so many posts about travels and visits that we really haven’t offered much insight into the day-to-day. So, here’s a post with a few topics.
Food and Cooking
Here are just a few pics of amazing meals we’ve had.
Getting meals on the table is a little different here.
First, there’s only a cooktop. Some people have ovens, but not many. People don’t seem to have microwaves either.
our stove 
our freezer
I don’t have a pic of the fridge, but it’s much smaller than at home. Note that our freezer isn’t full because there really aren’t many frozen foods to buy! You can see we keep our gum in there — otherwise it gets really oozey and floppy. Also, there are bananas, ice cubes, and we have some frozen falafel on the side door, along with frozen peas. That’s one of the only frozen vegetables we’ve seen around here. The Freezer Section at one grocery store is basically 1 large case. At the other place we grocery shop, there is no freezer section.
Our grocery stores don’t have fruits and veggies. Those are all in the stands — and there must be at least 6 in our “Destination Center” (aka DC) shopping area. Then there are another dozen or more on a side road. Here are some pics.
The left two are the veggie stalls. The right one was actually a pic from a juice stand at a rest stop. There are lots of items that we have to learn about! On the right, the top pink fruit is dragon fruit. Below it (green) are custard apples. Those are everywhere. (And apparently the seeds are poisonous to people, so don’t eat those!)
The standard vegetables are very inexpensive by our standards. Here’s what I got a the shop yesterday.
I’ll let you guess the total cost.
Apples are on the expensive side here, so they’re almost at US prices (about 180 rupees per KG, which is about $1.50 per pound). As a clue, the tomatoes were 13 rupees, which is about 20 cents. Your guess…
Total was 240 rupees which is $3.43.
You won’t find much spinach or lettuce in the stalls, or berries, as those things can grow around here, but aren’t very hearty for the market. There’s no refrigeration at the stalls, and many are on the streets.
Small aside – I love how they hang the bananas! So efficient – and just using knots and ropes.
You have to bring your own bags here – as it is now in CT. They banned all plastic bags last May. There are only clothes bags. Occasionally you see paper.
Because people walk many places, so you’re always carrying your groceries, one of our “dry goods” stores also delivers. They load up your stuff in a big canvas bag, send it on a scooter, and then you unload it immediately so they take the bag back.
Parag one time purchased some groceries, and the delivery guy was going right then, so he just gave Parag a ride home on the scooter too :-).
Another time, we got a delivery around 10pm on Sunday night as Parag did a late-night shop. Nothing’s too late!
As for our daily meals, Parag’s been doing a lot of the cooking. Almost every meal around here has polis (not for us – but others!), and Cadi and Alex have become quite the poli makers! Kids even bring poli and bhaji (vegetables and spices) to school for their meals.
And then there’s the clean up! No dishwashers here — well, we are the dishwashers.
I’ve learned working in the kitchen is a little bit like camping. You just have the stove top and limited space. With dishes, there’s no hot water. We have hot water 6am – 10am in one shower. Never in the sink. We mostly just wash with the room temp water from the tap, but every so often, we’ll heat some water and use that.
We also get creative. Apparently you can make cake in a pressure cooker – as the girls did with their aunt. It was delicious!
And then I’ve experimented with cookies and rolls in a fry pan. It kind of works if you’re very careful!
One thing that’s really interesting here is that vegetarian and non-veg are kept very separate. In restaurants, people want to know if the food is prepared separately. Here’s an example from a Starbucks. (These are not common, but there’s one about 25 mins from us!) The left side of the case is labeled Vegetarian Food Case. Anything with chicken is in a different case.
In general, a green dot in a square is vegetarian. A red dot in a square shows “non -veg.”
I’ll leave it at that – with a few pics of some meals being prepared.
I haven’t even mentioned all the sweets and snacks! You saw some in other posts. I’ll leave that to Parag.
I also haven’t mentioned milk – very important in a chai-drinking culture! Next post…. Teaser: there’s no skim milk (only at Starbucks), or low-fat yogurt for that matter…
Joshi-Staples Family India Adventure! 