Fabulous Flavorful Food

In honor of thanksgiving, I thought I'd blog about the food I've been enjoying here. You'd think it would make sense to blog about thanksgiving, but that will have to come later. First of all, let me just say the food here is delicious. I really have enjoyed tasting all the delicious flavors, but that is only one side to the experience of food in india. First of all, preparation of food can be pretty intense. Most meals include rice, so they cook a lot of it!

Eating at RSO with the kids is so fun. The kids eat with their "families" and each family gets a big pot of the days meal. The kids spread out on the dining hall floor and line up to get their food.
We then sit on the floor, and eat with our hands!

The girls taught me how to eat with my hands. There's a very particular technique apparently, and they liked to give my lots of advice on how to do it properly. And of course I'm not allowed to eat with my left hand because that's improper. This is Gracylydia. We have the same birthday!

My favorite lunch that they serve is served on thursday (we have the same menu every week). It's a buttermilk sauce with okra and a potato dish with lots of yummy spices over rice. Delicious!
One of my favorite dinners is friday night. Chapoti night! Chapoti are pancake like bread that you tear into small pieces and use to scoop a sauce to eat.
This is the yummy chapoti sauce.
My other favorite dinner is Idly. Idly is this weird spongey bread-like disk that is dipped in different chutneys. I'm not sure what the orange one is made of but it is delicious. The white one is a coconut base and its amazing, and the red one is a beet base.
Traditionally, meals are eaten on banana leaves instead of plates. It's pretty fun and really easy to clean up when you're done eating. This dish picture below is parota. It's kind of like the fast food of india. We get it when we're out driving, and its so deliciously greasy. The sauce you dip it in is delicious (a lot of spice that I can not identify)
This is the wedding meal we ate last weekend. (i'll blog about the wedding later).
I've also had home made chips. They had a spicey chili powder on them. That was a fun experience.
But every once and awhile, its nice to have some good old american food. So often in the morning I'll make myself some oatmeal.
And from time to time the volunteers will make up some american dish that we don't get very often, like pasta with alfredo sauce, or tomato sauce or omelets.
Needless to say our very american thanksgiving dinner we had to day was amazing, and I look forward to blogging about that soon. It was delicious, and the whole day was a joyful wonderful experience. Happy Thanksgiving to all. I'm so grateful to be here in India, and I'm so grateful that I have the chance to share it with all of you!