Food

It has been a long time since I've posted. Every time I sit down to write something I just don't know where to start because there's a lot going on and not a lot going on all at the same time. Confusing, I know, but to give you the skinny: Work - moving along and learning more about what it's like to navigate in a big organization (processes are slow and patience is a must); Personal - meeting with friends on the weekends (we go out to eat and shop and just hang out...huge sources of comfort here) and I still haven't gotten sick yet (knock on wood); Weather - it's summer and it's freakin' hot and sweaty! (You'd think I would have great skin after all this sweating, but I'm not entirely sure that's the case here). Overall, I am having an incredibly rich experience here and it's quite challenging all at the same time. Some days are good, some days are tiring and frustrating, and some days are inspiring. I am learning a lot, but I do miss home and think sometimes how nice a teletransporter would be for just a short bit.

Now...back to food...I've been meaning to post pictures up. Take a look see!

This is one style of the Indian Thali. In some of the restaurants, each dish is served in its own little metal bowl on a big plate. All the small side dishes vary from restaurant to restaurant and meal to meal. In Kerala (and perhaps in other places in India), they call the thali "meals", so if you order "meals", you would get something like this.

This was at a really good family owned road side restaurant in Tamil Nadu. The pots you see on the left are traditional clay pots where they cook the rice and other dishes. They also cook eggs in the big iron ladles that you see sticking out from underneath the pots. They crack an egg in the ladle, scramble it, and stick it in the wood stove to cook. Interesting way to cook an egg! It was really good. The woman on the right is one of the owners of the restaurant.

This is a Sadya, a traditional meal in Kerala served on a banana leaf. Each side dish is served in a particular order and it can be vegetarian or non-vegetarian. Traditionally though, I believe it is vegetarian. After you finish the meal, you fold the banana leaf to show you are finished. I learned that in Tamil Nadu, if you fold the leaf toward you, it shows thanks and that the relationship is in good standing and/or you enjoyed the food and if you fold the leaf away from you, it shows that you either did not enjoy the food or that the relationship is not in good standing.

A double banana! The superstition is that if you eat this, you will have twins.

Kozhukattai (I think it's pronounced: ko-ru-kut-ta..."zh" is an "r" sound here). These are super yummy steamed snacks made of rice flour, ground coconut, sugar, and salt. Many people also put jaggery in them. This was my first attempt at making them when I first moved into my apartment. The yellow hand tool that you see is used to scrape the insides of a coconut to get coconut shavings.