The Food

Without a doubt, the topic that I have been questioned about the most is the food. I have put off answering everyone's questions about the food because a) it really is not that special, and b) I was planning on eventually making this post at some point. I have finally gotten around to writing this post, and I hope it fulfills everyone's huge desire to know what I am eating. Get ready, because this post has a lot of photos!

First I will start off with a little tour. For the first 3 weeks that I was here, we ate in the old mess hall, which usually serves as an overflow space whenever SEARCH has a group of trainees or youth on campus. Supposedly they were remodeling the newer mess hall for a few weeks.

Here is the exterior of the old mess hall, which I can see from my bedroom.

Here is a view of the interior of the old mess hall. Kind of bare, because they moved some of the tables and most of the chairs back to the new mess hall. The food used to be put out on a table that would sit near the counter on the back wall. The counter itself would contain all the plates, bowls, and cups, which are all made of metal. The tables used to be separated (like a school cafeteria), but as the foreigner intern group grew, and we became closer with the interns from India, we tried to keep forcing more and more people at a single table. Eventually, we pushed the tables together to make one long table.

After every meal (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) we are responsible for rinsing and cleaning our own plates. Outside on the back exterior of the building there are two rows of white-tiled taps and drains. We use this grainy green soap that works really well. I think it is special concentrated dish washing soap. Sometimes there are drainers to place our dishes when we are done, and sometimes we just stack them back up on the counter inside.

There are two lovely women who cook all our meals. Vimal tai always comes out and attempts to speak with us, and pet our hair, and sings sweet songs for us. She always asks us to come to her home village, but that is a few hours away. Instead, one Sunday when we went into town, we went with her to visit at her friend's house. I am very fond of her. It is very hard not be very fond of someone who is cooking you three meals a day. Here is Vimal tai and me in the kitchen. (My shirt looks like a mess because I just finished washing some dishes, I'm not a slob!)

Here is the other woman who cooks, Anjana tai. (Tai meas older sister.) We do not know her as well as Vimal because she does not come out to greet us during the meals. We do see her every afternoon though, when she comes to the library and research buildings to serve afternoon tea. In this photo she is refilling one of the bowls during dinner.


About three weeks ago we moved to the new mess hall. Our first meal there was dinner on the Tuesday when the monsoon started. The floor is marble and it was very slippery and I was not a fan at first of this new mess hall. However, now I really enjoy it. It is not as drab and it is a lot more airy, bright, and more beautiful to sit in. In the new mess hall the tables were already pushed together, so we can also enjoy our large group seating.

The new mess hall is V-shaped, with the food served on a central table and seating areas to the sides. The food is always put out in the same order: plates and utensils (spoons only), sides like sprouts, dal, main dish, and then a big bowl of rice. It always causes confusion in the line because most people like to put the rice on their plate before the dal and main dish.

Here is the table that we sit at in the new mess hall. You can see how much more open the new mess hall is compared to the old mess hall. You can see the old mess hall in the background.

Finally, here is the cleaning and washing area of the new mess hall. It is a narrow hallway that also serves as the side entrance.


Ok, enough with the tour, now time for the food. (Yeah, yeah, I know most of you probably skipped the boring tour and went straight the to food anyway).

The Food in General: I was very excited to come to India and eat vegetarian Indian food for 8 weeks. Overall, I enjoy the food, but it is very different from the Indian food I've had in the past. I envisioned in my head a simple buffet with a few options for each meal and in that regard, the meals are served very much how I imagined. I did not think there would be a spread of all my favorite Indian dishes at every meal. However, I had pictured the food resembling all the Indian food I eat in the restaurants in the U.S. and at home in the 90-second Tasty Bites and Trader Joe's microwaveable packets (a staple of my grad school diet!). Instead, the food at SEARCH is a lot more plain. I think the reason for the difference is that India is a very large country, and the dishes we enjoy in the restaurants are the best of each region- like "Jaipur Vegetables" and "Kerala Vegetables" and "Madras Lentils" and "Punjab Eggplant." These dishes are usually very distinct, hearty, and colorful. At SEARCH it is much more localized to just Maharashtra style. In addition to the food being regional, and not fancy, the Indian interns here say it is also very cafeteria style - made for the masses. So while it is usually tasty, we are not talking high quality Indian cuisine here.

At SEARCH, vegetarian also means no eggs. Yogurt and buttermilk are served, but there is also no paneer cheese. I have only had my favorite Indian dish, palek paneer (spinach with cheese), once at the restaurant in Chandrapur. Another one of my favorite dishes, channa masala (curried chickpeas) has only been served at SEARCH twice and it wasn't great. Sadly, there is also no naan (the doughy bread that accompanies every meal I've ever had at an Indian restaurant). It's just no where to be seen. Sona says that it's only served at restaurants, not usually at home, and special restaurants at that. Chapati, as you will see further down, is a lot more ubiquitous.

Breakfast: Here is a photo of a breakfast we have perhaps once a week, something fried. Usually it's just fried grain, although once we had fried vegetables, and one time it was potatoey inside, like a knish. It is usually served with "ketchup" and some dal or sauce.

Here is a much more common breakfast, which I don't like. It's these rice paddies that taste awfully plain and it is served with this white-green porridgey stuff that I do not like or spicy dal that you just don't want at 8 in morning. Unfortunately, this stuff gets served at least twice a week and I usually opt for granola bars instead.

Another very common breakfast (no photo) is a yellow potato/rice flakey thing with tomato, onions, and some type of green veggie in it. It's not too bad, but it is served a lot, and is of varying quality. Another similar breakfast (no photo) is a yellow wheat germ mush, sort of the consistency of mashed potatoes, with again, tomato, onion, and some green veggie in it. This is my favorite breakfast because it's the most tasty and relatively non-spicy which I prefer at breakfast time. Another less common breakfast is two grilled chipati with potato in between. It's kind of like of a non-sweet pancake filled with potato. Finally, we also had a sprout pilaf with a sweet bbq-esque sauce a couple times.

At every breakfast chai tea is also served. This same tea is also served around 3pm each day. I never had chai at home (maybe once from Kayla at Starbucks). I always thought I wasn't a huge fan, but it's actually really good. It tastes very close to coffee. The other foreign interns here say it is much better quality than the chai at home, but I really have no basis for comparison. It is served in little mugs, espresso size.


Lunch and Dinner in General: The food that is served at lunch and dinner is nearly identical. There is nothing that distinguishes the two. I have put the photos below into their respective categories depending on the actual meal that I took the photo at, but really, it could be either.

At SEARCH, we get served white rice, chapati (which is a flat bread, like you would use for a sandwich wrap), and dal (lentils, sometimes thick with a lot of lentils and sometimes just the thin yellow sauce) at every lunch and dinner. Then, we also usually get one kind of curried vegetable like okra or green beans, and sometimes another spicy dish with squash or potatoes. If we are lucky we get sprouts, boiled peanuts, and/or yogurt. In the two days that I photo-journaled the meals we were very lucky, and we got a lot of these little extras all together. But, we've also had occasional meals where the only thing put out is rice, chapati, and dal, no extras, and no vegetables, just all starch and minimal protein.

Lunch: Probably the best photo I've taken of the food here, and the most representative. Although, we usually don't get sprouts + cucumbers + yogurt at the same meal. So maybe this is not very representative of a meal itself, but of the food that is served and the portions I take for myself. In this photo you can see rice with curried cauliflower, lentils, sprouts, chapati, cucumbers, and yogurt. We sweeten the yogurt with large granules of sugar. Vimal and Anajana started serving yogurt at almost every lunch and dinner because we get really cranky if we don't get it to complement the spicy food.

Other little extras that will occasionally come up are chopped onion (adds a lot of flavor when you mix it in with your rice and main dish), roasted garlic in oil (also adds additional flavor when mixed in), bananas, tomato, and papad (spicy lentil cracker/chip). Again, it is rare for more than one or two of these to show up at the same meal.

Here is a photo of a not-as fancy-lunch, a lot more typical. Just rice, chapati, random green vegetable with dal, and chopped cucumber.


Dinner: In addition to okra and green beans, other vegetable dishes that have been served include peas, cauliflower, eggplant, cabbage, and about five different kinds of unknown green vegetable (sometime squash like, sometimes green pepper like, sometimes gourd like). The vegetable "main dish" is usually the spiciest thing served and has to be diluted with dal, which is less spicy, or eaten with a lot of rice and chapati.

Other "main dishes" have included spicy chopped potatoes (I like this the best because it's seems the most like comfort food), curried chickpeas, spicy lentils that are not "dallified", black-eyed peas, chapati or rice paddy soup, a "stuffing" made of chickpea paste, and once we got very spicy shredded potatoes.

Here is a photo of dinner being setup on the table. The white rice is not out yet.

Here is a close-up of some lentils, potato and green vegetable dish, and yellow dal.

And here is a shot of the table with the bowls lined us the way they usually are. Again, the white rice is still not out (sometimes we wait for the food like eager vultures). The chapati is kept in that container with the lid.

Here I am finally eating dinner that night. Aditi and Pawan in the background.

Here is another photo of dinner. You can see one of the random green vegetable main dishes. This one was of the green peppery kind. Again, because I happened to take photos on a pair of good days, you can see some things that we do not always get. First, instead of white rice, Sona's mom visited the campus and dropped off a huge pot of really awesome yellow rice. Second, one of my rare favorites came up: tomato, onion, and cilantro salad. One time they just happened to serve this on the same day as boiled peanuts. I took the opportunity to make a peanut burrito. The boiled peanuts resembled black beans, I obviously had rice and the burrito wrap (the chapati), and I used dal like it was salsa. It worked out really well!

Another dinner that has come up a few times is yellow rice with a thick yellow curry/dal. Usually the dal is pretty thin, but this dish is more like thick gravy. I'm not really sure what is in it, it might not even be dal. It is always served with yellow rice and not white rice, and this is usually the nights when we get the roasted garlic and oil to mix in.

Dessert: There is never dessert, although we usually turn the yogurt into a dessert by mixing in lots of sugar. Two exceptions: On my very first night we were served a warm, sweet, rice noodle soup. And one other time we were served two very very saccharine milk-product balls drenched in the most sugary liquid I have ever tasted. Oh yeah, and sometimes there's buttermilk, but I absolutely hated it during the first try, so I never take it.

Snacks: Here is a photo of some snacks I frequently eat. In it you can see the Masala Munch (like cheetos, except instead of cheesy flavor, think Indian spice flavor), golden raisins, Bourbon chocolate cookies, and I'm never without small-sized Cadbury Fruit & Nut bars. I have also bought cashews and ice cream. And of course, I came with 120 granola bars. As mentioned in earlier posts, when we go into town, we often eat at restaurants where we can get eggs, and we also frequent the ice cream store.


Cravings:
Now that I have finally described the food that I am eating, let me post my growing list of cravings:

1. Italian food, Italian food, Italian food. Far and away my biggest craving. I would do anything for a big plate of pasta with some good marinara sauce, and maybe some steamed asparagus or broccoli.
2. Chips and salsa. Specifically fresh chips and salsa from Chipotle. And a burrito to go with it.
   
3. Birthday cake. Kinda funny, since this is not one of my favorite foods, and I rarely crave baked goods. I think I just want to have a normal American dessert.
4. Orange juice. Anyone that knows me, knows I drink this stuff almost every morning. Well, I have gone over 30 mornings without it, and it's time I get my hands on some.
5. Hamburger. I would love a huge hamburger with tomato, lettuce, onions, ketchup, and mustard. And maybe some chicken too.
6. Fruit + cold in any form. I want berries: strawberries, blueberries, cranberries, blackberries. I want frozen fruit popsicles. I want cold juice. I want fresh fruit besides bananas (the one kind we get here).
7. Grilled cheese sandwich. One of the girls mentioned this the other night and I nearly passed out from the thought of a warm gooey buttery grilled cheese with tomato. Add pizza to that. And cheese and crackers as well.

Well, there it is. A monstrous sized post about the food. I hope you can all rest peacefully now!