Food

July 15, 2008: I was just writing an email to someone, answering their question about what kind of food we’re eating here, and I’m going to take portions of that email and turn it into a blog entry. Here’s some of what I wrote:

We've been having all sorts of stuff (ever since finding Le Marche, the grocery store). We've actually been kind of creative, because we often find ourselves with limited ingredients... We had a can of coconut milk which turned into dinner one day when we made a coconut curry sauce with tamari, and put it over veggies and fried tofu. The other night we were down to cabbage, onions and granny smith apples. We cut them all in long strips and cooked them together with some vinegar and lemon juice and put that over sautéed chicken. It was actually really good! We eat a ton of cous cous. It's the easiest starch to make, and Maria Luisa LOVES it. I made a cold cous cous salad with mint, raisins, cucumbers, cumin, lemon, olive oil and parsley. Another yum :-) That's a family recipe, so I can't claim creativity for that one.

But that’s not what you really want to hear…you probably want to hear about all the delicious Indian food! Lunches at the office are fantastic. We all sit around the large conference table and everyone has one or two different food dishes (mostly vegetarian), stored in round, tin ‘boxes’ that sit in a food warmer from the morning until lunch time. The food warmer looks like an oven, and perhaps that’s what it really is… but it serves to bring things to just warm enough to enjoy eating at lunch. People take a Tablespoon or two of their own food, then people start passing things around and taking a teaspoon or two of other things they want to try. It is all delicious! Usually quite spicy, but not 'fire-in-the-mouth' spicy. I've always described myself as a spice 'wus' so I'm proud to say that I try everything without first asking whether it's spicy. It might 'tingle' and feel a bit uncomfortable, but it subsides pretty quickly.

Some people bring some yogurt (or curd) and some bring rice. Everyone has 1-3 pieces of bread: naan, chapattis, roti, parantha. You break off a piece of the bread (some do it with just their right hand, as you do not eat with your left hand at all, stemming from some of the (still practiced) bathroom habits). It’s not as easy at it sounds to tear the bread with one hand. Not everyone avoids using their left hand – many of the younger people especially use their left hands. I try to use just my right hand sometimes, especially when in public. One plus is that it helps you to eat slower…

I thought it would be good to learn some Indian cooking while I'm here, so I bought several curries and masala spices (there are different mixtures for different dishes) and occasionally try to replicate what we eat at lunch. Chickpeas with tomatoes, onion, garlic and ginger. Potatoes with peas, onion and tomato. Green beans cut into centimeter long pieces and cooked (a lot!) with onions, garlic, ginger, tomatoes. Okra. Bitter Melon. It's the spices that makes things taste different, because you can see that the ingredients are often the same.

We buy whatever is fresh at the local market: cabbage, carrots, mangoes, plums, cucumbers, potatoes, zucchini, onions (I've only seen red onions here), and garlic. Some of the street markets sell garlic already divided into individual sections. There are mounds of them. Describing this is making me want to visit the market again with an eye to describing it in better detail, and writing another blog entry, with photos. (To come).

Cooking starts by soaking all the vegetables in Steriliq, a watered-down bleach solution, for 20 minutes and then rinsing them in bottled water. We have a 5 gallon water dispenser in our kitchen. It costs $1.75 to have another bottle delivered to the house. The plastic bottles are reused and incredibly beat up, so much so that we weren't sure how sterile it was to drink the water, even if the water was clean, but we've been ok so far. It's a little tiresome to have to clean/soak everything, and sometimes we get out ahead and soak everything when we come back from the market. But when I start writing about these ‘inconveniences’ I’m immediately thankful for what I do have…the means to sterilize things, to have an abundance of clean water, and a warm (or cool) and peaceful place to sleep every night. I'm humbled by the effort that so many of our program's beneficiaries extend to live every day of their lives. So no fussing from me about having to soak veggies :-)

There’s more to say about food. I’ll write later about the markets and perhaps some more regional dishes I’ve tried.

Hope everyone’s well!

Sarah B.