Chapatti, Curries and Rice, oh my!

19 July

Anyone trying to adhere to a paleo diet would not survive in India ;) 

The volunteer program provides three meals each day- breakfast and lunch at the Ayurvedic University and dinner is generally picked up in town and eaten at the house.  While it is intended to be fully vegetarian, we have had fish or chicken a couple times over the last few weeks. As soon as I get to London I am going to totally dig into something medium rare and get an infusion if iron into my system. ...........(Yummmmmmy steak) 

The view from the cafeteria, thankful for a veg and non veg spot ;) 

We are eating traditional southern Indian food as part of the program, which translates to rice, chapatti or rice noodles  with every meal, as well as some type of curry or sauce.  Every few days we will get a piece of fried chicken or fish. 

  

Today's lunch: 

Very spicy fish, spicy curry and spicy mystery sauce.  

Spicy, and soooooo good. 

There is a really big difference between Northern and Southern Indian food. I am accustomed to Northern style cooking: tikka masala, palak paneer, aloo gobi and naan, glorious, fabulous naan.  None of that really exists here (remember, we're in a pretty remote town with basic shops and services, but even so, apparently Northern Indian food is not super common in the south).  Southern Indian food (as far as i can tell after two weeks) features thinner curries, cucumber and onions in a coconut milk sauce and beans in a type of thin sauce. 

Here's a few snapshots from random and assorted meals over the last couple weeks:

My first dinner with the program, eaten on a banana leaf.  The flash sorta blew out the color :)

For the most part we eat family style.. 

This is actually one of my favorite meals here- saffron seasoned biriani rice with fresh cucumbers and onions in a coconut milk sauce. I think this was breakfast. 

Another breakfast dish- rice pancakes with a lentil soup and a fried banana (the fried banana was a special addition!). 

We've had this for breakfast a few times as well-  rice noodles with a bean sauce. 

Lunch, plain rice and a few different curries.

This was dinner a couple nights ago... Our team leader Rahul (who is local to this area) asked for requests and a few of us asked for North Indian curries.  Rahul delivered.. He had to hit up a neighboring town to do it, but he totally came through (except for naan because you really can't find it here, but the chapatti did the job very nicely ;)

Overall I am really loving the food- it's spicy (most of the time), flavorful and fresh. Having said that, two consecutive weeks of the same type of food is starting to wear a bit, but its all good, they have little shops that sell biscuits, 

I am so used to eating with my hands at this point (well, eating withy right hand actually) that I'm going to have a hard time using silverwear next time I'm at Pakwan or Naan and Curry..... although it may be a while until I eat Indian food again :)