The Chechi

 First, thank you for your kind and encouraging comments and notes after the last post. We are all doing better. Henry has discovered a new Magic online platform (it launched two days before we left) that seems to give him the competitive/intellectual outlet he was craving, and we are all working on planning fun things together balanced by obligations and down time. So far, so good.

This update is about food. On the one hand, we have been eating very, very well here. 

Occasionally we get crisp and delicious dosas:

But more usually, we frequent one of our two favorite restaurants, both a short walk from our apartment: Punjab House and Ceylon Bake House (this is Punjab):

They both seem to serve mostly North Indian food, although the Keralan parottas (like a more flaky, buttery naan) are ubiquitous, and some dishes that we've never heard of seem to be standard, such as "tomato fry" (cooked tomatoes, onions, ginger, curry leaves). They recognize us there and seem to be amused by our cheerful oafishness and our low-skilled efforts to eat with our hands. 

The only real "street food" we've tried so far were these fantastic plantain chips, fried right before our very eyes:

But as I remarked in an earlier post, the timing of meals and the challenges of cooking at home have been difficult to master. The grocery stores (there's really only one within walking distance) don't have the ingredients I'm used to cooking with-- no tomato sauce at all, for example; only ketchup, which is a favorite condiment here. My skill in cooking with Indian ingredients is limited, and it is a time-consuming cuisine. Plus the children don't eat "lunch" till they get home just before 3 pm. After I posted that I couldn't figure out how to feed us reliably, many of you who have lived in developing countries emailed me and told be to find a helper. And that's what I did! The chechi ("older sister")  came last week for the first time. She comes Monday and Thursday in the middle hours of the day and cooks a bunch of food and cleans the floors. She would do washing, too, but we find that easy and we don't have many clothes (we have a washing machine in the flat and hang clothes to dry on racks on the balconies). Floors get a lot of attention in India. Shoes are left outside and the floors are swept and mopped so they are clean and white. That is very nice, but the main thing is the delicious food. The chechi belongs to the servant family aligned with the family who invited us to the Christman beach party-- in fact we had met her that day. The first time she came over, my colleague accompanied her and translated while I wrote down a list of everything she needed. 

I was worried about be able to identify and purchase the right ingredients, but it turned out to be easy because our market ("the Ashis") basically only has the items chechi wanted. I've never before lived in a place that was dominated by a traditional cuisine. The market sells all and only the elements needed for that cuisine, and the people know how to turn those things into delicious food in a time-tested way. There isn't much variation or expression; it's all set by tradition, including the pot you cook certain dishes in-- in Kerala, you cook fish curry and chicken masala in one of these shallow ceramic pots:

The main variable is how spicy you want the food. (Pretty much the first thing people ask us, after they've told us which one of their family members lives in the US and where they live, is how we like the food and if it is too spicy for us. It is not-- we love it and it is delicious.) There is fish and chicken, and then there are vegetable and legume dishes, plus rice. People are surprised that Agatha is a vegetarian because that is not a personal/ethical choice here but rather a religious one-- Hindus are vegetarian, while Christians and Muslims eat meat. Because we are white, people assume we are Christian meat-eaters. So chechi expects us to buy fish and chicken which she cooks for us, but she cooks a lot of other things, too, so there is plenty for Agatha to choose from. The top photo includes the idli she made on Thursday-- little pillow-like cakes of rice that you dip in sambar, which is the vegetable-lentil stew next to it. That is a common breakfast.

She's also made black chickpeas, white chickpeas, mung beans, and a powdery fluffy rice dish called puttu. 

So, we are getting into a routine at last. (It took a full month!) For breakfast, I make the kids grilled cheese. You can get Indian corn flakes here, but the milk is a blend of cow and buffalo milk and the kids don't like it. Michael and I like it fine, and I have it with my tea (I've given up on trying to make coffee with the powdered coffee they have here) and with a kind of homemade muesli in the morning (oats, raisins, cashews, cinnamon). The kids take snacks in their backpacks: plantain chips and "Kerala mixture," which is like a salty trail mix of little puffed and fried things, and sliced cucumber. When they come home from school, they eat a plate of food, either freshly made by chechi or reheated from what she made the day before. Around 6:30 or 7 we eat dinner, usually going out but sometimes eating take-out, our own cooking, or chechi's food. Here the usual dinnertime is 8 pm and the kids eat and go immediately to sleep (I've asked around). Which seems so weird to me-- don't you need some time to digest? But our kids are hungry again by 6 even if they just ate at 3, so it doesn't seem to matter too much.

Plus, today I made regular, American tomato sauce and pasta for lunch. I can't buy the usual convenience foods in the market, but I can buy fresh tomatoes, garlic, onion, and olive oil and cook it down. I saved a packet of "Italian seasoning" from the ill-fated mayonnaise pizza delivery and added that. I cooked a package of vermicelli, which they use for a rice-pudding-like dish, and mixed that in. We can't get lettuce here, but the cucumbers are delicious so I sliced those and made a dressing of lime juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper. It was delicious and tasted quite a bit like home. 

So, we are eating well. 

I'll have to do a whole separate post about the ice cream, burfi, cakes and other sweets.