Mosquito Masala

Like everything in India, all aspects of food and eating are an experience within themselves. Not really, well, not yet, but I often say to Ant that we have no idea sometimes what we are eating, and its often difficult to recognise items in a curry. The best thing to do is just eat, enjoy and most of the time our stomachs let us know what's been dodgy. After each bout of dodgy stomach events I try and pinpoint what it might have been, but its totally impossible. The pineapple juice? the curry? a tomato washed in dirty water? who knows, you just go with the flow . . .

Anycase, below and around is a selection of foods, street and otherwise, that are available. I must admit we have not tried many of them as as you can see most of them, even guessing the ingredients can be difficult. On the whole we have stuck to a variety of western foods for breakfast (toast, cornflakes etc), a small snack for lunch (fruit, nuts etc) and dinners have been a combo of fish curries, lentil curry, potato curry, something or another curry and even a i-dont-recognize-this-and-not-sure-if-we-should-be-eating-it-curry.
Some of the pics are found in your regular roadside drinks shop/cart ..mostly baked and fried sweet cakes and biscuits type things (not great!). Other things available are nuts roasted on the side of the road and chai (tea) stores. Not shown in the pics are the obvious lack of hygiene when preparing foods and of course the gazillion flys that are buzzing around almost everywhere (at night that are joined by mosquitos - a very irritating combination!).

The most common food down this part of India is called a Thali. Its traditional dish served on a banana leaf and eaten with the fingers (its the last pic). You get loads of little dishes of various spices mixed with veg, an unending supply of rice, a pompodum or two and a bread of some sort (roti, naan or chowpatty - they are all the same to me!).

Most of the spices include some form of coconut, chilly, nuts, yogurt, tamarind, lemon, lentils, cabbage, mustard seed, coriander - well at least these are the ones we have recognized so far. We aren't the biggest fans and every third or so day we are curried-out and need salvation with some western style dinning which is not always readily available!