Reflections on...food

Hmm....
There's definitely something about good food that can make one happy...

Flavours are fun and they are fantastic as well!

For the last couple of weeks, the teachers in school have been having lunch parties. They divided themselves into groups and treated everyone. I was lucky enough to freeload on this deal...

Anyway...these parties were for the entire secondary staff, including the clerks and the peons and the बाईs or मावशीs (aunties) as they are now called. This was pretty good on part of the teachers and a couple of times, the staff requested the मावशीs to make the food and they always were fantastic about it...
Once the entire teaching and clerical staff had finished their turns, the peons surprised everyone by saying they wanted to treat us to lunch as well.

And what a treat it was! पिठ्ल भाकरी, मिर्चिचा खरडा, पापड़, सुरळीची वडी, कांदा, मसाले भात and topped off with some melon as हानुमान जयंती प्रसाद and ice cream!

The whole thing was fantastic and had so much taste and flavour in it. This is only the outcome of making food with all their heart in and the love and affection that these very simple people, simply feel for those around them.

Fantastic!

It made my day and I won't forget it in a hurry....


Also, recently, I started getting bored with my (self imposed...sort of) limited range of culinary creations at home and decided that I needed to do something about it.
As a result, I've started increasing the range of ingredients I use and actually moving closer to a more homely taste of food than one which is more suited to convenience...
(Eh...convenience is a matter of perception anyway - what I call inconvenient...someone else might call lazy...)

Anyway...along with newer ingredients, I've also started expanding the side dishes I use and so, I made some chutney today (well...put my grandma to work, making it and watched...but next time it'll be all me) and it turned out very well...
Corriander, dried coconut, green chillies, salt, sugar, cumin and raw mango!

So with the chutney, it was a nice potato preparation (well spiced with cumin and ginger), rice and curd!

Yum!

So yeah...flavours are fun and food makes me happy.

Today, I'm a happy puppy! :-D