Home Food

What is it about the home cooked food that we all miss once we fly out of the nest? Do we love it because it provides us a sense of security and reminds us of the insulated and protective environment that we used to live in?

Well whatever it is, it is truly amazing. Now, I recently took my first few hesitant steps out of the nest, you see I got into a uni far away from home and I have had to live away from home in this hostel and though I didn't really have time to reminisce about home and hence get home sick, it was wonderful to come back home during the break and slurp the home cooked food again!

Let me introduce you to the sort of food that my mom usually cooks. I'm a South Indian, the sort of food that my family considers as part of the staple diet is things like rice, rasam, dal, curd rice, avial etc... Pardon me if you are not familiar with some of the names that I have mentioned, but the very names start the digestive juices off in my alimentary canal! The meals in South India are incomplete without rasam mixed with rice. Rasam is this spicy concoction of the juices of tamarind and tomato with pepper, chillies, and whole lot of other spices and herbs. To read a detailed article about this heavenly concoction, point your browser to the following URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasam.

The thing about rasam is that if the right herbs are added, it can be a medicinal concoction that can provide a quick fix for various tiny problems. Fruits and vegetables can also be added to the rasam. My top favourites are: Milagu rasam, Mysore rasam and pineapple rasam.

Now the other things that make up a typical South Indian meal are things like curry, avial... wait a second, did you just say to yourself, "What is avial?". Whoa! You just have to try out this dish, which can float you up to cloud nine and bring you back gently to earth, or if you are a foodie like me, you might just as well choose to go on eating and never float back to earth! It is a mixture of many veggies. It is a heady mixture of yams, potatoes, beans, eggplant, drumsticks, coconuts, curds, milk, various gourds, radishes, carrots, turnips and spices. It is eaten mixed with rice and is a special dish from 'God's own Country', Kerala! Click here for the recipe.

Payasam or Kheer is a must for any festive meal to be complete. The rice payasam is a "a rice pudding typically made by boiling rice with milk and sugar. It is often flavored with cardamom and pitachios."- Wikipedia.

Now I'm off dear reader, a hot South Indian meal specially prepared by my mom is waiting to please my taste buds, so until next time, happy hunting and happy cooking.

Trains!

The air whooshed past my hair as it whooshes just after the first rains of the monsoon. The green landscape whizzed past me in just the manner that a green landscape is expected to when one is looking at it from the door of a coach of a train that knows the meaning of the word speed. Cows ranging from the usual white and black to the more exotic black and white (if you are wondering what the difference is, please don't wonder as there is no difference) sat chewing their cud in the shades of the many trees that were whooshing past me, or is it whizzing past me? I was leaning out of the open door of the coach numbered A2 (the coach happened to be attached to a train at that point in time). The electricity posts on the sides of the tracks whistled past me (notice the choice of the word 'whistled', it is to denote the fact that the posts were making a whistling noise as they whistled past me) and the occasional desolate, small town railway station thundered past me. The train seemed to be treating these parodies with disdain, the station masters could only look on and hold out their green flags as if to show that they were in control, but the haughty steaming giant thundered forwards not taking notice of the diminutive figures in their khaki or their white clothes which seemed to tell a lot about the local dhobis. Cities, towns, and villages streamed past me and as I looked on, the haughty giant pulled a fast one on me (don't ask me how he did it, the man standing next to me seemed to think that he had hid it up his sleeve) and in a nanosecond even as I looked on, the landscape changed and presto, lush green forests recently washed by the rains and trees that looked like pregnant ladies as they bent in a graceful arch allowing the wind to caress them. The valley seemed to have been preparing for a ball, it appeared before me in its grand evening dress, lovely in a velvet green robe that covered her form from head to foot, although some perverts had cut away some of the covering somewhere near the foot, I tried not to look there as it was too painful and embarrassing to boot. As the train turned around a bend I could see all the way to the back, men were leaning out of all the bogies. I strained myself to keep looking at the coaches when we were all enveloped in a thick, white, dense something. I could feel the spray hitting my face as I turned to face the front, though I couldn't see anything more than three feet ahead of me, I didn't mind, I could smell the perfume of the kurinji hanging in the air which told me that we had neared our destination and I could hear the familiar hoot in front of me which told me that our haughty giant had finally been overwhelmed and was bitterly complaining about it!