Cooking -- Part 2

A Trip to the Supermarket

This store sells most of what you might find in a supermarket. In addition to dry goods, there's a selection of soaps, detergents, housewares, and personal care items. You really have to know where to look. It's a small space (maybe 1000 sq ft or 10 sq m), but large by Indian store standards. It's crowded, and the inventory changes daily.

This is the cooking oil section. Large (3 to 5 L) containers are the norm. For smaller sizes, oil is sold in plastic pouches.  (BYOB - bring your own bottle!) Those pouches that look like they should contain sugar or something "dry", are 1 L bags of oil.

On the back side of the oil "nook" is the grains and legumes "nook". This is a sampling of wheat flours. Atta is whole wheat; maida is refined white flour; rava and suji are more like wheat "grits". I'd never seen the Pillsbury bags before. 

Moving around the "nook" to the right, you see the selection of lentils (dal), and legumes, including chickpeas, peanuts ("ground nuts"), and many others that I don't recognize (yet).

The last corner of this "nook". Behind the large bags of rice are many other kinds of legumes. You just gotta know where things are!

The spice "nook" is huge, but not as big as the grains/legumes. I have no idea what most of this is. While I might recognize the spice if it had the usual English name, the English names on the packets are simply transliterations of the Hindi or Gujarati name for the item.

Cooking meets Monsoon

This was salt, left in a pan after roasting peanuts. A few minutes later -- where's the salt? As a chemist, I would say this is a demonstration of how hygroscopic salt is!

Cooking Part 1

Cooking is definitely going to be a multi-part topic. And I'm sure it will provide a lot of laughs for veteran Indian cooks!

Our microwave oven can also broil and convection bake. Despite the "easy instructions" in somewhat strained English translation from Korean, we did figure out how to preheat and bake. We roasted raw peanuts -- that's a pretty simple start!

Those of you who know me, might expect me to start experimenting with Indian breads. I made some roti last week, and made some naan yesterday. Since I have no pizza-stone equipped oven (most recipes you find are for the North American market), I make-do with a pre-heated heavy aluminum skillet. I wish I had a cast-iron griddle.

Rotis are unleavened bread: just flour and water and salt, if desired (I desire!). Naan recipes usually call for leavening, but I haven't seen any yeast here. I can't figure where I would leave bread to rise without attracting ants (more on ants below). The naan in the restaurants doesn't seem to be leavened, so I just made a dough, and added some garlic and yogurt (that should provide a small amount of "yeasties"). Once I rolled it out very thin, it worked well.

First attempt at naan

Before starting on the bread adventure, I bought a marble platter and wooden rolling pin. The marble is a miracle surface: the dough just doesn't stick to it. No wonder pastry chefs use a marble surface for rolling out pastry crusts!

More on ants. Apparently, ants are only a big problem during monsoon (or so I've been told). They will go for any kind of sugar or flour. They even manage to get into tightly sealed canisters. They're persistent little beasts! So I now store all of my flours and sugars and nuts, etc. in the refrigerator.

Morning in America

Email

To borrow a phrase, "It's morning in America" when the email starts to fill up the mail box.

Being 9.5 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time, when we're up and about, it's mostly night-time in the U.S. About 4 PM (6:30 AM EDT) things begin to pick up. The newspapers come through first, then the spam starts rolling. All through our evening, various messages arrive. In the morning, there is a full mailbox awaiting a read, but don't expect a response until just before bedtime!

Animals -- Mostly Large

This picture is supposed to be at the end, but no matter what I do, it insists upon being up here. Oh well.
Look closely -- there's a goat on that motorcycle!

It's not unusual to see cattle, water buffalo, goats, and dogs wandering the roads and highways. While I've seen many dogs limping along on only 3 usable legs, the larger animals are large enough and slow enough for vehicles to avoid them.

Sometimes it's difficult to use a road when cattle decide it's their domain.

Pre-monsoon. Even the cattle want the shade.

I've also seen pigs along the street, and yesterday we had a cat on our door step. It ran away as soon as I got out of the car. It was the most beautiful cat I think I've ever seen -- leopard spots. I hope I can get a picture some time.

As you might expect in a country overrun with trash, rats have plenty to live on. We saw two dead rats on our Sunday walk. It's also no wonder that rabies is a huge problem.

Banking

Banking has been frustrating from Day One -- and the U.S. side is only slightly better than the Indian side.

U.S. banks have trouble letting us use debit cards in India -- it's a "fraud zone", and we have a U.S. mailing address. The bank says if we're living in India, we need an India address. But we want our statements, etc. sent to Richmond, not Vapi -- where we may never get them. (Actually, we do it all online, but still....) The local branch of the U.S. bank won't accept anything from a U.S. account -- no check cashing or deposits. All this with an account that is supposedly set up specifically for expats (and has no branches in Virginia). Hmmm.... Fortunately we have a "travel" VISA card, which works (for a fee) pretty much any where.

Our Indian bank account has proved even more frustrating. Lon has written 12 checks, only one of which has been accepted by the bank. One time he wrote, "and NO/100" at the end of the amount. No go. In India you must write "ONLY" to show an exact amount. Another time the date wasn't clear enough. Most of the time they didn't like his signature -- said it didn't match what was on file. We've mostly given up and now pay bills with cash withdrawn from our U.S. account. It's taken three months to get a debit card. Now we are trying to add me to the account, which may or may not be possible. It's likely to take months and multiple trips to see the branch manager.

The real issue is that sooner or later (each month it gets delayed by another month), all of Lon's paycheck will be deposited in the India account, and we'll have to figure out how to make a monthly wire transfer to a U.S. account to pay all our U.S. expenses -- which are considerable, since we're maintaining a residence there, and we have to write a monthly check for all of the U.S. payroll deductions such as 401k and United Way contributions. We won't even get into exchange rates....

Enough venting for one day! After two days of continuous rain, I can see a shadow! Of course, that doesn't mean it won't be raining in 10 minutes!

Monsoon Contrasts

Monsoon is the price to be paid for green and water. While much of the year, it's dry and dusty, monsoon is lush and green. Here are some contrasting photos from January and July.

January

July

Unfortunately, I didn't take enough pictures in January to show the contrast where the dry dusty fields of winter are now rice paddies -- filled with water and green!

And the dry river beds of January are now overflowing with muddy water.

And yes, the air quality is much improved in monsoon!