True Happiness with Good Food

India is just so diverse when it comes to food preferences. I belong to North India and my food habits changed for the first time when I moved to Delhi. From toor daal to daal makhni, my taste buds had to go through a variety of complex food. Paneer, rajma, chole, lobhia became a part of everyday diet and I realized that if it tastes good, I am open to change 🙂

The next big change happened with my relocation to Bangalore in South India. From Aaloo and gobhi parathas with curd in the morning, this was a shift to idli-vada and dosa with sambhar and freshly prepared coconut chutney. Yet another welcoming change. Having been in Bangalore(on and off) for seven years now, I am a lot more comfortable with a little sweet sambhar, fluffy idlis and the various baths – avalakki, khara, bisibelle to name a few. The filter coffee here is so much better and the tea certainly needs more work to match the one prepared up above.

I have also spent a good time of my life staying in Mumbai and Nagpur, which I am going to safely call the Central India and the food does change to a great extent – vada pav, misal pav, kadhi chawal, dabelli and so many other awesome snacking options – taste buds are in for a treat. Oh yes! I will be too lame to miss the pani puris and the chaats from Central and North India.

Travelling to Kerala this time, I realized that I am not done yet when it comes to food. Kerala treated us with some spicy chicken curry and rice. This dinner was wonderful and filling and I will cherish the memories and eating so heavily! The idlis in Kerala were dense yet light. The sambhar contains coconut milk and is lighter in color but of thicker consistency. Something new that we tried was Kunjipatthri (steamed rice dumplings) which should be eaten with any spicy curry – veg or non-veg.

We were also served small balls of white and brown rice with red gram curry. This might seem normal to a north Indians but the difference was in fact that the rice was rolled into a small cylindrical form and the curry had coconut milk in it giving it is lighter color and different taste.

Coming to something that I did not relish was the aaloo bonda prepared in palm oil and maybe I did not like this cos I have never been used to having such a recipe. Tea dust is another thing that we discovered over our trip. We figured out that Kerala hosts a couple of tea plantations and tea dust is sold along with whole spices across the state. Now the tea that is prepared in the state from this dust is very different – they mix this dust with hot boiling water and add little milk and sugar to give taste. This dust almost dissolves in water and gives color and aroma.

So, in a nutshell – food is the reason we can sustain ourselves. It’s a need! As I remember from my childhood days – Some eat to live, some live to eat and I love to eat 🙂

About the Guest Author

Parul Kashyap Thakur – HR Professional . Working Homemaker . Blogger . Wikipedian . Family Photographer . Engineer

I am a Bangalorean, an impulsive blogger and I love to put my thoughts in writing. A right event, situation or emotion can trigger me. I enjoy spending my time with my husband (no pets and no kids and no plans) though with him I am always out of our house roaming around. We love to see different places and this is just one of the few similar interests we discovered 😉 I am also a food lover.

Feel free to comment if you find something interesting and leave a message! 🙂 I love being appreciated! For more details please visit my Blog