India: "Hello, I'm Here for the Food."

Yes, that title is correct.

We came to India for the food.

But who knew that this love for Indian food would be what gave us the richest cultural and interpersonal experiences in India?

My first taste of my favorite type of food was all thanks to my women’s rugby team in England.

I was 19 (just a young lil’ thing!) and studying abroad in England.

One day after practice, our uber-social-butterfly team captain announced that we were all going out to an Indian food place that night in Jericho (an area of Oxford)—players and coaches—and that there was no declining allowed.

As I was brought up with a lot of bland and non-adventurous foods, this announcement that we were going out to Indian food made me feel the slightest bit nervous at the time.

(How would I know what to order? Would it taste weird? Why did all my fun British teammates like it so much?)

As is true for all 19-year-old brains, mine was still developing but one thing was true for me even going back to a young girl: I might have felt a little cautious and nervous on the inside, but hellz bellz was it fun to branch out and try something completely different!

*Cooking with an Indian family in New Delhi…more pics below!*

Our team met at the restaurant and we’re all seated at one big, long table in the middle of the restaurant. It was called Jamal’s, and I’ll never forget it because I went back there so often afterwards with friends for years.

(One, the food was good and two, it was BYOB! We poor students with our £2.30 dinner allowance loved that we could bring our own shared bottle of wine and Jamal’s didn’t charge us a penny. PS: The food served in our stunning Harry-Potter-esque hall was terrible. Near-inedible. And remember, that’s coming from a girl who was raised on cheap frozen pizzas so “near-inedible” is really saying something.😂)

Turns out I didn’t need to worry one bit. My cheerful, chatty teammates took care of everything, ordering dozens of different plates I’d never heard of, and we all just scooped and shared from the center of the massively long narrow table.

The end of the story is I had walked into heaven.

Indian food + my rugby team: I loved it all.

That time living abroad helped me learn so much about myself and changed the course of my life in so many incredible ways…and food was just one great side bonus. 🙂

I remember taking bites of spicy Indian food and thinking things like

“WHERE HAS THIS BEEN ALL MY LIFE?”

“Billions of people have been eating this food without me?!”

“These flavors have been in existence for the past 19 years and NO ONE TOLD ME?!?”

I was in shock that I’d never once been encouraged to try or offered this food by anyone I’d ever known.

At some point during that dinner, I subconsciously resolved that I had 19 years worth of Indian food consumption to catch up on.

*Flying into India from Mauritius late at night.*

……

I told that story so that you’ll understand me a little better when I say the following:

I came to India for the food.

I mean sure, there’s the Taj Majal and too many other temples and tombs and forts and cities to count…

…and you should know by now how fascinated I am by language and experiencing different cultures…

…but the #1 (and #2…and possibly #3) priorities were

food.

We were guests in an Indian home in New Delhi where we made a delicious daal, a green pumpkin curry…

…and my daughters learned to make roti.

Learning to roll the roti just the right way…

Our daughters enjoyed it so much that they spent probably 45 minutes making roti.

What got them especially serious and focused was discovering that the better they balled up and rolled out the roti just so, the more it would puff up perfectly once they put it directly into the flame of the stove.

Making REAL chai from scratch to be served in the terra cotta containers on left.

We didn’t expect to learn so much about the religious aspects of life in India, but oh boy did we. These little “idol areas” the homeowner showed us proudly reminded me of the cutouts they used to have in Japan for the “idols”…where we Americans kept TVs. 🙂

SUCH good conversations about religions, beliefs, faith, spiritual world, the seen and the unseen with our daughters.

Didn’t expect that, but thank you India for bringing it up in a very real way for our family.

Speaking of cultural differences, I give you “More Cows On Side of Freeway.” (A common sight.)

You don’t know what honking + traffic is until you’ve been to New Delhi. Those of you who know, KNOW!

I booked us a food tour through Chadni Chowk.

I had to agree with the Indian guide we met taking some Germans through the same area. One of the German women was telling him she’d had this particular dish in Germany…

…and he turned to me and said, as if I would understand,

“But it doesn’t taste the same as here.”

I had to laugh as I nodded in 100% agreement. For the past 25+ years since that night at Jamal’s, I’ve been trying Indian food from Oxford to California to New Zealand, all made by expat Indians who clearly still made it so deliciously that I’ll always answer “Indian food” to the question “What’s your favorite kind of food?”…

…and yet I can now bear witness that it doesn’t taste the same as in India.

Why? I don’t know. Whether it’s the air, the water, the soil, the fact that we’re eating only the in-season fruits and vegetables in that part of India at the time…

…it tasted exactly (to me) as

the most ideal of ideal Indian food.

When your kids’ feet get tired, hop on a rickshaw!

And I actually preferred the street food to the food the Indian housewife taught us to make, probably because she was scooping in huge tablespoons of sugar to the pumpkin curry and coconut ball dessert, even when we told her we didn’t need it so sweet.

No, they just like it that sweet. Even the chai (which our daughters hand-ground up the ginger for in the mortar and pestle) was super sweet.

The Indian street food was perfect. Our guide knew where to take us and I honestly can’t imagine how they could have made it any better. The paranthas are my new favorite Indian bread, especially with the mixed veg and chilis for a kick. My kids liked the cottage cheese paranthas and the big puffy balls at the other restaurant…

Afterwards, I read another blogger say how concerned she was about having stomach troubles in India and I had to admit the thought never crossed my mind.

I hadn’t realized that I’d come to India being more distrusting of pickpockets and the scam artists…but that I had 100% TRUSTED Indian food and the makers of it.

If there is fresh-squeezed orange juice, I will stop. Remember the fresh pomegranate juice in **Morocco?**

…..

What of our non-food experiences?

Both our older Indian dinner hosts and our younger, “hipper” food tour guide were apparently quite devout Hindus. I knew a bit about Hinduism and had expected the average modern Delhi Hindu to be a little more accepting and chill, but…

Nope! I’ve never experienced a more pushy religious batch of people than those we met in Delhi.

We listened politely but oh man, didn’t see that one coming either!

Like I said earlier, brought up GREAT conversations with our daughters later! 🙂

We learned a lot about not only arranged marriages but the types of things bought for the weddings and where.

SIDE STORY:

If you’ve ever wondered

“What it would be like to completely ignore a red light and drive my car straight into oncoming traffic (and whether they’d stop or not)?!”

…let me tell you, BECAUSE THIS WAS OUR DRIVER IN DELHI! 🙂

I mean, up until this point Cairo was the world winner for sheer Free-for-All on the roads but Delhi woke us up again to take notice. There may be a challenger for the world title.

Update: the middle-aged Indian couple we met in their home settled this for us. They’re both born and raised in Delhi but actually mentioned (not knowing we’d been to Cairo) that they’d just gotten back from a trip there and the roads were…no words, their eyes just opened wide and their words trailed off. Apparently these Delhians have no words for Cairo so it appears Matt’s and my initial award was correct—Cairo is still #1 in road driving insanity.