FOOD – India

All the food on my blog was crashing my 'puter, so I decided to split up future food updates by country. 
Check out all the grub in India! Mostly delicious, sometimes not too tummy-friendly, Indian food is generally awesome, with some caveats.  Indian restaurants tend to pile starch on starch, so one meal might consist of rice, a bread product, and a potato dish.  Not too healthy.  Also having to examine the kitchen and hands of the cook before deciding to eat at a particular place is not fun.  I'll keep updating this post till I'm out of India, and have tried every curry in the land.

Dominos.  Yes they have it in India!  Not that this is good pizza or anything, but after longs periods of nothing but rice, dahl, and potatoes, fake cheesy goodness was a welcome change.



This was a surprise awesome thali.  The roti and rice were both perfect in every way, and the tapas were each unique, rich in flavor, not oily, and seemingly healthy and non potato-based.  And there was lots of fresh stuff too!


Taste testing fancy teas in Gangtok.  I like coffee, so this all just tasted like earthy water to me.


Nepali thali with square rice!  This was incredible.



Chicken gizzard skewers!  YES!


Maybe the best thali yet.  Bitter gourd, spicy cheesy something or other, several other vegetables I couldn’t identify, some yummy pickled stuff, and the signature Nepali GREEN dahl, so much better than YELLOW dahl.


Make sure to hit up Sonam’s Kitchen if you’re ever in Darjeeling.  Not only does she get direct trade organic coffee from south India, but she cooks up killer western breakfasts, including hash browns!!!!



Decent thali, but I’m still not a fan of the two starches in one meal, usually rice AND potatoes, which seems to be a real eating habit in India.


A creamy, Kashmiri style curry falafel ball thingy, with nuts and dried fruit inside.  Delicious.



A creamy paneer curry. 

Above and below:  BANANA bread!  Mike and I rolled up onto a 7th Day Adventist church in the middle of nowhere and asked if we could camp on their grounds.  After calling his dad (the pastor), this kid brought out a whole dang loaf of awesome banana bread.  Apparently this entire village knows how to make banana bread after the missionaries that converted them all a couple generations ago imparted this knowledge upon their ancestors. 

 
Beans, cabbage, maters, veggies, etc... Like a plate of soup.



Cooked on a camping stove in our hotel room.  Noodles with everything we've been carrying around in our bags for weeks.



Pretty self-explanatory.  Indian food makes you fart.


Cheese curry.  Red.

 
Rice and dahl with various side dishes, served on lotus pads plucked from the lake!

 
MOMOS.  Finally.

 
Cheese and pea curry.  Yum yum.

 
Taters and maters curry.

 
Mixed veggie curry with a cream sauce on top.  Scrumptious.

 
More MOMOS.  So good and oh so cheap. 

 
Your basic roti thali set.  You get a certain number of roti/amount of rice, and the side dishes just keep coming until you finish your complex carbohydrate of choice.  In this case (sadly this happens too often), many of the side dishes are also just carbs, here we have potatoes, potatoes, two types of pickle, some chickpeas, and sauces.


Japati in the werks.



Another mutter paneer  (pea and cheese) curry.  This one was extra awesome, and completely different in taste and appearance, than other mutter paneers I've had.

 
More thali, with some interesting pickles, and dahl in the foreground.



Veggie roll!  Closest I'll come to a burrito this side of the Atlantic, or the Pacific.

 
The holy grail of curry, for me at least – Palak paneer!  (Spinach and cheese)

 
Kashmiri style veggie curry.  It's Kashmiri style cuz it's got raisins in it.  And maybe cardamom and saffron.

 
Lipi's mom picks the brain pods out of a jackfruit and feeds them to us on a platter!  Ewwwww/yummmmy.



And the same mom cooks up a healthy thali set.  It's like restaurant food, but without all the oil and diarrhea!


Two hungry dudes chow down on loads of eggs, thali and fresh stuff!



Mike protects his grub from predators.

 
Soupy chickpeas in spices topped with a SAMOSA.  OMG pure genious.

 
Egg sammich on the street.


Army base fare.  Not bad.  Included a pumpkin mash.

 
This was probably the healthiest thali set I've laid hands on.  Included at least three different greens.


BEEF momos!

 
Beef Thukpa (Tibetan noodles).  Not really different from other noodles.

 
Giant pot of Dahl at Jamtse Gatsal orphanage.