Food woes

We are a family of foodies. We live to eat and not merely eat to survive. But all my culinary heavenly dreams came crashing down on me the moment I landed on US shores. This is a country for meat lovers and shuts the door, bolts it and throws away the key on vegetarians like me.

The only solution left for us is home cooking. But therein lies another problem. I am just a budding cook. No cookbooks to my name, no claims to fame just the average adjustment expert. You know, adjust the salt, adjust the heat, adjust the water till basically the dish has deviated immeasurably from the original intention. Everyday is a battle with the salt and the chilli powder. The salt never drizzles down in the infinitesimally small proportion that I desire while the chilli powder always seems to waft up into my nose everytime I use it and I end up sneezing over a very salty preparation.

Daily over breakfast and dinner my eyes follow the first morsel of food my husband tastes. I scan his face hoping to detect that smile of ecstacy or the mmmmmm of delight. But till date my eyebrow - springing moment has not come. So I decided early on that once a week we will eat out to give ourselves a much needed respite. But little did I realise when we started that it was all rotten tomatoes out there.

My earliest memory of eating out was when we had gone to a McDonalds in Seattle. After staring at the menu on the wall for a long while and not finding anything that I could eat, I approached the sales boy. And I asked him "Do you have anything veg?"  Veg evidently was an alien word to him, because he was dumbstruck. He couldnt understand it even after we repeated it twice. Not even when we expanded veg to vegetarian and pronounced it in the slowest possible way so that even a two year old would repeat it. Before we scared him further I understood that McD had closed it doors on me.

We walked out and Reni said "There is this great shop nearby. Its good. Chinese". Like a lamb being lead to slaughter I was lead to a Chinese restaurant.  My husband becomes like a small kid everytime he sees this place. If you have ever seen kids with their noses and hands stuck to the glass walls peering inside their favourite place you know what I mean. Ok, so maybe not so much drooling goes on. I exaggerated on the nose bit. But he does love Chinese. On the other hand, whenever I hear chinese I cringe inside. The foodie inside me jumps off the top floor of a 100 storey building to an instant death. I have only one complaint against chinese food. They believe that vegetables be retained in colour, shape and form as mother nature intended to be. So consequently I have brocollis bushes, carrot boulders and highways of peas on my plate. I have to open my mouth really wide, and I mean stretching my jaws to the limit to stuff the vegetables inside. And in public its not really nice to reveal the internal logistics of your mouth and shock the people on the next table. (However the chinese treat their chicken and beef well I ve noticed.)

Right about when I have stuffed my mouth with one giant broccoli or carrot, a waiter will appear from no where and ask if we are doing fine. Cheeks stuffed, eyes watering from the huge, hot vegetable my teeth are trying to grind and my tongue trying to escape, I would somehow manage a smile and all the time Reni would be happily nodding "everything is perfect".

So between Chinese, the bland Indian food which evokes some long forgotten hotel memories my weekly eating out has become a nightmare. We eat at American joints where I order the garden omelette. It is as promised, a garden minus the bees and the birds. Pancakes and omelette's and plain old toast bring back the twinkle in my eye while opposite side of the table the beef or the chicken dances gaily in a multitude of flavors.

The only place I truly like is this Italian restaurant where we go to occasional. But all the times we go there either we fight before, or en route or at the place itself. I remember this one time where I blinked back so many tears that threatened to fall that the folks around us were looking me curiously. And all this sadly spoils the appetite. Plus the world truth that all good things are generally expensive holds true for this place and therefore for every five times I say Italian I get heard only once. ( Ofcourse for all the times that he says chinese I stay poker faced. Touche!)

So given the plethora of options outside for someone who is not restricted by food Amreeca is a foodie  heaven. But for those of us who would rather see a chicken (or a cow) cross the street rather than end up on someone's plate, "choru, koottan and upperi" are the only option.

The worst part of all this is, if you have just read this and you meet me on the street my incredible weight gain will leave you convinced that I am a pathological liar.