Where I'm Volunteering (and What We Eat There)

If you've been wondering what I've been doing for the past (almost two!) months, besides eating...the answer is mostly eating. But! I've also been volunteering several times a week, since arriving in Kodaikanal, at Grace Kids Centre, a crèche (like a preschool, kids ages 3-5) run by the non-profit organization Help-Kids-India (p.s. to anyone who found this post through searching for Help-Kids-India, I apologize most deeply for the profanity in my blog title).

Help-Kids-India, an organization which runs Grace Kids Centre and 3 other preschools in and around Kodaikanal (which I hope to visit soon) provides education, as well as 3 meals a day, healthcare, uniforms, and lots of love, to kids ages 3-5. Each creche has a current enrollment cap of 50 kids--and all are full. These kids come from Dalit families—that is, what used to be known as "untouchables," the lowest caste in India’s caste system, systematically discriminated against for years. Although the caste system is "officially" no longer legal, people from these communities still face very real discrimination all over India. Parents from these communities are often financially unable to put their young kids in school. These parents are often working labour-intensive jobs, with long hours, for little pay. Not only do the crèches provide valuable education, nutrition, healthcare, and community for these children and their families, but having the younger kids in school often means that older siblings are able to attend school also, where before they might have been kept home to look after younger siblings while parents worked.

I've been helping out with daily activities--with kids this age it's important that there are lots of adults so that everyone gets plenty of attention--and sometimes leading crafts and activities: drawing pictures, teaching letters and numbers, and making paper chains, and handprint art. 

These kids (and their teachers) are pretty much the best:

morning activities...butterfly song? I follow along with the actions but I don't understand Tamil so I can only guess.

duck-duck-goose/dance. where the tagged person has to go in the middle and do a dance! This dancer is Leya, the daughter of Selvam, who is the caretaker of the house we're renting.

And now, of course, to stay on-theme of this blog, I'll tell you now about the completely delicious food at the crèche. The kids eat first (I always eat with the kids for some reason) and then the teachers eat while the kids take their nap. 

always rice, with veggies, proteins, and a sauce. Here it was cabbage, okra, potatoes, and chick peas.

Another thing that I have yet to mention on this blog is how Indians eat. I find it weird that I didn't know this before coming here, but maybe you all already do and I'm just ignorant (very possible). Anyway, in general, Indians eat entirely with their hands. With their right hang, specifically. Eating with the left hand is considered impolite and unclean, the right hand is used for all eating--and there is a technique so that you never actually have to stick your fingers in your mouth. All the pictures I'm about to post are of children, but I promise you adults manage to make this look pretty graceful. This method of eating is partly why every restaurant in India has a handwash station--even food stalls on the street will often have a bucket of water for this purpose. 

on my first day at the creche I felt pretty proud that I was at least less messy than the 5 year olds. 

At the crèche, kids get breakfast--usually a variation on porridge, and milk. One of my favourites is kesari, a sweet wheat (rava) based porridge made with cardamom and cashews. It's often considered a festival food, so we had it last Friday morning at the crèche as yesterday was Diwali (they had the week off).

in this highly flattering photo, I'm helping teachers Thilaga and Selvi (the head teacher, an amazing woman) distribute the breakfast--bowls of kesari. 

The meal plans for the crèche are clearly well-thought-out, and emphasize veggies and protein. No child is refused second helpings, and food never goes to waste. Some of the food they cook with comes from a garden in the backyard, tended by the same women who teach and cook. 

Different day, different meal: curry with potatoes and tomatoes, and a hard-boiled egg for each person. It's the rainy season now, so we often have to eat indoors.

right hand only! 

Hygiene and healthcare are also heavily emphasized at the crèche. The children are taken frequently on field-trips to the local hospital's medical centre, where each child is weighed, measured, and has an individual check-up with the doctor. Medicines are administered to the children at school by a nurse who works with the crèches. On a more day-to-day level, basic health and hygiene practices are taught: handwashing, brushing teeth after breakfast (I am now a pro at the dispensing-of-toothpaste-to-excited-children), coughing into a sleeve, etc.

After meals, some of the older kids help out with cleaning and putting away the dishes, as well as sweeping stray rice off the straw mats and the floor. 

cutieeeees

If you'd like to read more about this incredible organization, or to donate to a very worthy cause, please visit www.help-kids-india.org! There's lots of great information on the website, including explanations of the other projects besides the creches (like the smokeless cookstove project--visit the website to learn what that is!).

COMING SOON: street food, rice noodle bowl recipe, and lots of pictures of animals eating!

$2 Chow Mein, India Style

For all my nostalgia for Montreal, I don't have to wait until 2 in the morning to buy chow mein for 2 dollars from a grumpy man anymore, I can do it ANYTIME and get way more. These plates (which you can get with meat and veggies and onions and fried egg) were $2 each from the Royal Tibet.

2chow indiastyle

There's a big tibetan population in this town, it seems, and 2 Tibetan brothers run two of the best restaurants in town, aptly named "The Tibetan Brothers" and upstairs on the same block "The Royal Tibet."

Chick Pea Curry with Okra and Roasted Cauliflower

Serves 4

You Will Need

-          1 cup white rice

-          about 2 big handfuls of okra, chopped into inch pieces

-          some chick pea flour, or other flour (optional)

-          ½ cup oil

-          1 ½ cups (dry) chick peas, SOAKED OVERNIGHT!!! So you better start this recipe yesterday!!! (psst there is a secret way around this which is to use canned chick peas. Shh. If you are using canned, do two cans, because the 1 ½ cup measurement is dry)

-          2 onions, sliced

-          4 cloves garlic, minced

-          about an inch piece of ginger, minced

-          2 green chiles, chopped, with seeds

-          3-4 medium tomatoes, diced

-          1 head of cauliflower

-          cumin

-          turmeric

-          salt and pepper

-          cayenne

-          garam masala

-          coconut milk (optional, but better)

-          about 3 tablespoons fenugreek leaves (dry)

-          lemon juice.

1. Before you do ANYTHING, cut your cauliflower into chunks, toss it with oil and pepper and salt, and put it in a pan in the oven at around 375. After about 30 minutes you can stir them around (or flip them over one by one with your fingers, as I did. But if you are really imitating me you will have to cook them in a toaster oven because we don’t have an oven)
2. Start your rice
3. Put the soaked chick peas in a pot of water, cover, and turn on high. Stir occasionally and just leave them in there until they are almost soft. Turn it down when it boils.
4. Put almost all the oil into a big frying pan, and turn on the heat. Toss okra pieces in flour so they are lightly covered, and when oil is hot, throw them in there (careful). You will now LEAVE THEM IN THERE, stirring occasionally, for half an hour. Seriously. This way they will get crunchy and nice and not at all gummy or cottony or any of the weird stuff that can happen to okra, the poor misunderstood vegetable. After about 30 mins, take the okra out of the oil using a slotted spoon, and lay it aside on a plate with some paper towels, and sprinkle on a little salt.
5. Okay, I know you are using like, 3 of your stove burners now, as well as the oven. I’m sorry. But shhh don’t stress. Shhh
6. So now you want to take another frying pan, and with a bit of oil start frying onions, garlic, ginger, and chili, along with all the spices except for the garam masala and fenugreek. Simmer on low heat, adding water now and then
7. When onions are translucent, add tomatoes and some water, and garam masala. Continue to simmer.
8. When your chick peas are mostly soft enough to eat, add them to the onion pan, add fenugreek and between ½-1 cup of water, or coconut milk if you have it. Cover and simmer until chick peas are soft and everything is saucy.
9. At the last minute, when everything is cooked, mix cauliflower and okra into main pan. They will have a good crunchy texture compared with the soft chick peas and tomatoes
10. Serve on rice. 

Here is a really crappy quality photo of what this looked like: 

IN WHICH I Give You an Easy Pasta Recipe, Liam Eats Giant Lunch, Oreos Are Better Here, and Everything Tastes Like Cardamom (and Sand)

read on for more GIANT LUNCH

In the interest of you-all-whoever-is-reading-this not getting tired of constant Facebook newsfeed items that are like I Ate A Sandwich Come Read About It OMG!!!, I’m now going to just toss a whole pile of foods into one big post. Here’s the agenda:

1. Some delicious pasta you can make in basically ten minutes.
2. yesterday’s lunch it was very delicious
3. Dark Fantasy (mysterious)
4. Various and Weird Grocery Store Desserts.

One. A RECIPE

I wasn't going to blog this recipe but then it was SO PRETTY 

Serves 2

Very Easy

like ten minutes prep time, plus cooking of the noodles time

it's so pretty but you definitely still want to eat it

Ingredients:

• rotini or other fun bite-sized pasta shapes (enough for 2 people. I can't help you there, I always make way too much)
• 2 red onions, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• oil for frying
• 2 medium tomatoes, diced
• 1 green chilli, minced
• a Whole Lot Of Olives (I pretty much just made this because I love olives and we hadn't found any in grocery stores until yesterday)
• dried herbs: Basil, Oregano, Sage.
• salt and pepper

Cook your pasta. While it is cooking, start onions and garlic frying in oil. Stir a bit so that the garlic doesn't burn. When the onions are like, approaching translucence, throw in the chilli--you can include the seeds if you want it fresh and spicy. Now add the tomatoes and spices to taste/smell. Fry it until the onions and garlic and tomatoes are all mixed and juicy. Throw in the olives at the last minute so they have time to warm up. Serve over the pasta, with cheese if you want. 

Two.  Dosa Varieties

 As much as I love cooking, when a meal out is like between $1.50 and $4 CAD per person it’s hard to be like nah I’m gonna stay in the kitchen for always. 

Liam and I went for lunch at Astoria Veg, one of the highest internet-rated restaurants in Kodaikanal. It is fairly normal here for restaurants to advertise in their name whether they are “veg” or “non-veg”

onion rawa masala dosa

I got Onion Rawa Masala Dosa. A dosa (friend pancake thingy) made with Rawa (wheat flour), with onions tossed in while it’s cooking, giving it a delightful hashbrown-esque consistency (very fancy), and which is wrapped around masala potatoes. It was served with 3 chutneys—a coriander coconut one, a roasted pepper and peppercorns one, and a sambar (soon I’m going to try and make a sambar—STAY TUNED)

Liam, because he is a teenaged person, ordered 2 meals. Great for me, She Who Wishes She Could Try Entire Menu.

First he got Poori, which are excellent mostly because they look like blowfish or balloons.

or something. 

Really it’s just a thin layer of hollow pastry, and a lot of air. Served with 2 chutneys, fairly mild compared to most.

NEXT HE ORDERED THIS!

yep

Called a Paper Dosa, it was like a regular Dosa but a little crispier, and huge. It was actually not what he was aiming for: we kept seeing waiters carrying basically this same thing, but shaped like a gigantic cone. Like a 1 foot tall wizard’s hat of pastry. We guessed wrong about which menu item that would be, although luckily Liam still had the opportunity to eat a crunchy dosa larger than his head.

3. Dark Fantasy

When I return to India I will be very fat as many of you have probably guessed already. Part of that may be the fault of THESE COOKIES

which look exactly, deceivingly, like oreos, and taste like what oreos might have originally tasted in the dreams of whoever first invented them. 

4. In Which Two Grocery Store Desserts Both Taste Like Cardamom/Sand

These:

 

yet another turd-like dessert

they have the texture exactly of it you mixed brown sugar and sand in a bowl, and packed it altoghether into hard balls. And they taste very strongly of sweet cardamom.

I also bought this little can (very heavy)

Gulab Jamun

 full of little dessert balls floating in a syrup. Sometimes they come with Thali lunches. Anyway, they are basically a sugar-coated, liquid-infused version of the exact same ball of cardamom-flavoured sand.

Improved by the sweet liquid, as eating sand would be improved by a glass of water. (No but seriously, these are actually way yummier than the dry version)

Coming up soon: chick pea and okra curry, $2 chow mein (kodaikanal style)