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)

Palak Paneer*, (you will succeed where I...mostly? succeeded)

As you know, I’m currently living in a house with the whole fam. We're taking turns cooking, and I'm trying each time it's my turn to use at least one ingredient that I have never seen before, or never cooked with before. Palak paneer is always one of my favourite dishes at Indian restaurants in Canada, and I had never cooked with paneer before. So this COULD BE DELICIOUS. 

I suggest, if you have never had this dish, that instead of scrolling down to my photo of my finished product, you Google it, or like, get Indian take-out or something. I promise that is a better idea. Continue reading to find out how you can do this better than I did, because you probably have a reasonable selection of kitchen appliances!!! Mine still tasted good but it looks a little wrong.

Okay.

Time: about a half hour including simmer-time

Serves: 4? how hungry are you?

Easiness: Easy

You need:

-          paneer (Indian homemade cheese—you can get it in some grocery stores/Indian stores/in India…also it is apparently quite easy to make yourself  but I didn’t do that so I can’t help you there.) Amount: however much you want—this is the main protein of the dish. The only protein. Cut into 1- inch cubes.

-          1 large onion

-          5 cloves garlic

-          about a square inch piece of ginger

-          turmeric

-          cayenne

-          cumin

-          coriander

-          garam masala

-          1 tablespoon honey

-          salt n pepa

-          5 tablespoons vegetable oil

-          a whole bunch of spinach. Like the amount that would fit in your largest frying pan, or more than that. Also, you can use frozen spinach for this if you want, it might even be better but I wouldn’t know because you basically can’t buy frozen foods in this town at all.

-          1 green Serrano chili

-          ½ cup yogurt, milk, or coconut milk, or other similar edible substance

-          beer for the chef

  

     1.  Pour yourself some beer into a glass, because you are a classy chef

     2.  Put on rice because you know you will forget to later (but remember to take it off when it’s done because I’m not going to remind you)

     3.  Whisk 3 tablespoons oil, 1 tablespoon honey, some water if needed, a teaspoon of salt, and a bunch of turmeric and cayenne (who actually measures their spices?) in a large bowl. Throw your paneer cubes in the bowl and mix them around until they are coated, then leave to marinate while you do other things

check out those cubes

     4.  Chop onions. Now is your opportunity to cry about anything you've been meaning to cry about. Let it all out.

     5.  Pull yourself together. Seek solace in beer, but not before removing bug, which has drowned in beer.

     6.  Mince ginger. Smash (or “chop” if you’re boring) the garlic. Throw ginger, garlic, and onion in a BIG frying pan, over medium-low heat, with about 2 tablespoons of oil.

     7.  Add finely chopped Serrano chili now!!! Or, alternatively, for a less spicy meal, forget not only to add but even to buy Serrano pepper, and instead throw in two dried red chilies at the very last second, in manner of bay leaves, sort of.

     8.  Add cumin, about 2 heaping teaspoons or however much you want. Now listen up! THIS NEEDS TO SIMMER FOR LIKE FIFTEEN MINUTES!!!! This is the time when all the spices enter into one holy union of tastiness. You cannot rush into something like that, it’s a big deal. The only thing you need to do to this pan now is add a bit of water and stir it, if you feel like things are sticking or burning

     9.  While that is happening, throw your marinated paneer cubes on a different pan and let them brown on one side. Take them off after a few minutes and leave on a plate.

    10.  While that is happening, blend your spinach in a food processor or related appliance (defrost frozen spinach in microwave first)**

    11.  Once 15 minutes have passed, and/or onion pan has become a golden, caramelized bed of tastes worthy of posting on a food-porn Tumblr blog or something, it is time to add MORE SPICES. Add about a teaspoon each of garam masala, and coriander*** and let the whole thing simmer for another 3-5 mins. Add more water so the spices don’t burn.

    12.  Add spinach, along with ½ cup of water. Simmer until spinach is dark green and cooked.

    13. Turn heat down or off, and slooooowly add milk or yogurt (if you go fast it could curdle). Stir it in, then add paneer and simmer until everything is warm. 

Serve on rice, with naan or chapatti or nothing. Drink some more beer, and revel in the warm praise of your happy dinner guests, awed by your attractiveness and magnificent cooking skills (or eat it by yourself, I’m not judging you).

please read on for explanations of why yours will look more
beautiful. Try the recipe, I swear it's good!!!!!

*well, yours will be. mine was…similar.

**I don’t have a blender, and also the spinach I was able to buy here was 99% stems, so my end result looks less smooth and soupy and more like a swamp. Hence why I placed the photo at the end of the recipe.

***I’m saying that to sound civilized. really just take a knife and poke a respectable quantity of spices out or the jar. later you may add more! Who knows. Live dangerously. Be free. let your long hair blow in the wind.

xoxoxoxo

this recipe was adapted from here and here

Coconut bloggin’

A short one. Advice on roadside cheap beverages: DO NOT BUY the water because a) there is a chance it is sketchy bad water re-packaged in a water bottle pretending to be all safe and sanitary and also because b) you could be having THIS instead:

I mean the coconut not the 7-up

They call it a tender coconut, and you see people drinking them on the streets everywhere (and thus also discarded coconut shells on the street everywhere, and cows eating the discarded coconut shells everywhere). The guy selling them will hack the top off for you with like a machete and then poke a straw in, and when you’re finished drinking it he’ll cut it in half, slice a spoon-shaped piece off, and give it back so you can slurp up the soft pulp, which feels kinda like eating...coconut-flavoured oysters.

Cheap Samosas: 2 kinds

Cheap samosas: the comfort food of every McGill student at the low price of 3 for a toonie, and available for EVEN LESS at basically every depanneur across Montreal. I've eaten them so often in the past 4 years I pretty much forgot they were Indian food.

Shockingly enough, my first actual Indian encounter with this delicious food was one purchased at a uni cafeteria. We were at the The University of Mysore, which the internet tells me has 53, 000 students, to visit the folklore museum. The campus is great, with an enormous amount of green space. We weren't allowed to take photos inside the museum but some of my favourite pieces were the sculptures outside anyway:

yes, these llamas have their tongues sticking out. .

Apparently samosas are popular student food here too. I wish I had taken a photo of the "line" to order food in the cafeteria, because it was...more like a riot. People pressing each other against a counter in a disorganized horde, shouting their orders and I have NO IDEA how anyone knew if they were grabbing their own food or someone else's off the counter. I basically ordered samosas because they were the thing that I knew what it was...

look at that flaky pastry mmmm real spices mmm

I'm sure this is not the best India has to offer because...cafeteria food. Cold cafeteria food. But so much more delicious than I'd tasted before. Crunchy pepper pods inside, and cardamom, and I don't know what other spices along with soft potatoes and carrots and who knows what else. Really, who knows? Cold cafeteria food is pretty much exactly what the travel clinic person told us not to eat but...what could possibly happen (don't answer this please anyone).


Now, for our second variety of cheap samosa, we take a step even further into the realm of cheapness, and try this:

mmmm taste of tradition

Yes, these are the potato-chip-equivalent of samosas. Like, dried and in a package. Like, hard little balls...Samosa shaped...with stuff inside it... to be honest I wanted chips but the sour cream and onion Lays that they sell here are really sweet? So this was the next best option. And it was far better, and far weirder. What more can you ask for from a Mini Samosa in a plastic package? They are trying their best.