Hungry Days of Summer

It took a couple weeks, but Tony and I are finally over jetlag and mostly decompressed from school stress. Time to get down to business. There’s so much to eat and drink before the end of July!

Here are some of my Michigan food-and-drink-related routines:
(1) I welcome myself home with a cake from Kroger’s. Usually I just pop in to the store and ask for a cake that says, “Welcome home, Sharon!” and then I eat it in secret. This time, I decided to be more inclusive and I had the hilarious plan of asking the baker to box in a corner and write, “… and Tony.” My sister Kate offered to pick up the cake for me, but when she saw the poor baker seemed to suffer from terrible arthritis, she said, “You can just write ‘Welcome home S & T’.” Lame.
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(2) I eat avocado every day. This is my Second Annual Eat Avocado Every Day Summer Challenge. It started last summer when I was stuck in Washington, D.C., with a fun group of ladies from AES, waiting for our new Indian visas to be issued. We found ourselves at the same Mexican restaurant most days, eating guacamole. Avocados in Delhi are rare and expensive, so it seems like a good plan to get ’em while I can. My favorite lunch time treat? A loaded BLAT sandwich.
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(3) I eat copious amounts of pie. My favorite? Strawberry rhubarb. Bring it. (And be sure to bring Breyer’s Natural Vanilla ice cream, too.)

(4) I drink a ridiculous amount of beer and wine. With import duties around 150%, booze is pricey in India. My go-to red wine in Delhi is Yellow Tail Shiraz, which retails at $30. Guess how much it costs in Michigan? $4.95! Less than five bucks! We have a beer pub in our Delhi neighborhood, where Tony and I go for dinner occasionally. A nice pizza and a couple glasses of beer costs us about $100. So, if most of my summer pictures show a drink in my hand, don’t judge.

(5) Bacon. Bacon. And more bacon. The Hindus in India don’t eat beef, and the Muslims in India don’t eat pork. So the only ubiquitous meat is chicken. Dang it, I am so sick of chicken. Bacon cheeseburger with guacamole? Yes, please!

By the end of the summer, I may be jonesing for a samosa, but for now, you’ll find me on my deck, beer in hand and gearing up for my next American snack.

Summer Paranoia

Tony and I have poured a lot of time, energy and money into establishing a home for ourselves in Michigan. After bopping around the country every summer, crashing with my parents or friends, we finally have a place of our own. When we head back to India every year, we winterize the house and leave it in the hands of a trusted neighbor. Still, we can’t help but worry.

When we returned to the States June 1, we opened up our house with a big sense of relief. Everything looked fine … for a few minutes. After throwing a load of laundry in the dryer, I smelled something funny. I turned off the dryer and checked the lint trap. It was clean. I had read about the danger of letting lint build up in the exterior vent, so I went outside to check it. The vent was bursting with dry, fluffy lint!

Years of watching Monk, Psych and The Mentalist prepared me for this moment. Somebody must have broken in to our house to do laundry! And they must have done it in the last day or so or the lint would have been wet from the rain, I deduced. As I was rubbing my chin reflectively, Tony came upstairs from our basement.

“Did you put the yellow kayak somewhere?” he asked.
“No, where would I put it?”
“Well, it’s not there,” he said.
“Someone broke into our house to do laundry and stole our kayak!” I exclaimed.

Paranoia gripped up both. We searched every inch of the house to find any more evidence of a prowler in freshly laundered clothes. In the guest bedroom, I stared at the dresser. “Where’s that green box and the fake fern that usually goes here?” I asked. I use the box for jewelry during the summer, but I didn’t leave any jewelry in it. I guess it did have some loose change in one of the drawers. We panicked.

“Why would anyone steal that box but not take our TV?” Tony asked.
“Well, it is a crappy old TV,” I said. “Who would want it?”

We asked the neighbors if they had seen anyone in our house in the days before our arrival. They hadn’t. We asked my sister, who lives about half an hour away, if she had sneaked in to do a few loads of laundry. Nope.

I called my dad to see if he had any ideas. He reminded me that the family who gave us the yellow kayak borrowed it back for a camping trip or something. As soon as he said that, I recalled the email correspondence. Then I got on the phone with my mom, who said the dryer probably just sucked all the lint in the hose out to the exterior vent when I turned it on for the first time in 10 months. OK, that explains the kayak and the dryer lint … but what about my fake fern and the green box?

Stumped, Tony and I quietly explored the house again. This time, I noticed a beach towel draped over the clothes hamper. When I pulled away the towel, I discovered the missing fern and box. I had obviously covered them to keep off the dust. Mystery solved.

After a couple days, our paranoia abated and we settled in to Michigan life again. God only knows what’s going on at our house in Delhi …

Old Delhi Walking Tour: Saari, Kinaari, Bazaari!

I own two saris – a turquoise bedazzled number that caught my eye early on in India and which I now realize is cheap and gaudy, and a quality bright-orange hand-spun cotton one I purchased after a special afternoon at Sari School last year. Both sit in a closet, never used. I’ve only worn a sari once, and it was borrowed. Still, I remain entranced by the “unstitched garment.” That’s why I jumped at the chance to poke through Old Delhi’s sari market April 18 with one of my favorite tour guides, Himanshu Verma of Red Earth India, on his “Saari, Kinaari, Bazaari!” tour.

The ad for Himanshu’s walking tour said,

Chandni Chowk, the commercial centre of the city, presents a shimmering spectacle. On this Saree Walk, we will wander into Kinari Bazaar, the wholesale market for fabric trimmings and soak in this most colorful part of the city, where any saree can be accessorized with a relevant trim. A popular destination for bridal shopping, Chandni Chowk also offers us access to an array of Saree shops – from the hand-woven to bling and cheap synthetic sarees.

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Himanshu took us into sari shops, including this tiny space.
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At larger stores, he helped us distinguish between hand-woven and machine-made, traditional and trendy, silk and synthetic sarees. It was all so interesting, but also overwhelming. Rather than shop for my own saree, I far prefer watching Indian women do so. Often, the whole family sits together on low stools while the shopkeeper unfurls the sarees. A baby sits on his father’s lap. A woman holds up the end of a saree to her chest and looks to her sister for approval. A grandmother reaches out to pull a saree closer for inspection while the shopkeeper shakes the next one out of its plastic package. The sarees drape across everyone’s laps and pile up on the table. Soon, the group is swimming in a sea of silk. Mesmerizing.

We also popped into several emporiums stocked from floor to ceiling with rolls of ribbon, lace and trim of every imaginable color and design for adding a kinari – or border – to a saree or other garment. Himanshu encouraged us to buy something fun to jazz up our clothes, and I eyed the collections with plans to add trim to a pair of jeans. In the end, I simply couldn’t commit to anything; I loved it all! However, now that I know where to find this stuff, don’t be surprised if all my western clothes get a touch of Indian flair.
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Our group paused for snacks a couple times at places we never would have tried without Himanshu’s trusted recommendation. This sweets shop offered up delicious milk-based desserts.
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This man, whose little stand was unfortunately located directly across the narrow alley from an open urinal, whipped up golgappas, which are hollow crunchy balls filled with a watery mixture of tamarind chutney, chili, masala spices, potato, onion and chickpeas. He also served one of my favorite Indian street snacks – bhelpuri, a mixture of puffed rice, tamarind chutney and chopped veggies. Despite a momentary hesitation (no doubt triggered by the combination of the urinal smell and the sight of our snack-maker’s bare hands scooping the golgappa balls through the pot of water), we all gobbled up the treats and found them a bit spicy but tasty.
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Eventually, Himanshu led us up a flight of dark narrow stairs to a busy eatery, where people lined up to get fresh bread straight from the tandoor. The breadmaker sat on an elevated structure and reached into the oven with long mental tongs to pull out the hot naan. We ordered paratha, a pan-friend flatbread stuffed with potatoes and spinach. Diners sat on cracked plastic chairs at long rickety tables; this was clearly not a place that catered to the hoity-toity expat crowd. In fact, I doubt any of us could find this place again. I always relish experiences like this, when I get a glimpse into the lives of locals in a way that doesn’t make me feel like a voyeur. It was pretty special, and the food was great!
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The labyrinth of Old Delhi can be daunting with its twisting alleys packed with pedestrians, motorcycles and bicycle rickshaws. Himanshu shared his expertise about the district and the iconic sarees, but he also brought a sense of curiosity and calm to a chaotic place, reminding us of its rich history and current relevance. I can’t wait to join him for another eye-opening tour.