OMG! I made food!!

Ok so this is a very special occasion for me, although it may seem silly to everyone else, as most of you know me as someone who cooks on a fairly regular basis.

But today...I COOKED!!!

This is exciting for a couple reasons.

a) it is the first meal that I have cooked in India that hasn't consisted of rice and some boxed curry mixture (aka Ready-to-Eat) or leftovers that I steal from my roommate

b) in order to make this meal, I gathered the courage to buy veggies from a real live Indian woman who worked at a real live Indian vegetable stand (aka not a store. And not in English.) This is a step that has intimidated me a fair bit, largely because I haven't had time to wander around and discover such a vegetable stand. This woman was cool though, I imagine we will be becoming fast friends.

c) I made CHAPATI. From SCRATCH. I rule.

So what was this wonderful meal? Well, I was excited enough that I took a picture of it, which you can see below.


The curry is essentially garlic, onion, green chillies, ladies fingers (okra) and tomato all stewed together with curry and coriander and red chilli powder and then cooked down (borderline too spicy for me, but we push the limit on that every day). I'm still working on my technique with the chapati (the bread - it was a little bit chewy) but I'll go ahead and declare this a stellar first effort. The rice is pretty straightforward, lol. The fun part? It's so damn healthy. The chapati is whole wheat flour and water, essentially, with just a little bit of salt. The veggies were cooked in just a little bit of coconut oil, but basically just enough to saute the garlic and onion before the rest got tossed in. I can't seem to find brown rice here but whatever.

I feel like an adult again! As if I've regained just a little bit of independence. Small steps, small steps. I'm toying with the idea of showing this to my Fellows, but they'll probably think it looks awful and laugh at me. Which is fine. I'm learning!

Finally: Boston people who are obsessed with Haymarket? Today I got like 10 onions, 10 tomatoes, 3-4 generous handfuls of green chillies, like a kilo of okra, a big bunch of bananas (like 12 small ones), and 3-4 handfuls of garlic for less than $2. The food I bought today can feed me for like a week (awesome).

Miss you guys! Stay tuned.