Food

It’s Canadian Thanksgiving at home. A time to be thankful for the opportunities and friends we have, and a time to be with family. Time with family always comes with wonderful food. I spent most of breakfast this morning describing a typical Thanksgiving dinner for us. I was lucky enough to skype in for the end of the Wiebe’s Thanksgiving evening.  I was specifically asked to blog about the food, so here I go.

The food at Sangam is cooked by absolutely amazing local ladies. They’re very friendly and helpful. A few days ago, my day was made by the head of the kitchen greeting me by name. I really like the ladies and am trying my best to get to know them.

Breakfasts: There is always toast, cereal, bananas, oatmeal and homemade peanut butter and jams available. We generally get two different types of fruit at breakfast. The fruit can be hit or miss, but when it’s good, it’s delicious! My favourite so far is the fantastic pineapple and pomegranates we’ve gotten. There’s usually an egg option served with every breakfast. Usually it’s different types of omelettes. I really enjoy the egg-in-a-hole.

Lunch: Our lunches are vegetarian and Indian. There’s some sort of rice almost every day, dal is pretty frequent and chapatis are a regular occurrence. Chapatis are essentially the Indian version of a tortilla. The food here isn’t served very spicy. There is always something plain being served. At lunch we have two homemade spices to add to the dishes. A garlic and spice mix and mango relish. I don’t find the mango relish spicy and regularly get teased for eating it by itself to finish lunch.

Dinner: Our dinners are more varied. Sometimes they are Indian dishes and sometimes they are international dishes. The international dishes never taste quite like they do at home. Locally, the food is either spicy or very sweet. So a lot of the international dishes end up sweeter than is typical. I don’t mind the dishes, but you can’t expect your spaghetti sauce to taste like spaghetti sauce.

Desserts: The Indian desserts are quite sweet, but usually quite good. The ladies make amazing carrot cake, and their chocolate cake is good too. I missed the apple crumble that was served a couple of days ago, but I heard it was quite good. The ice cream here has a very strong and particular flavour. Perfumy is the best way I’ve heard to describe it. It kinda tastes a little like you are eating flowers. Two Indian desserts stand out in my mind. We had modak a couple of weeks ago, as it is a traditional dessert only served during the Ghanesh festival. It was amazing! It was a ball of coconut covered flour and deep fried. I know the Wiebe family would like it!  Then there’s another dessert, whose name I forget. But basically it’s deep fried dough that is soaked in a very sweet syrup. Quite tasty!

Snacks: We have to snack times at Sangam. Morning Maitri and an afternoon Chai. There are biscuits (cookies and crackers), nuts, fruit and juice served. The Chai is incredibly sweet. It’s made by boiling tea in milk, and then sugar is added. At first it tasted as though they saturated the tea with sugar, but I’m getting used to it. I have been assured that the ladies actually put much more sugar in their own Chai, and they dial it back for us.

Vegan Mondays: In Sangam’s efforts to reduce our carbon footprint we have vegan Mondays. In India, vegetarians typically don’t eat eggs, so going from vegetarian to vegan Mondays just meant cutting out milk and yogurt.