Are you a foodie?

 

A foodie or just someone who likes to hog? Someone who likes to explore different restaurants or an #InstagramFoodie?

Before calling yourself a foodie, stop! understand!

Just because you like to eat doesn’t make you a foodie. A foodie isn’t someone who tells that a particular restaurant is awesome, a foodie is someone who knows where what’s worth noshing on.

Dictionary meaning of ‘foodie’:

A person with a particular interest in food; a gourmet; a person who enjoys food for pleasure

What ‘foodie’ doesn’t mean: Food Hog

A food hog is a person who hogs and constantly eats food

Food hogs pursue eating as a hobby, foodies don’t. However, this term is recklessly thrown around of late. Even someone with a digital camera who visits restaurants only for #FoodForTheDay photos, call themselves foodiies these days. Foodies know the cooking styles, ingredients, famous preparation methods along with the origin of the food they eat.

A foodie has a list of his favourite dishes that is longer than his bucket list.

Next time, call yourself a foodie only if you can make a recommendation backed with some relevant information. Okay?

Diwali & Homecoming

The festive season just got over. People aren’t really able to digest the fact that the light & sound festival, Diwali, is over. They continue to burn crackers and the lighting on their houses refuse to go off.

Resultant:

But have you noticed, each festival has its own vibe. When they are around the corner, you can almost smell it in the air. No?

When Diwali is near, there’s cool breeze blowing when you wake up in the morning. You try to crawl out of the bed, drag yourself to the bathroom, only to turn the shower on and wait to gather enough courage to get into it.

You realise, you are running late for work, and plan to wake up at least 10 minutes early the next day, so as to dedicate that time to perfectly balance the hot and cold water for bath.

While mornings are lazy, evenings are pleasant, and that smell reminds you of the festivities. And when you are staying away from home, that smell tends to bring a smile on your face. The smell of heading back home.

Suddenly, the advertisements talking about ‘Ghar wali Diwali’ start playing in your mind on loop. Especially that particular scene from the Maruti Suzuki ad, where a guy holds a banner in his hand, asking for a Lift. The banner reads “Need to be Home for Diwali”.

So, I have spent all my Diwalis at home till now, including this one. But this was the first time, I was away and was homebound for the festivities!

More than the festival, I was excited about treating my taste buds. Poor thing, they have seen bad days of late, with gravy bhindi and gravy gobhi served for dinner. Two weeks before my temporary departure from the South to the North, I decided to make two lists. Naturally, lists had to be about food.

List One had the names of the dishes I planned to nosh on.
List Two had the names of the food items I planned to take back with me.

So far, list two is sorted. And list one has three items left unchecked. Three items, two days!

Like Diwali is celebrated to mark Ram’s return to Ayodhya after defeating Ravana. This time, it marked my temporary return to hometown after defeating the food monsters.

From foodie to survivor

I could always put lazy cats to shame, but moving out of home changed me… Not an ounce. I adorn the bed, mostly, avoiding any activity that can be useful for mankind.

Food has been a challenge since the first day of moving.

I kept watching videos on YouTube about how to make fancy looking cheese sandwiches, and ended up eating bread butter. Because budget bhi koi चीज़ hai bhai!

With everything tasting similar, I revisit the concepts of fooding world, as to what is what, each day. I gulp whatever is served to me, in quantities sufficient to keep me alive and not kill me of taste poisoning.

With my cheese being finally stolen after two failed attempts, I am afraid to use the refrigerator now. New cheese slices, the jam or the bread, everything lies in a pan full of water in my room. Safe, out of thieves and ants’ reach.

Living in a hostel full of hunger struck females, who mostly finish of the food before I reach to fetch the rice meal – yet another rice meal. That’s not it, they make food mountains on their plate, fearing that the food might get over before their refill. And later throw away the remains of what they couldn’t eat. How mean!

From foodie to survivor, the transition has begun!

Happiness is Mom-made!

Chhole Bhature is a dish that you can easily find in every nook of Delhi. This city loves chhole bhature at any time of the day. To make things pleasurable for all, October 2 was declared as International Chhole Bhature Day back in 2012, and the city has been celebrating it ever since.

Being a Delhite, my love for the soft and spongy Bhaturas with saucy Chhole knows no bounds. I would even rate a hospital basis unki canteen mein chhole bhature kaise milte hain. And when those puffed breads and chickpeas are homemade, it’s like so many yummy cherries on the cake. It is synonymous with Happiness is Homemade.

We rarely go out for dinners, or order in, since my mother is a delightful cook. And when you find flavours in your home’s kitchen, there’s hardly any need to hunt places for lip-smacking delicacies either.

What made me all sentimental about home-cooked food?
Well, it was yet again a Happy Chhole Bhature Day at my place, and this dope left me drooling.

 

 

💗 Mom-made Chhole Bhature 💗

 

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will…
A plateful of chhole bhature will give you the needed thrill.

 

Jaipur revisited

A long overdue plan, finally materialised – only to die a natural death for some, only to happen in a fuddy-duddy way for others. Initial group of 12 Jaipur enthusiasts got reduced to 4 within a week’s span. Cancellations for 8 had to be done and vacation mood was screwed.

But I had to visit the place again.

Just a day before the trip, she tripped and fell and broke her ankle. But we still lugged her till Jaipur. And made her get her pictures clicked.

Amid the food and pool breaks, oh…look at the pool.

Yea, so between food and pool breaks, we were more inclined towards food breaks.

And the selfies in the rangeelo pagdis 😉

The trip was coming to an end, we had managed to visit just one fort – Nahargarh, when we decided to say a quick hello to the ghosts of Bhangarh. Spooky, dank, full of lushes – the birds sounded scared. Though there were many humans wandering through the day, the place has the capacity to go eerie by the night.

Oh…and did I tell you, we paid a visit to Neemrana fort palace too?

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