roybot

Who Owns The Organics?

So this is a cool chart showing who owns the big organic companies. Its from LawGeek via Good Magazine. It connects well with some of my favorite books lately including The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, What to Eat, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Chennai 3: Scenes from a "Tapas" Restaurant

So you don’t realize how great you have it at one school until you trek off somewhere else and experience life there for a couple of days.  Here at ASB we have all these vans that are always carting us around wherever we want to go.  A van picks me up for school in the morning – there is a choice of four vans in the evening to take me home (none are quite as late as I would really like but that’s ok) and on special occasions – going to the airport, arriving at the airport, Saturday shopping, taking visiting teachers out to dinner and such vans are provided as well.  The Chennai School does not have this van situation.  There are no vans – teachers have to either buy cars or take taxis to school and back.  (And the taxi drivers in Chennai universally refuse to use their meters – so it’s a constant battle for a fair fare everyday)
Luckily, Scott and Maria have a car (a very small car) and yet 6 of us still managed to pile into it for the trip to the “tapas” bar.  The last time I remember piling into a car like that was in Raimbault’s car in Morocco on the way to this great restaurant called Entrecote (which is a story from a time way before the blog)  The verdict was still out on the “tapas” place but I became more concerned when I heard it was called Zara.  Zara, I have recently learned, is this huge – hip clothing retailer which all my well-traveled friends here in Bombay continuously rave about and say I would like.  The nearest Zara to Manchvegas is in New York City which is why I had never heard of it until moving here.  Anyway (this I can tell is going to be a blog entry full of digressions – apologies) Zara is a Spanish brand, although the word Zara has no Spanish meaning (wikipedia).  Here in India stores like to name themselves after well known stores from the west – and it is usually a sure sign that they will be nothing like the real thing.  For example I make small electronics purchases (surge protectors, alarm clocks) at a local store called Circuit City.  The first time you go to these similarly named places your expectations are high - at least until you have been tricked enough times anyway.
We eventually (apparently all good restaurants are like 45 min away from where the teachers live – not down the street like here in Bandra) arrived at Zara, which was located next door to a Copper Chimney (which is a great Indian chain) so that was a good sign.  The group of us (10 in all with the another car load) headed in, but alas not me because I was wearing shorts.   I had actually wondered about the shorts thing earlier in the evening due to my experience at Olive way back in August (read about it here) but I let it go since I wear shorts everywhere but Olive and never have a problem. I was thinking maybe this place was nicer than I thought but then everyone else was incredulous that this place wasn’t letting me in and so my expectations were lowered again. 
Sometimes I argue with people (believe it or not) and I can tell early on that I am going to eventually win the argument, not here, it became clear very early that I was not getting in to Zara sporting shorts. 
Scott and I figured we could go find me some pants and so we did.  A cool thing about India is you can walk outside on a mission for a pair of pants and actually have a reasonable chance of finding them.  Just past Copper Chimney there was this Indian store selling a wide variety of handicraft things including what appeared to be some women’s clothes.  So we dropped in.  They said they didn’t really have much for men’s pants but they had a couple of pairs.  Sure we replied.  The very friendly clerk pulled out this great pair of airy white “scrub like”, but nicer pants.  They were perfect and only 5 bucks.  Like a little kid with new sneakers I wore them out of the store.
We were back at Zara in less than 7 minutes total elapsed time and the maitre d’ was clearly a little miffed that I’d found pants so quickly but he didn’t say anything.  Everyone else hadn’t even ordered anything yet but were very amused.  I was wondering why this place had the no shorts rule since it was about on the sophistication level of your local Applebees but whatever.   The food was about the same.  The “tapas” consisted of a variety of Indian appetizers with some “world” selections thrown in – like chicken satay, calamari, and such.  It was sort of like going to a Chinese restaurant in the US and ordering chicken fingers, and boneless spare ribs.  They are good (especially the chicken) but we all know they aren’t Chinese.  More soon. 

Food, Glorious Food

So I feel like I have been the recipient of a large number of delicious dinners at many people’s places here in Bombay – a fact that Chad and I had been talking about lately.  So we decided that we would try to host a dinner together.  We would start small – a simple, little dinner party for 5.
While the number stayed at 5 it wasn’t long before I had a shopping list of about 40 ingredients that I needed to try and go find out in Bandra.  There is no Shaw’s here so shopping took a good long time, and involved at least 6 different places (fruit stand, vegetable stand, little market, flower shop, meat shop, etc.) 
At the end of all of this I was still missing unsalted butter and low-sodium chicken broth.  So I decided to check out this new place called Sante that everyone has been raving about.  It was really cool inside – cozy and clean with lots of hard to find products.  I immediately found top quality Danish unsalted butter so I was psyched about that.  They also had Hellman’s Mayo so I picked up a couple bottles of that too – (mayo rocks!) but alas the low sodium chicken broth was nowhere to be found.  The closest I had come earlier was boullion cubes (which for some reason Chad bought an entire case of! – but then he bought an iRiver too so…)
Anyhow I had already struck up a conversation with the proprietor – a nice Indian lady who recently opened the place and had lived abroad but returned to India – so I decided to ask her about my chicken broth dilemma.  Devin had told me time and again that Nestle makes great products so I was prepared to use my Nestle brand bouillon cubes if I had to but I was holding out for something better.  The proprietor (I should have learned her name) told me that she new exactly what I was talking about but hadn’t seen broth  in India, bummer I was thinking, and then she went on to say that she made her own – she said it took a while but she used leeks, and vegetables and then strained it carefully and froze it – it sounded like a labor of love.  I too had considered making my own broth (or having Salamina make it) but hadn’t really been planning that far ahead for this little dinner.  And then she offered to let me have some of hers if I would like it.  Of course, I would love it, and in no time at all one of her employees was handing me a plastic container of beautiful chicken broth.  She told him that he hadn’t brought me enough so he was off back to her house and then back again with another couple pints of the stuff.  The chicken broth worked great in the chicken piccata, and the warm kindness will not soon be forgotten.  People’s helpfulness never ceases to amaze me.  It was crazy how our little dinner ended up taking 7 hours to pull together but it was worth it.   I love sharing good food with friends.  More soon.

About the picture: Its not the best of shots (alright its pretty bad really), but it’s the only one of Sante I’ve got.  If you haven’t been there it’s a little deli across from Choice Foods near Pali Market a couple blocks away from my flat in Bandra.  Not to be confused with Bon Sante – a natural food store near, my apparently old, house in Manchester.

Coming Around Again

So Chad and I had seen this horse and buggy thing on the grounds of the hotel but we had no idea that the rides were free – or that the hotel had a few hundred acres of property to explore.  All of this new knowledge was thanks to Mr. Sherma who set us up with our free horse and buggy ride. He told me that the hotel had been cultivating a peacock garden and currently had a few hundred on the property.  I was hoping the peacocks would be strutting around magnificently during our ride but apparently that is a dusk and dawn thing only and so the ride was pretty much bird free.  We did spot about 5 of them hiding hither and yon but none of the shots are particularly blog worthy.
    The highlight of the buggy ride though was on the way back.  We were stopped by this snake-charmer guy who wanted us to watch his show.  Chad is pretty petrified of snakes and I, initially, just wasn’t super interested, but before we could blink an eye or say no the guy had opened up a box and had his hand about 3 inches away from a cobra.  He was twisting his hand back and forth like he was twisting a door knob which seemed to keep the cobra mesmerized.  This was a good thing because there was always the thought that the cobra might jump out of his little basket and come attack Chad or I.  The first cobra was soon followed by another and then soon he had three cobras in front of him – the hand waving was out of control.  He did of course bring out a flute / recorder like instrument to help out but the snakes seemed to respond better to the hand twisting. 
    When the guy put the snakes back in his satchel we figured the show was over but then he pulled out this massive python.  He said it was only a baby python but it still looked pretty big to me.  He immediately put the snake around his neck and then began imploring Chad and I to get a picture with the snake.
    After some cajoling I figured I would give it a shot.  The snake charmer insisted the python was just a baby and that I would be safe and plus it would make a good photo (hopefully for the blog I was thinking of course) and Chad was the one afraid of snakes not me – right?  I also remembered getting my picture taken with a snake ages ago at Benson’s Wild Animal Farm – this amusement park / zoo which used to be in Southern NH.  I remember looking a bit petrified in the photo so I wanted to do better this time.  The snake was cool – and I’m still alive so all is well.  It was however a bit scary when the python would stick out its tongue and lick my arm – two or three times of that and I gave the snake back to his owner. 
    Which brings us to the end of our time in Varanasi, our last night was spent switching hotels and pleading with the waiters at this sweet all you can eat kabob restaurant that yes, we did want some kabobs with vegetables on them even though we weren’t vegetarians.  I mean - I like meat but I don’t want to eat a meal of just meat – I’m not Fred Flintstone. The restaurant manager came over – the manager always comes over – and soon we were in kabob heaven - with all the veg and non-veg kabobs we could ever dream of eating.  Next time - the train to Bodhgaya and a great “small world” moment.  Keep reading and writing.  More soon.

About the pictures:  The first is me and my python friend.  Maybe my dad can dig out that old snake photo for x-mas.  Incidentally, in the picture I am wearing one of my favorite Melody Pines shirts which reminds me that Steve, Erika, and Colin are now joined by Jacqueline – so congratulations are due! I can’t wait to see them at x-mas.  The second photo captures our snake charmer friend from behind but you can see the cobras and their hoods pretty well.  Finally, photo three has the snake charmer and the baby python up close.

Two Birds, One Rock

So, despite the best of intentions I did not get out of school today on the 3:40 van - I did get my act together for the 5 o'clock van though.  Downstairs it turned out I was the only one heading home at that time.  So I hopped in the Scorpio (a very popular local SUV) and Hamid (one of the school drivers) and I started to head out.  Being curious I was looking around the cabin and noticed a large ham in the backseat.  So I asked Hamid about it and it turned out that after he dropped me off in Bandra he had to head back into town to exchange the ham at the commissary before heading back to Bandra to deliver it. The ham was supposed to be hamburger but there was some confusion about this so a ham was delivered instead.  Indians refer to hamburger (which they don't refer to very often) as ground beef.  I could probably write an entire post about interesting Indian vocabulary but not tonight - perhaps Brijin could write a guest column about this for me sometime.  Anyhow I digress - so I told Hamid that I would actually love to go to the commissary if that would be ok - which he was thankful for because it saved him well over an hour of driving.  It was great for me because I got some more groceries.  The commissary is pretty small but has some essential stuff - namely Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice which I have found locally but for $7 bucks a bottle (ouch)  - at the commissary it's pretty much normal price.  I also bought all the stuff to make Macaroni & Hamburg so I can attempt to recreate Memere's recipe this weekend.  Other purchases included some bagels, frozen lemonade, and some bacon and a can of ravioli (both of which I left of the list I relayed to Brijin) All the way I enjoyed talking with Hamid about his family, India, his criquet playing days in Kuwait, his mischevious childhood, and his friends.  In the midst of this he told me that he loved driving me and the other new teachers like Brijin around because we had conversations with him and talked to him like he was a real person and not an object to be ordered around.  I thought this was both cool and sad at the same time.  Hamid then wanted to take me to visit his friend who ran a food stand on the way home.  So we were off.  I was a bit skeptical about eating food on the side of the road but I was of course thinking that regardless of the outcome I could later write about the whole thing on the blog.  I had this sandwich that consisted of a mixture of potato, spices, and I think Hamid said goat meat that was then battered, deep fried, placed in a fresh roll, and served with green chutney.  I was initially skeptical (and had not been told about the goat meat) ,but it was awesome - and on the house.  On the way home Hamid told me that the chutney is sort of famous in the neighborhood with people buying up batches of it to take home for their own cooking - sort of like Puritan special sauce (although some people like to dump this down the drain instead of eating it) and that the sandwich normally costs 3 rupees - which is amazing because 3 rupees is only 6 cents - makes those 100 rupees pizzas suddenly very costly.  Keep the comments coming.  More soon.

About the picture:  I was really hoping this photo of the food stand would come out better, but alas it was dark and I am still a camera novice.  It made the blog anyhow.  I would have mentioned the name of the sandwhich I had but despite my best efforts I after three or four tries could still not catch its name.  Hamid is going to write it down for me tomorrow.

Up On The Roof

So this has been a three day weekend here in Mumbai, since tomorrow is Indian Independence Day.  Independence Day commorates India's freedom from over 150 years of British rule which ended on August 15th 1947.  I know all of this because I was just reading the Wikipedia entry on it.  Wikipedia - is an online encyclopedia edited my whoever wants to edit it - for example if you know a lot about the game of four square or the rubik's cube you could edit those articles - that said it is surprisingly accurate - controversial topics or articles occasionally get defaced since anyone can edit the pages but they are cleared up on average in under two minutes - both On The Media and Wired have done stories on Wikipedia recently.
Back to the topic at hand, I've been really glad we had three days off because I felt terrible all day long.  I woke up feeling miserable and being sick and that didn't go away.  I did manage to sleep for a good part of the day and then awoke again absolutely roasting in my apartment which is kept pretty cold so I knew I had a fever.  I went for my bottle of Advil which I of course forgot back in New Hampshire.  No problem I would trek out to the nearest chemist where you can get anything you want without a prescription - I mean I haven't tried to get vicodin or anything but I did get a prescription antihistimine there the other day without any problem.    Not so much today - the chemists are all closed on Sundays. 
Luckily AG and Les were around, and they not being foolish, had brought some Advil with them from NY.  So I am feeling much better now, I just had some soup - It was cheaper to order soup from a restaurant and have it delivered than to buy a can of Cambell's So up (imported) at the store - and am gonna try to get some sleep.  Hopefully I will continue to feel good in the morning.  I need to start writing up syllabuses and thinking about stuff like that.  I look forward to this almost daily writing hopefully the reading has been good as well.  Please continue to share your comments and thoughts.  More soon.

Incidently, everyone has said that getting sick is inevitable and it was just my turn - I feel like I did pretty good getting through three weeks of India with only a minor rash which is on its last legs.  But I would prefer not to feel like this again for a while.

About the picture: So we had a small gathering on Friday on our rooftop terrace.  This photo was taken a few minutes later than it should have been so its getting a bit dark.  The terrace is huge though and it's beautiful, great plants all around.  We are gonna all pitch in and buy some furniture for it and then try to use it as much as possible.

The DA Is On The Case

So lots has been happening here in Mad Mumbai, Les, AG and I were refused entry to the city's hottest dinner place - Olive - the other night because Les & I were wearing shorts.  Apparently Thursday is the night to go to Olive anyhow so tomorrow we are gonna try again.
  On the school front yesterday I attended probably the best, certainly most moving, staff meeting ever.  We watched clips from films - such as Tuesday's With Morrie, School of Rock, and Miracle and then talked about relevant school topics in small groups and debriefed.  The meeting was planned much the way a good teacher would craft a lesson.  Excellent.
  The biggest development of the past few days was the hiring of the DA.  DA stands for domestic assistant - Brijin's euphamism for maid.  Brijin (who has been wondering about whether or not she has made the blog) is my upstairs neighbor who I met in Austin.  She has clever verbage much like Ms. Smith which I take no shame in stealing.  She is also new to Mumbai and spent the last few years in sunshiny Aruba.
  So my DA is Salamina - she is Indian and very nice.  Before working for me she worked for an Indian family as a nanny - but now the kids are grown up so she had to find a new job.  Her cousin Rose works for my friend Diana which is how Salamina came to me. Connections - mean a lot in India (not unlike in the states) This has been a great development.  My laundry is done, my floors are freshly mopped, and today there was dinner waiting when I got home.  A chicken breast with a decent coriander sauce, some rice with a vegetable sauce, and a salad.  I never thought to buy salad dressing so I had it with salt and pepper which wasn't too bad.  Its been mostly a good week.

On the bad front - I found out last night that Peter Jennings had died - as Ms. Smith (is she even reading this blog?) - knows I loved Peter Jennings.  I will always remember watching his news brodcasts with my parents - whether it be in our little 3rd floor apartment on Dubuque street or the past couple of years on Riddle Place.  We watched him for hours the day the Challenger exploded in 4th grade (Ms. Letendre's (scrabble) class) on Ivy Street and again on New Year's Eve 1999 when he reported for like 25 hours straight.  Gone too soon.

About the picture:  So this is the kitchen, you can probably make out the sink (where I won't be doing any dishes), the $350 dollar convection microwave griller thingy, and my washing machine.  You may also notice the zip-lock bag hanging above the sink.  Salamina used it to store something yesterday - washed it - and taped it upside down to dry so that she can use it again tomorrow.  I found this mildy amusing, and unnecessarily thrifty but thought Tom Sutton (is Tom reading the blog?) my find it to be a helpful hint.  Keep reading and writing.  More soon.

To The JW Marriot

    So I woke up late to a beautiful day here in Bombay, the sun was bright and the rain decided to hold off until the middle of my taxi ride home but more on that tomorrow...  Today was the first day in as long as I could remember (not counting those days at the lake) that I didn't need to set my alarm to way up at some early hour.  Which was nice - but there was also this sense of - when I wake up tomorrow what am I going to do and when I do it who am I going to tell?  Alas my moments of self reflection were fleeting because shortly thereafter Anne-Gaelle and Les (Anne-Gaelle is a French teacher from Brittanie and Les is some sort of tech consultant - AG will be teaching with me in the high school ) called to see if would want to head over to check out the JW Marriot with them today. 
So today there we headed.  Our goal was to check out the bakery and hopefully buy some good breads - AG was thinking crossaints etc, then to have lunch and get a tour of the health club and facilities there that foreigners can join.  This nice afternoon excursion probably should have taken oh maybe 2 hours -- but nothing in India moves quickly...and we were there for five hours.
    We started our tour by checking out the bakery, surprisingly the bakery was great and cheap (hotels are notoriously overprices see heath club below) I bought a loaf of whole wheat bread, and a cheese danish for about a buck, AG got her croissants and a baguette (big surprise) and then we had lunch.
    Lunch was at the hotels Italian restuaurant and it was spectacular.  It was outrageously expensive by Indian standards (about 20 bucks each) but the buffet was all inclusive and they had everything to eat - the normal buffet part had chef's mixing up salads to order - then there were two spreads one with all sorts of antipasto and the other with desserts.  Chefs came around delivering entree choices to your table as they were made.  It was awesome but we won't be going there every day.  For comparisons sake last night a bunch of us ate out at an Indian restaurant - and ate well, we shared four entrees, appetizers, lots of bread, and rice, plus wine and beer and the bill was 30 bucks for the four of us.  The night before I ate out alone at this local chain called the Noodle Bar which is sort of on par with say Chili's (different theme obviously) and the bill was even less.  A value meal at McDonald's here costs me about 2 dollars.
We finished our tour with the health club which is very nice, but also really pricey - about $3000 a year, and had all those rules that annoy me about staying in hotels so I won't be joining it.  I guess there is a decent gym nearby with reasonable rates so I should probably check that out...thanks for reading keep the comments coming.  More soon.

About the picture: So there is this new newspaper in town called DNA - Daily News something and they advertise it on billboards everywhere - with terribly bad puns - sometimes in america when stores are going out of business they pay people to hold billboards up - I know I have seen them around like the Mall of NH.  They advertise the same way here in India to an extreme.  I took this shot in the car at the end of a row of about 30 guys all holding these DNA signs - I wonder if they would be able to afford to buy a copy of the paper.

On The Fridge

So they installed these brand new appliances in my place yesterday.  Which had to be very expensive but since I haven't been up on my price checking since late April I'm not sure.  Pictured at left is the new fridge.  Refrigerators are smaller pretty much everywhere you go outside of America but this one is pretty big by Indian standards.  (In case you were wondering the refridgerator - is currently stocked with nothing but beverages, plus a small pack of butter and a bottle of ketchup which were in the welcome kit - and It will probably stay that way since I plan on eating out whenever possible).  Another interesting thing about the refrigerator is that it has a lock on it - notice the black key.  I guess these are so that you can keep your staff members out of the fridge?  It is kind of weird.  There are a couple of great photos on the fridge too.  Send your pic in a comment or an e-mail and I'll get it on the fridge for next week.
There is also this crazy convection microwave thing.  I managed to get it to heat water today for coffee but thats about it.  It has all these crazy features but no traditional keypad.  I will get to the bottom of it.  I am thinking about adding microwave popcorn to the shopping list.  More soon.