Real talk. I've tended to find Western vegan and vegetarian cuisine a little too easy on the palette (i.e bland). But I gotta tell thee, India's been good to me so far on the vegetarian front, and I'm finding it really easy to not require meat flavours in my meals. This isn't to say that I've gone vegetarian, just that things as they are have facilitated a significant reduction in my consumption of flesh.
I have cereal for brekkie, we get a veggie lunch made at work – the big boss is a vegetarian, so at lunch we’re all vegetarian. As for dinner I haven’t got myself a gas delivery sorted out yet so I've been heading to the kitchen that’s only about four or five doors down my street. It appears to be run by a Tamil family, and I've been making an idiot out myself using the few Tamil words Shasti taught me. Not everything they make is vegetarian - they have hellbutcher good fried chicken - but their vegetarian meals are dirt cheap, nutritious, filling, and taste wonderful.
Moreover, my landlord is a Muslim and he has requested I refrain from cooking or eating pork in my apartment. I'm also unsure of where to source quality meat that won't introduce unwelcome guests into my intestines. So, even when I start cooking for myself I doubt my meat intake will go up very much. I smirk at my own anxieties considering I've bought and consumed meat in the United States*.
My favourite veg dishes so far are kesri bhat, bhindi (okra) fry with rotis, masala dosa, paneer masala, palak paneer, and chappathi with lentil sauce and sambal. Oh, and the office cook makes a mint chatni that is to die for!
I plan to hit up my girl, Rimi for recipes. As I'm poor, rushed, and out to learn how to make some of this stuff for myself.
I suppose I could argue that I'd rather get sick in The States than in India, but I actually don't know if I would.
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