The Evening’s Vegetable and Milk Shopping

A photo story from India

We got a surprise visitor today: my hubby’s big brother dropped in — all the way from New Delhi! He took the Rajdhani Express, a simply lovely and reliable train that takes just seventeen hours to get here from India’s capital.

That’s the Rajdhani on the Jamshedpur railway station platform. This picture was taken a couple of months ago. Photo by the author.

When my hubby’s big bro walked into our home and met his very surprised mother, we were at our dental clinic. We had back-to-back appointments and couldn’t get away for three hours or so.

When we did get back, we found him with a list off the Internet. A list of fourteen places to eat at in our city.

I told him that the best place to eat at in Jamshedpur was our home, and that there was no way we(my cooks with ingredients purchased by me) would be beaten by restaurant cooks when it came to taste, health and hygiene.

The first stop was of course, the vegetable shops.

My brother-in-law and my mum-in-law (his mom! Isn’t this is great way to celebrate your mom, to go buy veggies with her? I love this photo.) Photo by the author.

We picked up some capsicum and okra. With some coriander for a green chutney, we were set for a healthy dinner which would be lip-smacking to boot.

Here’s a pic of the shop I picked up the milk from. Photo by the author.

I include the milk shop pic because I’ve been to American supermarkets which look nothing like this. Milk was sold in American shops in plastic jugs!

Here we get milk in half and one liter plastic pouches.

Yes, I know it isn’t very environmentally friendly to have so much plastic tossed out everyday.

So, back to dinner!

We soaked some lentil grains for yogurt vadas, which are savory and eaten with a tangy tamarind chutney. I’ve put the pictures in a collage to avoid inundating you with pictures!

Picture collage of yogurt vadas, from soaking, to grinding to a paste that is deep-fried into the doughnut-shaped savory lentil cakes to decorating with the tamarind chutney. Photos and collage by the author.

There’s plenty of food items our visitor will have on his trip here — he’s home and in his mother’s and father’s house after all. My husband and I are merely the facilitators. I’ll try and post as many of the food pics as I can, courtesy the new Medium app that ALLOWS US TO PUBLISH OFF THE PHONE!

Thank you, Medium!