Nom Nom Nom

What I eat at Rishi Valley
Rice -- lots of rice. Plain boiled white rice. Steamed rice. Tomato friend rice. Onion fried rice. Other types of yummy fried rice. Rice every day.
Biryani -- we only have biryani on special occasions. We have egg biryani and paneer (see below) biryani. Usually, biryani is made with mutton or chicken and is equivalent to the Russian plov. It is rice fried with meat and veggies and has an orangish color and is absolutely delicious. My mom used to make bomb plov. The capital of Andhra Pradesh, our state, is Hyderabad, which is famous for it's amazing Hyderabadi biryani. I hope to have some before I leave India. :)
Dhal -- a thick soup-y type deal made of lentils. You mix it with your rice.
Sambar -- a vegetable stew-like concoction. It's is delicious. You also mix this with your rice. We have sambar every day. Nom nom nom.
Chapati -- an unleavened flatbread made from wheat flour on a skillet
Roti -- an unleavened flatbread made from some other type of flour. Thinner than chapatis.
Dosa -- a delicious thin pancake made of dough with buttermilk usually accompanied by sambar and coconut groundnut chutney. Nom nom nom. We have these for breakfast at least once a week.
Masala dosa -- the above accompanied with potatoes stewed with some vegetables. It's pretty awesome.
Idli -- little fat cakes (about two or three inches across and an inch in thickness) made of fermented unhusked black lentils and rice. They are white in color. They are also served with sambar and coconut chutney at breakfast.
Potatoes -- surprisingly for me, there are a lot of potatoes in Indian cuisine. Win!
Vegetables -- there is always a vegetable component at lunch and dinner. The veggies vary. They are usually fried or perhaps boiled/steamed. We often have cauliflower, green beans, okra (this is the first time in my life I've seen okra cooked any other way than southern deep-fried), potatoes, chickpeas, or beans. I think the cauliflower is my favorite with okra a close runner-up. :)
Paneer -- this is Indian cheese. It tastes nothing like mozarella. It comes in little cubes always in some sort of sauce. By American standards, it tastes closer to tofu than cheese (maybe some weird variety of goat cheese, but far less stinky). Paneer is probably the least stinky cheese I've ever had. (Stinky being good, the way cheese is supposed to be! Stinky = cheese flavor.)
Pickle -- this is the equivalent to Indian hot sauce. Usually, it's pickled mangoes (or another vegetable) smothered in a red spicy sauce. You mix this in with your food, usually the rice and sambar. Food at Rishi Valley isn't very spicy, so pickle is always passed around the table.
Soup -- soup is always available at lunch and dinner. It's usually a clear broth, well spiced. Somehow, Indian soup has somewhat of a sour taste, which is delicious if you're expecting it.
Fruit salad -- is served on Wednesday nights. It usually consists of bananas, apples, pineapples, grapes, and perhaps guava. It is the absolute BOMB and comes in a cream sauce.
Pasta -- pasta night is Wednesdays! Sometimes, we get noodles and sauce, but more often, it's pasta bakes, which are absolutely delicious. I always ask for seconds. Wednesday dinner is one meal where I don't consume rice.
Western food -- Western food night (think pizza, veggie burgers, etc.) is Saturday night. It's always funny to see what they'll come up with. It's also a nice way to spice up the week. :)
Eggs -- eggs are available three to four times a week for breakfast in various forms: hard boiled, scrambled, and as omelets. Eggs are available for dinner usually once a week, either in an egg biryani (very rarely) or in a brown delicious sauce.
Toast -- toast and jam are served for breakfast for most of the week. The jam, I'm sure, is natural and home made. It's not very sweet, which is just how I like it. Toast is usually available for breakfast at least 5 times a week, with the other two days offering dosas or idlis. Sometimes, there is butter to be had with toast. At other (quite inexplicable) times, toast will be available for dinner.


What I don't eat at Rishi Valley
Meat (Rishi Valley is strictly vegetarian and no meat is allowed on campus)
Tofu (there's no tofu available at Rishi Valley!)
Buttermilk -- which is a watered down version of regular buttermilk. Indians love to drink this after meals to aid with digestion
Curd -- yoghurt. This is sometimes mixed in with the rice.
Raitha -- a yoghurt based sauce mixed with spices, such as mint, corriander, cumin, cayenne pepper, etc. Often has onions in it, as well. This sauce can be put on anything, especially (you guessed it) your rice!


How I eat at Rishi Valley
At every meal, I eat with my hands. The ritual is as follows: there are a number (about 14?) of sinks lining the wall of the dining hall. I wash my hands with soap provided (oooh, also, Indian soap dispensers are AWESOME), and then enter the dining hall. Last semester, junior meals were served exclusively on banana leaves (palm tree leaves). I think senior breakfast and lunch was also on banana leaves, but I can't be sure. You'd sit down at an already laid out banana leaf and pass around the little metal buckets of rice, sambar, dhal, vegetable, and the bowl of pickle. You take as much as you want and put it on your leaf and then dig in with your hands. When you were done, you'd excuse yourself, put any remaining scraps in a big plastic tub (for compost) and throw away the leaf in another tub (also later re-used for compost and other uses). For senior dinner (and perhaps other senior meals -- I don't know, because I never went to them), there would be tables set up in a cafeteria-style setting and you'd come up, grab a metal plate and little metal cups (for your dhal and sambar and soup to prevent them from mixing) and take your share. Then, you could sit and eat with your hands and socialize. A water jug is always present at every tables and cups are set out for everyone. There are 8 people to a table. There are about 4-6 staff/faculty tables in the middle of the cafeteria. After you're done, you wash your hands using the outside sinks and soap.

Important note: you only only only use your right hand when you eat. You never use the left. (Well, okay, you can use the left to pour yourself some water, so you don't get the jug dirty. But your left hand never makes contact with the food.) This is because toilet paper is not widely used in India, and the left hand is used for doing "dirty" things, like washing yourself after using the toilet, taking off shoes, etc. This is actually a huge challenge for me, because when you have to tear the roti or chapati, it's really hard to do using only one hand! But I'm learning and getting better at it... You're also not supposed to use the left hand to wave or pass things to other people, but this is a challenge for me, too. It's not something I consciously think about, so sometimes, when I catch myself waving with my left hand I feel awkward, because I was trying to be nice and friendly but ended up being disrespectful. Womp womp.

Now, during the main school break, we've stopped using the banana leaves for some reason. And we have to wash our own dishes when we're through at the washing sinks inside the cafeteria. (I think due to the water shortage we were experiencing when I first arrived, the water to these sinks was disconnected. Now, after the first rainy season and with the second rainy season coming in full swing, I think they're letting everyone was their own dishes again.)


When I eat at Rishi Valley
7:00am-7:30 - junior breakfast
8:00am-8:30 - senior breakfast -- you all know my love to sleep in, so I obviously go to senior breakfast

12:10pm-12:40 - junior lunch -- I go to junior lunch, because it corresponds with REC lunch break
1:00pm - 1:30 - senior lunch

6:45pm-7:20 - junior dinner
7:45pm-8:20 - senior dinner
I usually go to junior dinner, but if I'm working late in the computer lab, I will sometimes go to senior dinner. Also, when there is a guest speaker or a movie (every Saturday night), I'll go to senior dinner, because those events usually start around 8:20, and it makes no sense to bike all the way back to REC and then all the way back to main campus within an hour (and there's not much to do on main campus after dinner).

Just FYI: juniors are grades 4-8 and seniors are grades 9-12. The seniors are significantly louder than their younger counterparts. :)