The most important part of my day: Food

Feeding the guest is very important to Bengalis, and more often than not I have to beg people not to feed me more.  People are generally surprised that I can’t consume the amount of rice that they can, and I simply don’t eat as much here as I do even in the U.S.  Rashida, who does the majority of the cooking for me, is always watching to see what I like and don’t like… and this time I have successfully convinced her that I would prefer to eat more veggies and fruit than meat.

Breakfast can be a variety of things, but the main staple (for me) is ruti, a flat bread that looks, and sort of tastes like, a flour tortilla.  Rashida will often make a hard-boiled egg, or noodles, or aloo bhaji (fried potato slices); she often has papaya from her own tree.

Lunch is always with rice and a few types of veggie dishes, sometimes with chicken, fish, or little shrimp.  The shrimp kind of scare me, because the still have a semi-hard shell, but they’re so small that i can’t imagine taking off the shell of every single one.  Plus, they’re REALLY good in a milk-based curry.  Vegetables vary; they’ve been expensive lately, but usually some combination of spinach, potatoes, pumpkin, and gourd.

Dinner, for me, is small: again with ruti, and usually smaller portions of whatever was for lunch.  Often when I return to my room I take down a few gulps of 7up.  It may not be true that it helps with digestion, but I like to believe it so that I can indulge in that small luxury.  I also have a supply of ‘biscuits’ (semi-sweet crackers, really), peanut butter, and cereal in my room.  The peanut butter and cereal obviously came with me from Dhaka.