We are simple, down-to-earth folks. Our food is ordinary, healthy, seasonal, and readily available. We get some vegetables from the nearby store, turn them into delicious curries, sambar, or koottus, cook rice or chapatis, and eat with relish and great satisfaction, belching with abandon. Dinner offers varieties like idlis, dosas, puris, wonderful upmas, and more. Just wash your hands, feel the heat, taste the love that has gone into the cooking, and eat. Yummy!

Even when we went to hotels, I often observed that people would ask for the menu—there were no printed menus during my younger days—and the server would reel off the names of various dishes at an unfollowable speed. After listening with closed eyes to these unheard-of names, they would often settle on idli, dosa, or puri. So ordinary were our palate’s needs.

But as we soared into the sky to explore new lands—where were these delectable foods? The flight from Chennai to Singapore was okay. Indian food. But even choosing the type of food required some training. Asian Vegetarian for us, of course. On the flight from Taipei to Seattle, I was given something that looked like rice. After confirming just under a hundred times that it was vegetarian—no eggs, no meat, right?—I tasted it without knowing what it was called. After all, I was quite young at the time and did feel hungry. It tasted good, or so it seemed.

My first exposure to American foods led me to develop an incurable distaste for pasta. The reason? Unknown or forgotten. Nearly 23 years after eating that rice look-alike food on the flight from Taipei—which I had gobbled unknowingly—I now find out that it was a kind of pasta. Whaaat? Naturally, my family members, tired of my food fads, ask me, “You did relish that pasta? Why not now?”

What to say!

To be continued... 59 - Part 2 Food Fad - The World of Pizza, Pastas