CONFESSION
Today I had a psychological breakdown in Trader Joe, my favorite grocery store. I went in at a time when I had had a light breakfast, just before lunchtime, the worst time to go grocery shopping. But to make my breakdown more acute I had just returned from three weeks of eating first very spicy Sri Lankan food and then another three weeks of eating chili filled Gujarati food. I have already written about how Gujaratis in the United States eat only Gujarati food when at home and how difficult it must be for them to eat conventional American food. The two kinds of food are so very different. There is no resemblance between a Gujarati breakfast of bakra and kakra with potato curry along with sweet milky tea and an American breakfast of eggs over easy with bacon and hashbrowns with orange juice and black coffee. The only thing that makes them both breakfast is that they are eaten at the same time of the day.
In Sri Lanka the stringhoppers with yellow curry were delicious and in Gujarat, Praveen, the cook at the Ashram, who cooked a different kind of Gujarati breakfast each day, sometimes with puries and sometimes chappaties served with fresh, spiced and chilied vegetables, were not only tasty but were much better for me than Trader Joe‘s processed frozen meals from every corner of the globe.
But I discovered, just as Indians in the United States must, that my native food is what I am used to and that when I shift to something completely different my stomach rebels. It is not a question of which food is better, it is what my body is used to, and it isn‘t used to chili in everything. When I described some of the things that I have eaten in my life to Shilpa and Hasmukh at the ashram I could see their obvious disgust for some of the items, Greek calamari, South African ostrich (raw), pork or beef cooked in any fashion (after Shilpa had taken me to the goshala, cow stall, and had me stroke the cows for the obvious good health that hugging a cow would bring).
After six weeks of chili my stomach began to rebel. I knew the food was delicious but I was beginning to dream of Trader Joe‘s offerings. I couldn‘t help it.
And then today coming back from the kidney and hypertension office where Dr. Jones assured me that I was doing fine for my age and that my kidneys wouldn‘t give out before something else did, but still upped my blood pressure medicines and prescribed vitamin D, but without a lecture about what I was eating, but with the implication that I should eat moderately, I happened to drive by Trader Joe. And I went in and that is when I fell apart. I couldn‘t help it. Even as I tried to resist, my hands, beyond my control reached out for one frozen meal after another. French Onion soup, frozen latkes, Korean ribs, four cheese macaroni, North Indian (not Gujarati) eggplant curry, Greek lamb slices for gyros, spicy chicken wings, Inca corn, cassava chips. On and one and on. I knew my freezer space was jammed. I knew that I was being wildly irrational, but my body and the long repressed dreams of Trader Joe food overwhelmed me and silenced my disapproving mind. I was in heaven but headed to disaster. And when I got home, sure enough, I had no freezer space and a huge pile of frozen Trader Joe meals that said “keep frozen“ on them. I was in despair until Vickie Collins next door invited me for dinner tonight and after confessing my psychological breakdown I begged her for freezer space. She didn‘t lecture me. She could see my distress. And it turned out that she did have spare freezer space enough. But even then it pained me to part with my treasures and to know that to get to them I would have to go to her house and bring them back. She wondered what I could possibly do with frozen pork belly which I was ashamed to admit I had bought. I did hang onto and ate half the chicken wings for lunch and am counting on the 4 cheese macaroni to stay good for a couple of days until I can eat it.
And in a week or two I will start dreaming of Praveen‘s meals again, puffed up puries and chapatties spread with ghee, and will begin to tire of Trader Joe.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 