In case you weren't already jealous....

Have we written yet about the food in southern India?

Well, as Joy Kobayashi would say: Delicious.

Most "Indian food" we eat in the U.S. is northern Indian food (things like Aloo Palak, naan bread, samosas, etc.). I'm a big fan, and I look forward to chowing down when we head up north.
(I should pause to note that I'm generally wrong about most things, so I fully anticipate that I have irked someone out there by referring to naan as northern Indian food, or by saying that most Indian joints in the U.S. serve northern Indian food. In case I haven't done this already on this blog, I am hereby issuing a generic apology and mea culpa for virtually everything espoused on this site. But since I'm on vacation, I'll leave it to y'all to Wikipedia it yourself if you don't like my sweeping pronouncements.)

Okay, so southern India food. Delicious. Usually we eat "set meals" for lunch consisting of rice and several different kinds of curries, yogurts, and other culinary concoctions. They're all-you-can-eat. They're most often vegetarian (and I love the fact that they refer to things as "veg" and "non-veg," like vegetarianism is the standard and a meat-based diet is deviant).

Here is one version:

Version 2 served on a banana leaf

They're also super-cheap. Yesterday, Deb and I had an absolutely incredible all-we-could-eat lunch for 55 cents each. Throw in a Pepsi each and the whole meal for both of us was $1.70.

Then there are dosas -- the standard version, eaten for breakfast (or dinner), is a pancake-like thing made out of lentil flour, filled with mashed potatoes and onions (and some other veggies) and served with a few side sauces (like coconut chutney and a spicy tomato sauce). You might not think that mashed potatoes inside a fried pancake sounds tasty for breakfast, but you'd be wrong. They're incredible.

Then there are the sweets:

The only thing really lacking is good ice cream (we can only get it in the big cities). That, and the fact that "milkshake" means "milk with flavoring."

Unfortunately, we're leaving the south tomorrow morning, flying way up north to Darjeeling (land of tea and British toy trains). Ta-ta!