Lost in Baltimore (I hate mess II)

I complained and complained again about the kind of food that I would get in all my messes in Pune. But I will be extremely grateful to anybody who can bring Nana’s “Swami Samartha” or “Harikrupa” to Baltimore, let alone “SP’s Biryani House” or “Mahesh Lunch Home” or “Swarajya” (near Nilayam talkies), some of my hot favorites from Pune. The food here can be described in 1 word, amm… no I can’t think of one word. Let me describe it in 2 words, it sucks.

It all started when I boarded a British Airways plane from Mumbai. For all the good things it offered us, an ontime flight amidst deluging rains of Mumbai, a nice 5 hours halt at the busiest airport Heathrow and some good movies onboard and of course, no lost luggage, the food was a true test of one’s character. We were served some orange juice, which tasted like anything but oranges (and wasn’t even sweet), a horrible tasting pack of butter, and the contents that we had to use to make our coffee from, were extra-ordinarily different in taste for us to make a good one. To add to the woes, the London-Baltimore flight had a vividly smiling Jennifer Anniston look-alike attendant saying to us “Sorry, chicken is finished, we only have beef and salami”, thereby rendering us vegetarian (No, I have still not gone on with the red meat, apart from my favorite pet lamb). And by vegetarian, they literally meant vegetarian as the food had plenty of green plants and leaves. I don’t know what the hell it was that they served us as it was extremely painful to eat. I had to manage on the cakes that were on offer.

Down here in our School Campus, as currently summer is going on here and hence there are very low crowds on campus, there is only 1 place where we get some food. And that place only serves Pizzas. I could find the reason of the fact why the biggest human beings I have ever seen are after I came to the US, hidden right there in the cheese of those pizzas. It’s all bread poured in cheese, which these people can eat day in and day out and not consume the fat that it accumulates on their bodies. Ok, topic changed, I am not here to do some social work by doing research on the obesity problem of the US. But how can one serve every chicken dish made with a lot of sugar in it? I don’t ask you to consider the Indians who are going to eat it, but do some justice to the chicken at least by giving it a taste of some spices.

Yesterday, I had gone to a Chinese restaurant here and could testify an old saying, Chinese eat any crawling living being (probably apart from kids). They served us with hot and sour soup which was neither hot nor sour. There were some unidentifiable items, which we dared not try.

After seeing all this, I know that however I avoid it; I have to accept that I have to cook, and be really good at it. Not for Amit, not for Anubhav, not for Ajay, not for the new students who are temporarily staying with us, but for my own hunger. There is no other solution to soothe your taste buds when you come here. You got to bite the bullet and lift the pan and cut the onions and put the spices. Otherwise, you will end up spending all your money and eat pizzas and bulge your bodies like lot of the natives here, or you simply die of hunger.