from as long as I have memories about food ....I have loved bread ...just plain bread and jam or bread and butter ...even plain toasted bread and I am set .... however here in India people have this Huge hang up about bread ....small buns are called pav in Maharashtra ...however in Assam I heard people say bread is bad because bakers used their feet to knead dough ...till a few decades ago ...however in Pune it was machine made since before I was born ....
I remember a picnic during junior school when we were taken to the National Defence Academy in my city and we saw the automated machine making and slicing bread ....
I also like flat bread made with wheat flour and millet flour too ....in fact growing up in Maharashtra ....in school I would see most girls in class eating flat bread made with whole flour ....
I on the other hand used to carry rice based food a little too often ....even the breakfast for a Malayali from Kerala was made with rice and most of the breakfast items had my enemy number one ...Coconut ...
it was a marriage made in some hell for me .... anything with rice and coconut was horrid even if sugar was added ....I liked jaggery more than sugar anyways ...
my paternal grandparents ancestral home was set in a huge compound with 4 bungalows and 5 kitchens .... one kitchen was a separate building by itself....my dad's eldest sister whose husband was in the Merchant Navy used that kitchen to cook and feed her family of six boys, one girl, one live-in househelp and a few pet dogs ...quite a mad household it was with loads of shenanigans by her brood of boys ....
in the late 70s and early 80s there were only two bungalows and the extra stand alone kitchen in that compound ... which meant a huge play ground for us cousins ...
everyday early morning I would wake up and go visit all 3 kitchens in that compound to see ....if anyone had made something without rice and coconut ....steamed rice dumplings called 'idlis' were something I dreaded and the worst breakfast dish according to me was called Idiappam aka String Hoppers...in Malayalam ...idi means pound or box ...this dish was so called as it was made with rice powder which was usually pounded by hand those days ....
the minute I saw this ..'idiappam' I would lose my appetite ...and go to the other two kitchens to see if they had made anything different to eat .... somedays all 3 kitchens would have Idiappams and I would suddenly not feel hungry ....after a point my Dad would come searching for me and I would try and fib about having had breakfast .... finally after a round of discussions with his elder and younger sisters ....I would be produced before the troop of cousins, uncles and grandmother having their breakfast and ordered to eat ....
finally after a lot of dialogues ....my Dad would go get a leaf of the coconut palm and take the thin stringy twig from it and I would get a spank with it ....in front of my cousins and uncles ....and that was it .... my granny would get upset and take me under her wing and tick off her eldest son for what he had done ....by this time there would a great din in the dining area of my grandmother's house ....and one of my dad's brothers who pronounced my name as Dali instead of Dolly ...would make his favourite statement .....
''Dali got an Adiappam and then she ate the Idiappam'' ....to loud laugh by some male cousins ....Adi in Malayalam means a slap ....which meant ...I got a slap-appam and then I ate the 'idiappam' punning on words in Malayalam was that uncle's habit ....
and once I got a scolding or a whack from my Dad or my Mom ...I would look out for anyone coming from my maternal grandmom's house and I would go away with them ....and for the rest of the time that we were in Kerala ....I would ensure that I was not in same part of town as my parents ... I was lucky that my relatives would cart me around and listened to me more than they listened to my parents ... it was a month of Awsum fun and being pampered silly till we were in the train back to Pune and I would start getting my quota of reprimands ....
once my family was in my maternal grandmother's place and I was in my paternal grandparent's place ....I went and told my dad's oldest sister a huge amount of jazz about ...Mallu food habits and Maharashtrian food habits and this weird customs of eating in Kerala .....she was a very petite aunt and she had asthma ...however that day ...feeling sorry for me and my food preferences ....she made the most Awsum jalebis for me ....however when I saw the amount of time she had to spend making jalebis for such a large amount of people ....I never asked her for any more favours nor did I go on about diet till I was there ....my paternal grandfather had two wives and 13 children and most of my aunts and uncles had a minimum of two to three boys ....the largest number being six boys and they were mostly into Martial Arts ....the number of boys ensured that the there was a Constant state of Pandemonium chez my paternal grandma's place ...
it is only after I went away to far off Assam that I started missing Mallu rice based food items ....and I started making south Indian food for parties ....
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