Eating Outside India

Has the word “Vegetarian” become so complex nowadays? Or has it been always like that? I don’t think any dictionary can give an exact meaning of the word vegetarian! To some people it is eating anything other than meat, eggs and milk. To few others it can include milk and for some the subset extends to egg products like ice creams, cookies and cakes. There are some elite groups, who dare to extend this list to fish varieties and claim themselves vegetarians. Whew! With so many different people claiming their own synonym for the sensitive word vegetarian, it’s not surprising that, it has evolved to become a complex word.

This writing is for the non meat eating, including fish and the non egg eating with the exception of ice cream and cakes, people. It is these people, irrespective of the synonym for the word vegetarian, suffer a lot, as the variety for them is shrunk, when they land up in a place where the synonym for vegetarian, includes the ultimate word MEAT itself!

So here I really am, in a land where vegetarians are very rare and you cannot find a hotel that is purely vegetarian (Not that I know of – as the hotels will run into bankruptcy, as the majority of the population is omnivorous.) I have frequented many a hotels here at Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah, both Indian and American types.

Let me begin with the first hotel that I visited and that too on the day I landed in SLC. It’s called the Olive Garden. Considered to be a little expensive by some of my American colleagues, (Yep – they call it very expensive and I know few Indians, who pay this Garden, a visit for their Saturday dinner – Now let’s not argue if us Indians are profligate.) has a variety of great food for Non Vegetarians. I had to choose (Oops there was only one vegetarian soup as far as I could remember) from one vegetarian soup and 2 vegetarian dishes. I was thinking, I had more choice back at home, where only one cooked for just 3 persons and the variety was definitely more than 3 on a Saturday. Should I say that, I missed my dear folks back home, during the first dinner that I had at SLC?

There are about 3 Indian restaurants which I have visited and they do have quite a variety for my palates. Indian restaurants here always have both the names and the menu pertained strictly to North India, despite the large percentage of Indian population being South Indians. All the more, a valid reason, why I long to eat south Indian recipes like Dosas and Idlies with Sambar or Vadas.

One of my colleague and his wife invited a selected lot (I would call the lucky lot) once for lunch and once for dinner (Of course both the lunch and the dinner were on different dates). The menu to my surprise included my favorite Dosas, with varieties of chutney and Bajjis. Those were happy hours!

Hmmm – I still miss the wonderful Idli sambar that my mom used to prepare. However strong I convince myself that the recipes that I cook, has come out well, I must admit that they are nowhere near the delicious food that my mom prepares for me. The secret behind that is that, she adds some more ingredients to the recipes that she prepares, like love, affection, blessings, goodwill and what not? It is these that make the food that she prepares very special and a taste that fails to accompany in every other food!

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