Time for the Colonel

We celebrated Labor Day a day late this year. For complicated reasons having to do with the prescribed number of holidays per year, Don got today off. It is a holiday, Krishna's birthday, known as Krishna Janmashtami, but this isn't one that allows most people to skip work.

Anyway, Don and I have a tradition of getting fried chicken on Labor Day, so we headed off to Commercial Street a day late to get our bucket from KFC. There is Original Recipe in India, but we got the Hot & Crispy, which it definitely is on both counts -- spicier than Popeye's back in the US, that's for sure. KFC is definitely expensive here -- a bucket of 12 pieces cost 375 rupees ($9), and that didn't come with any sides but it did come with a couple Pepsis. Keep in mind that you can get a cheap but good lunch here for less than 40 rupees.

Commercial Street, as you might expect from the no-nonsense name, dates from when the area was under the direct control of the British Raj. This was where many merchants set up shops to sell to the soldiers and their families, and it remains an area with one shop after the other. While we were there, we also made a purchase we'd been thinking about for a long time -- a mixer grinder. With this, we'll be able to make so many more Indian recipes, e.g. chutneys, dosas, and idlys.

We should have bought one a year ago, when we first arrived, but the problem was that it took a while to get our mind around even basic Indian cooking. Also, the mixer grinders are not super-cheap, so it didn't seem like a good investment when we were just going to be here for a few months at a time. But by now we didn't care, we plunked down our 1600 rupees ($40) and got our mid-market model.

Combine this with our coconut scraper, which bought a few days ago to get at the inside of a coconut, and we're ready for just about anything a recipe book can throw at us. Pictures and recipes will be forthcoming, as soon as I think of something good to make. Suggestions, anyone?



Here's what a mixer grinder looks like: