Idlis for breakfast, a travel tale from the road

@brittarnhild

This blog, Caffe Avec, was born in 2009, out of the pure love of the many wonderful coffee houses in Krakow, Poland. Over the years the blog themes here have varied, but kind of a red thread through them all has been my love for travels, and often my love for food as I travel east of the sun, west of the moon. For the moment I am reading A Fork in the Road, a lonely planet antology edited by James Oseland, a book filled to the brim with food tales from all over the world. My mouth is watering while I read, my everyday cooking is getting more colourful and with flavours which I don´t use often, and I walk down memory lane to food and meals I have had on my many travels. Several days now I have posted food and travel tales in my main blog, Britt-Arnhild´s House in the Woods, but with still baskets full of travel tales, I decided I would continue to remember them here, in Caffe Avec. So make yourself a pot of coffe, and come along.

 

2008 was the year I turned 50. A milestone, and I decided to give myself a golden birthday present - three weeks in India to visit my penpal Carolyn, a woman the same age as my own mother, originally American but married young to an Indian man a few years her senior, a student og Gandhi.

Carolyn and her driver  met me at Bangalore airport at five in the morning. I was tired after a long night with little sleep on the British Airway´s plane. Everything was still dark and quiet when we drove through Bangalore and continued south towards Mysore. A three hours´drive, three hours when all I could do, all I wanted to do, was to breath the air, watch the daylight appear, pinching my arm trying to believe that I was finally here. I was in India.

Later in the day I wrote in my journal:
It takes about three hours to drive from Bangalore to Mysore, and when we were about halfway we stopped for breakfast. A small café along the road, a place where Carolyn uses to stop when she drives between the two citis. A big, open builting, where monkeys climbed on the roof and cows standing in a small stall between the room where we ate and the toilets. No walls, only pillars to hold the roof. The name of the café is Kamat, and we ate idli and wade - steamed rice and lentils wrapped in banana leaves, and rise fried into donuts.

A first taste of India. And I was lost.

 

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Several morning during my three weeks in India that first time, Carolyn and her maid made idlis for me. And I blogged about it of course. Here is a post from October 24th 2008:

          We are up early in the mornings. Breakfast is not until 8.30, so we get alot done before that. Carolyn usually starts breakfast and then Hayma comes up at 8 to help her. I enjoy some reading time out on the veranda before breakfast and then I usually spend some inside to read and write some emails. Yesterday morning, when I was at the computer, Carolyn cried from the kitchen; "Britt-Arnhild, come here, there is something I'll show you."

          She was in the kitchen, making idli, the same food as I got the first morning when I had my first taste of Indian food.

          Idli is some kind of rice and legume dumplings. The rice and legumes grounded and soaked over night, then damped the next day.

         We ate it with a green chutney made of some spicy leaves from the garden, and I couldn't resist making a colourful plate and take a photo for you.

  

Thank you Carolyn for all the great, healthy food you are making.

In The House in the Woods we usually have bread and cheese for breakfast, or oatmeal porridge. What do you have?

Comments

[Kristi Jalics]

Your Indian breakfast looks lovely. In a charming book called The Marriage Bureau for Rich People (which has more serious things to say than the title suggests but which says them in a light gentle way) the wife is often making Idlis for breakfast. I never saw a picture of what they look like, so I thank you! I often have a scrambled egg and whole wheat muliti-grain toast. And coffee!

[Susan]

Thanks for this post, for sharing your experience in India with us. What a fabulous gift you gave yourself!

[mardelle]

I must ask my Indian friend about idli's -she has never mentioned them. they look wonderful. Our breakfast: My husband always has oatmeal with nuts and blueberries - I have my coffee (with milk) and later a whole grain muffin or granola with a lot of nut and blueberries (we are trying to be healthy)