Eat With Your Hands
There is an art form with eating with your hands here in the state of Gujarat. You use your right hand to eat and your left for water. Typically, you wash your hands before and after with lemon and water. To pick up the food, you press and rip off the roti or puri or other bread with one hand, form a little scoop with your fingers, scoop up the aloo or paneer, and use your thumb to move into your mouth.
I found this YouTube video for a visual.
So I learned a little more about the Silver Plate…the Gujarati thali, apparently one of the most balanced meals of all Indian cuisines. The silver plates are actually originally known as kansa (a five-metal alloy) known to improve memory and purify blood. The thali usually offers varieties of vegetables – from seasonal ones to potatoes to dal – all good sources of anti-oxidants, vitamin A and C, fiber and carbohydrates.
Eating from the hands is made even more splendid when eating from the earth. I had the fortune to go with a friend to his ancestral home about 2 hours away, where his family has a farm. The people who have farmed his family’s land have been doing so for 100 years. They farm tobacco and cotton. This community is wonderfully inclusive – you can walk down the street and a neighbor will invite you in for amla (from Indian gooseberry trees – left photo) or you can pick wild raspberries straight from the trees.
Papayas grow straight from the trees and we drank from freshly-cut coconuts. It was simply wonderful not just trying new foods, but being invited to a warm home, eating home-cooked meals, and enjoying the company of strangers who become like family over the course of one meal.
What language barriers? Nothing brings people together like food.
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