Source: The Motherload

Yes, I went to McDonald’s three times when I was in India because I’ll admit, the McAloo and fries were really, really good there. Plus it was so nice, friendly, and fancy. But in the U.S., I haven’t been in one in a long, long time.  There are multiple reasons why, one of the big ones being that little link between fast food and obesity? Yeah…it’s kinda true. So before you agree to to buy your little ones a meal just to collect all 10 figurines, please:

• Check out this report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest on kid’s meals and obesity, and
• Read Amy Clark of MomAdvice”s piece on how to prepare a healthier, home-made Happy Meal (Thanks, Amy, for a brilliant idea!)

Beyond the health reasons, however, there are other benefits to depend less on take-out and drive-throughs…

…and more on home-cooked, family meals. I know that many of us are so busy that cooking every day seems impossible. But find the time now or pay for it later, as they say.

Study after study shows that eating (healthily) together as a family not only reduces the chance of obesity, but also can lead to lower risk of depression and increase cognitive development. Eating together allows families to share stories and pass down family traditions and knowledge. Much learning happens in the kitchen and around the dining table so whether children are helping stir the pot or set the table, eating together as a family has many immeasurable benefits. Check out this quick video about how obesity can be partly attributed to the decline of the family meal:

Source: Snagfilms

Keep in mind it’s not just eating together physically. Eating fast food together or a home-cooked meal in front of a television isn’t quite what this video is talking about. It is eating healthily together, conversing, interacting, debating, learning, sharing.

Now that sounds like a real  happy meal.

Instead, we blasted up I-95 in Belinda’s Hobbit-sized, strawberrilicous, red bug,  ‘running’ from one meal to the next, pillaging plates of marvelously delectable and tragically unhealthy cuisine.

Meal Itinerary:

10:00am: First stop on our culinary exploration was an airstream parked on some random corner in NC to pick up a box of Daisy Cakes’ incredible Red Velvet and Grapefruit/Pink Lemonade cupcakes (www.eatdaisycakes.com).  We managed to eat only 1 cupcake each prior to breakfast.

10:20am:  Next stop, Parker & Otis (http://www.parkerandotis.com/store/index.php), an attractive, urbanish, warehouse-y, gourmet grocery store and restaurant with an outdoor seating area in the back.  Quickly ordered the #3 from the breakfast menu (Two eggs, any style, bacon, and cheddar biscuit) and washed it down with a coffee for me/strange juice for Belinda.

11:00am:  Buy essentials from Parker & Otis (candy, bag of chips and water).

12:30am: Invited ourselves to a friend’s brothers’ house for lunch.  A refreshing, heart healthy/cleansing salad with mesclun greens, ripe, pale orange mangos and grilled chicken was served with crusty white bread.  For desert, farm stand strawberries and creamy cheesecake bites that obliterated any benefits the salad might have offered.

3:00pm:  McDonalds for ‘fish sandwich and ‘chicken’ nuggets.  So bad, and yet, so good.

8:00pm:  Arrive at destination.  After eating three days worth of calories appropriate for 300-pound man, we didn’t exactly feel spritely.  But rather than drive off a cliff, I topped off my day with a diet pill and phone call to Weight Watchers.

This was one happy day. Happy Meal it was. The McDonald’s was super nice and clean with upbeat funky dance music playing. Great atmosphere.

The food. Oh, the food. Now I cannot tell whether it is because I have missed fluffy, soft buns (flatbreads are wonderful, but they are, well, flat) and in India, the McDonald’s buns are just as the image depicts – it is soft and fluffy. In the U.S., the soft fluffy bun often comes out squished and smashed. Not here. It was wondrous. I knew what I wanted to order – the biggest thing on their menu, but their other items all seemed just as good. McAloo (potato) Tikka sandwich, Salad Sandwich…their value menu starts at Rs. 20 (about $0.40).

As beef is not sold here, I ordered the Chicken Maharaja Mac, their version of the Big Mac. It came with fries, and I ordered a Coke float. The bun…oh, I talked about the bun. The special sauce was a mayonnaise spiced with chili powder and other spices familiar in Indian cooking. The fries were perfect – doesn’t have that meat flavor – but perfectly cooked and salted. The ketchup came in two little containers, and it was sweeter than what is found in the U.S. The Coke float was splendid. I could not have asked for more.

It is interesting how in the U.S., I often think of McDonald’s as the place of last resort – they are great for bathroom emergencies on the highway, and the occasional I-need-chicken-nuggets urge. Otherwise, I tend to avoid them. While I did go to nice one in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin with super friendly employees, most of the ones in the larger cities are impersonal and not the cleanest. Here, in India, however, it seems to be a place where at least the middle/upper class go. The food is amazing, the place is nice, and the employees really do smile.

So is McDonald’s a “good” or “bad” thing for Indian culture and cuisine? Diabetes and other diseases more commonly found in the U.S. are on the rise in India – especially among the wealthy. Is that due to an increase in fast food that is yet accessible to the lower socio-economic classes?

I’m not sure the answers to these issues, or whether there is even an answer. I do know that I thoroughly enjoyed my meal at a place that is familiar to me, and at the same time one that I usually avoid. An amazing sandwich for Rs. 125 (less than $3).

Talk about a Happy Meal.

Of course, one of the first sights is good ole McDonald’s. I know it gets a lot of flak in the U.S. – I actually haven’t been to one in the U.S. in a long, long time, but I’m very tempted to try the one here. It is a finer dining experience, apparently, AND they deliver.

My life pretty much revolves around my breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Most of the meals here are vegetarian, but it’s a sort of vegetarian that is friendly to meat eaters. I don’t even seem to miss meat too much…sort of. Apparently, unless you go to the fanciest restaurants during the summer, beware meat because storage is not always guaranteed to be cold enough to avoid any bacteria. Have I eaten meat anyways here? Oh, yes.

There are certainly some familiar foods for Americans who love Indian food in the U.S. – masalas, chana (chickpeas), naan – the usual suspects. Here, though the food is much spicier and at least for my palate, far tastier than some of Indian food in the U.S. which tends to dull down its flavors. A standard lunch or dinner is started with a soup here such as spinach and corn soup (photo 6). Some sort of bread, such as dosa or naan, usually accompanies a dal (lentils) or a paneer (cheese) dish such as paneer tikki masala or a palak dish (spinach). On occassion, we get some meat such as the murgh mukhani (butter chicken) (photo 4) or fish such as the fish masala (photo 3).

The spices here have an added oomph and flavor, and some dishes are more unique than anything I have ever come across before in the U.S. As someone used to eating Indian food in America, few restaurants compare to this university dining experience. The one restaurant that does stick out in my mind is in Washington, DC: Rasika. There, Chef Vikram Sunderam has done a pretty fantastic job bringing a bit of India to the U.S. Esquire has rated it one of the top 20 restaurants in the U.S.

More to come.