Eating with what you got....Your HANDS

"Why don't they use silverwear?"
"I don't know", I replied but thinking " why use silverwear?"........

On Mondays all of the staff of the widow's home gathers together to have a time of worship and to eat together. Usually the meal is rice and a bean substance called dal sometime with some potatoes and other vegatables. Even though I was introduced to eating with my hands before coming to India, it is on Mondays that I get a real taste of how to eat with my hands.

So first you get a mountain of rice but I usually only have a small hill size. Then the dal is poured on. I have seen some make a little a little bowl in their rice and have the dal be poured in it or I have seen it be just pour on randomly. I usually have it random. Then you might think that you just dive into it, but first you take with your right hand and get a bit of rice. You move it around in the dal till it is in a bit of ball shape and then pop it in the good old month. Another way I have seen it be done is to do the same motion with the rice with the dal. But then take a bunch of rice in your hand and bite it out of your hand and then you throw it back on the plate, do the same process and then have another bite.

Most of the time Nebin and I resort back to using silverwear when we make our breakfast, lunch and dinner.....but there was this one time....We finished our dinner of probably vegatables and I still felt like eating something....something sweet. So I said, " I think I am going to have some oats" So we had oats and sugar with a little water to make the oats a little moist. We didn't eat it with our spoon, we went Indian style.

So why do they use their hands to eat?

Well I can't answer this question, why do humans do anything they do, perhaps there is an anthropologist out there that know the answer but for me, it is fun. It makes a weird bowl of oats and sugar become really exciting and fun to eat.

Thanks for enjoying the show
:Jessica