indian food, still yummy

There was some concern that India would ruin Indian food in the US for me. I am happy to report that this did not happen although some things have changed.

Eating Indian food every day for a month, well as you may have gathered from the previous post, it did get to be a bit much. Part of the problem was not only was I eating Indian food everyday but I was virtually always eating at the same place. I believe I ate 6 meals at restaurants other than the hotel and ate at 2 potlucks at work. Perhaps 3 poor meals at the work cafeteria. For the whole month. So more than getting tired of Indian food I got tired of eating in that hotel, everything started to taste the same there. At the same time it was a mistake while at the hotel to eat the more European offerings, for the most part they were bad. Hyderabad is considered one of the spiciest of Indian cuisines but I always had my raita/yogurt ready and if it was hot to me I just cooled it down. It worked perfectly, I was ready for a change but for the most part I enjoyed it.

I got the impression that Indian food in India was going to be wildly different from Indian food in the states but really I didn't find that to be the case. Probably the biggest difference is that most dishes there are not served with rice, everyone eats it with bread instead. [and I love fresh Indian bread] Though the rice dish Biryani is hugely popular in Hyderabad, rightly so. Even the potlucks at work had all recognizable food, to me at least. Now the desserts were really different [interesting to be a potluck with 8 desserts and none were chocolate] but as I don't eat sugar and most were super sweet it really never came up.

So I ate a lot of Indian food, missed salads a lot and beef, tried a lot of stuff, some of which was excellent and came home ready for garden fare. However 2 weeks after I got back I was ready to have Indian at our favorite place again. We ordered some of our favorite dishes, medium as usual since the raita here at the states is an extra $4 and we usually don't get it.

I tasted it, 'oh they forgot and made it mild, too bad.' My wife tasted, 'it isn't mild.' I was amazed but she assures me that it was their typical level of medium heat. When I tasted it more carefully I could tell it wasn't bland and flavorless which is how mild would normally taste to me, it just wasn't spicy [at all] Then I bought a clue, I was different not the food. Apparently the month of eating much spicier food, even with curd at times, had tweaked my spice tolerance to a higher setting. It felt odd to realize that I had changed without being aware of it. I seem to be having a craving for spicy peppers on and off as well.

Not sure what I'll do the next time we eat out Indian though. Is this the end to sharing dishes?

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