Showing posts with label seafood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seafood. Show all posts

Friday, June 15, 2012

Don't You Food Me

the author feigning to eat a
clam in its entirety
Food features primarily on our itinerary for the next couple of days. There's this French place, this Italian place, this south Indian place, this Vietnamese place, this bakery, this cafe, this soup place, this lobster place, this fish place... First inquiry the PP makes upon waking up - in his first conscious moments into the day - being, "Where are we going for lunch?"

It feels like I've been held hostage to a bunch of bandits armed with an arsenal of food. Food is social, but alas, its turning into social torture for me. I'm picking calories in excess, which is not even compensated with any sort of outdoors or (mis)adventure. If that is nothing to bother about (really, I don't), my stomach has been nuked with multicultural cuisine - under the umbrella of south Indian food, that has included a lot more than the limited southie fare that one gets in North India, I have already been subjected to considerable strain. Knowing that I will be invaded by myriad international cuisines in the narrow space of two days only makes it a bigger affair to fear and lament later.

To mitigate some of that 'bubbling' fear, I started this day with a more familiar toast, peanut butter, marmalade; not that it makes my situation any better, since my fiber intake is still zero.

There is also the unfamiliar experience of "trying out" the freakishly expensive places, which is basically turning into places to damage the stomach lining at a premium cost, which is no good news for either my health or my pocket. the only worthwhile place was the one we visited last night with an equal split between the items I had liked and that I didn't. a thorough "Oye, solid thaa, yaar" experience seems impossible.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

On Kashid Beach

Afraid to die, or afraid to live? I have been having my rockstar day.
The sand all in my hair and the nape of my neck and in my toes giving that nostalgia of a couple of hours back. Lying in the ocean, periodically under and out of the sickly saline waters, staring up at the rising half moon, the soft cloud stubs that make shapes, and the burning humanity jamming out at far distance.
Now, the clapping of waves dominates the senses tonight. 0000hrs. Sounds of distant thunder do make you tingle in anticipation, but you know it wouldn't show up. A half moon brings some details to relief - like the shoreline, the ridges, and the tiny pebbles at the shore left behind now that the ocean has receded over the course of night.

My thoughts as tiny as those pebbles make it to the conscious. A muteness pervades - one that you get after a jump, bad T-rush, good fish. Oh how gladly I transmitted my head-load of thought/trash at a panicked pace to when over the phone with Anu and Ghoru (they must be thinking I'd just had sex).
//20101114

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Crabbed out

pincer के दो आगे pincer, pincer के दो पीछे pincer|
आगे pincer, पीछे pincer बोलो कितने pincer?

Had crab for dinner last night! what a monstrous thing to dissect through. I went straight for the pincers. In a land (or a newly moved-into apartment) sans hammers or shell-crackers, I proceeded with wrestling with every joint and ligament, ripping them apart with my bare claws, cracking open the shell with my teeth, sucking in the alien juices, and discovering general anatomy of the crustacean. Large crab, and a proportionally large effort. Karthik and his ma (who'd got the crab for us all the way from Vishakhapatnam) were amused seeing me adapt to it.

Youtube nationals start by teaching you to break open the crust, disposing it away, and savoring the innards. I rather consumed it all - the calcium-y shell in small chips, breaking them off, then grinding them with my semi-healthy teeth; still waiting for my tummy for final report to that.

It is hard to imagine being put in a boiling cauldron, die, coagulate into a lump, then being savoured - that too on a scale of millions each day. Chopping off heads, like we do to hen, is much less cruel - though this cruelty starts on a whole different scale.