Photo - Diet in the mountains and the Himalayan Sports Club

 

Our wee kitchen close up. Again, when I think of our flat back home and all the kitchen cupboards that we had I wonder why we needed all that space, and our kitchen wasn't even big. We don't need much space here as we have a really different diet here than we had back home and even different from the diet we had in Goa. We mainly eat vegetables, dhal, rice, pasta, cheese and potatoes. You can't get beef here as cows are sacred and are reared only for milk. You can get chicken but you need to buy the whole chicken with head lobbed off and completely skinned, but all the 'bits' still inside it. They also tend to be quite small and tough. The thought of preparing it for cooking turns my stomach and, even if Colin prepares it, I can't face eating it. The mutton and goat need to be cooked for hours and hours or else they're really tough. You can get pork, as the Tibetan people here eat it, but we haven't seen it for sale anywhere except in restaurants.

So when we are cooking at home it is vegeterian and if we feel like having meat we go to a resaurant/cafe. In previous years there wasn't a cooker on the top floor and we always ate our meals in the main kitchen. Last September and October when we were here at the start of our trip was the first time that there was a cooker on this floor and, at that time, we only cooked breakfast and lunch and still had our main meal in the kitchen. This time however, we have been doing all our own cooking, unless we are eating out or if Pritam makes mutton or goat at which time all of us in the house go down to the kitchen and eat together. 

At first it was a real challenge as we were both mainly meat eaters, ate some ready-made meals and processed food and probably used the oven more than the stove top. Here, there is no ready-made or processed food, very little tinned food (we only buy tinned beans, tuna, sardines and sweetcorn) and no oven. So when you are cooking here it's all fresh ingredients you use as that is what is readily available, even for basic cooking ingredients. At least we've both become dab hands at vegeterian cooking.

After making it sound like we have turned into a couple of health freaks, I must say that we have had a great day gorging on meat with not a vegetable in sight. We went to a place called the Himalayan Spots Club, known locally as the Tennis Club, for Sunday lunch with Jayne, Guy and Corbin and a Scottish guy called Dave. This place is only open on a Sunday and is packed out every week. It has a very small menu and the signature dish is roast chicken and chips - might not sound much to you guys with access to sainsburys, waitrose and good restaurants but to us two who haven't had roast chicken for 10 months, it was mouth-watering. Although the place has been there for years, none of us had been before. It is owned by an Austrain guy and his Indian wife and, because it is so popular, you need to call and order the day before if you want to be guaranteed to have the chicken. So yesterday we were trying to decide how many chickens to order as we were under the impression that you had to order per chicken rather than per person. For some bizarre reason (probably Guy and Colin's excitement/greed at having roast chicken) it was decided that for 5 adults and 1 child, we would need 4 whole chickens! 

We all met today in the village square and we got 2 rickshaws, Colin, myself and Dave in one and Jayne, Guy and Corbin in the other. The Tennis Club is about 3km form Vashist, in the opposite direction from the main town of Manali and the road is partly rocky and steep. So the rickshaw drivers wanted to distribute the weight of their passengers more evenly as rickshaws have little power and also, the less weight the less fuel used. Guy is slim whereas Dave and Colin are of the larger variety, so Colin was told to change places with Guy (better only 1 'overweight person' per rickshaw). When we got there it was a really cool place. The weather was lovely and the tables were in the garden. We luckily got the last table and let the waiter know we had ordered the day before. He confirmed that we had ordered 8 chicken dinners. We explained that there was only 5 adults and 1 child but he reminded us the we had ordered 4 whole chickens and told us that they allocated half a chicken per person. So, out came the 8 plates of food and, believe you me, each plate had a half chicken - breast, leg, wing - was enormous. It certainly didn't look anything like small Indian chickens. The food was delicious and the chicken even had crispy roasted skin on it, a rarity in India as they skin chickens as soon as they kill them. Obviously we had far too much food and had to parcel a load to take home (and also a parcel of all the chicken bones that we had munched on, for Tiger the dog). The plan is that Jayne is going to make chicken and mushroom pie (she has an oven in the apartment) and then Colin is going to make chicken soup with the bones - will keep you posted on that. 

My only regret about going there was that the puddings looked fab but I had pigged out too much to be able to have one. Belly full of meat and waddling a bit we headed home. It's not that easy to get a rickshaw around the Tennis Club so we headed back on foot. There is a lovely mountain path that takes you back to Vashisht, which is a very slight gradual climb and takes 1.5 hours, and it was the perfect way to walk off lunch - well, some of it anyway. We had a cup of tea in Ranu's cafe when we got back to Vashisht then off home to blog until it's time to watch the European Championship final, Italy v Spain. Oh, and Tiger really loved all his chicken bones, better than his staple of dhal and rice.