Meat Eaters in the Land of Veg

One of our biggest challenges has been the food. First off, everything is ridiculously spicy. Of course, I admit that I am a spice-wimp, but still. There is alot of potato dishes, and many strange (to us) vegetables. Then there is the fact that most Hindus are vegetarian - not all, different regions have different views, but most. And then the thing where they worship their cows. Someone told me it is illegal to sell beef in Delhi. So chicken is very available (and about the same price as US) and fish (expensive, but probably about the same as US), and lamb is readily available too, but beef and pork are rare. I bought bacon once, and it was gross - more like salt pork but not even that good. And once at Subway I saw someone put bacon on their sub and I would swear it was raw. So if that is how they eat it, no wonder it is not popular! I have recently found pork ham (yes, you have to specify, because it is most likely to be chicken ham) and it is pretty good, but no other pork seems to be available.

I wanted to blog about the meat, because the butcher shop here is really something. There is a shop at the mall across the road that we walk to, called Blue Water, and I get chicken there pretty often, but the first time I went in there I couldn't believe it. It wasn't the whole lambs skinned out and hanging along the walls, or the rows of fish, or the really bad smell, or the fact that they weigh your stuff directly on the scale, the same scale that has weighed the raw meat for every customer all day (and maybe all month!). Nope, none of those things. It was the guy cutting meat up on a raised platform with a knife held in his toes that was the most bizarre to me! (Altho the huge chunk of log that they use as a chopping block that is probably growing a thousand kinds of bacteria wasn't really my favorite either.)

So you go in and order lamb chops (as I did once, and won't do again, since I didn't know how to cook them and they were like leather, and there isn't enough meat on there to feed a mosquito) and they pull down a lamb and hack off a chunk and then if you want them into chops they give it to the guy on the raised platform and he chops it on that nasty log. If you order chicken you can have it "cleaned" by the guy with the knife in his toes.

It actually makes sense because it leaves both his hands free to manipulate the meat, but the concept is kind of gross. Also, the big knife (can you see it there in front of the guy with the hat? It is fixed in place somehow and is used for cutting bigger things) gets "cleaned" by wiping it with water out of a bowl that sits beside him to dip his finger. My guess is it never sees soap or hot water. Frankly it is amazing that we have never gotten sick!

Recently, tho, I discovered that a guy in our Church branch is a grocery wholesaler and he can get BEEF!! this photo is of Christelle and I the day he delivered our steak and roast, and even tho I don't have the best ways to cook it, we have enjoyed it alot! Apparently he can get pork too, so we will give that a try next.

Incidently, there is no such thing as a Crock Pot here, or I would own one!