Soliloquies- What's on my plate?

I've seen my friends talking a lot about food and having a strong connect to food. I never had a strong connect to particular food. I'm happy if there's food. Out of blue, I flet like I want to cook lemon rice. Lemon rice has been the dish my mom cooked as breakfast. Lemon rice with peanut powder is one of my favourites. Also, that's one dish I cooked confidently when I arrived to Geneva. This is the first time, I felt to cook lemon rice to relish the memories. 

Cooking the lemon rice, I wondered why I don't have a strong connect to different sorts of food as I lived in different places. Home cooked food and certain dishes have definitely a strong memory and connect. In the last week, I prepared peanut chutney with a lot of chillies and onions. That chutney flashed a memory from 23 year ago- The nights when Dad would come home from office, take a bath and ask what's there for dinner. 'Peanut chutney with some vegetables' my mom'd say. Dad would immediately get excited and look forward for hot rice and chutney for the dinner. That's one of many associations I have with that chutney. 

Rasam is one more dish I relished at home, along with curd. Apart from home cooked food and mom's style cooking, I don't really have the 'aha' moment I see around me. 

There are few dishes that does it for me though. Bawarchi biryani does it, as I have strong memories of relishing it during my last school days. Haleem is another dish I repeatedly had it during ramzan times in Hyderabad. Dal bati is another dish I enjoyed regularly in Rajasthan. Apart from these, I always welcomed the food with a lot of curiosity. I've tried a lot of food at alot of different places. Idly with tomato chutney is one breakfast I enjoyed thoroughly when I was living in Vellore. I also rememered the way I learnt the words- Tair(curd in Tamil) and more(Butter milk in Tamil). It was in Guidyattam. I tagged along with my father for one of the meetings that were hosted. Since I couldn't attend those meetings, a staff member- Chandu was taking care of me while I was running around in the large venue exploring the place. During the lunch time, he took me for lunch and introduced to different tamil words for everything I was fed. That's how I learnt tamil words for Curd and Buttermilk.

Noodles in Nellore is another favourite food I used to have with Jayakanth anna and Preetham. Also the ice creams, mushroom curry, along with butter naan. 

In chittoor, it's idly again. In hyderabad, biryani. In Raichur, it's the jowar roti, the hard bread. In Rajahmundry, the famous rose milk. I used to go out on my own and enjoy the rose milk at the Godavari bridge.  After that, during college days, Humaara dhaba days were fun. After that, buffets & food has always been abundant. However, I hardly associated food to memories as there was always novelty rather than sustaining food to build memories for long time. 

In Sirohi, Dal bati, lauki, bhindi dishes have been a few dishes I cherished for years. Kachori, Poha has also been a few dishes. Will write more on food as a lot of memories are floating around as I think of what's on my plate.