Food in the United States of America..

I have been itching to type out something on American grub from the day I landed here. I guess I should have included this as one of my reasons in my first post ,"Why I have started to blog.. "

Part I:
Let me start off my listing out the best part about the food here - There's none. That's an exaggeration, but for the most part of it, it stands true.

Part II:
The not-so-great things:

-No, the burger is not as scrumptious as it looks on that television commercial.

-Every edible item in every supermarket in the country will fall into one of the following categories:

Fat-free.
Sugar-free.
x% reduced fat.
0 (zero) calories.

Give me a break! How do you expect people like me to put on weight?

The closest thing to "fat-filled" milk I have found here thus far is some 'Vitamin D' milk. The only reason we bought it was because it did not have any of the above mentioned 'categories' on the container.

-Gravy is almost a non-existent concept in the West. And so is spice. (Thank heavens for Devon Avenue!)

So basically, food here is bland, expensive (actually, everything is expensive when one's a student) and does not "fill your stomach"!.

There are not too many eateries around here. In India, I was drowned in choice about where to eat. Here, it's hard to find a good place to eat. I have found that I do not particularly like any cuisine other than Indian or Chinese - hence these places are what I would classify as 'good'.

I'm resigning myself to having one of those Subway sandwiches every other day for lunch.

Oh, and I pity vegetarians. This country is tough on them, because meat rules!! A lot of veggies I know have fallen prey to the "cheeseburger", which actually has ham in it. And some who did not know what pepperoni was. Simply put - meat, in any form, is the staple diet of any red-blooded American.

Salads. I didn't want to get started on this topic, but it deserves a mention. $5 - excluding tax -for some pieces of raw vegetables and leaves in a plastic container. Enough said. Pizza's.. they are good for a change, and I have them once in a while when I get fed up of eating Subway merchandise.

I will also mention here that I'm a huge chocolate freak. I love ice cream as well, but mostly of the chocolate variant. And in this regards, the United States has proved to be heaven. It's in fact, the only thing that I do not see the price tag on before making a purchase.

Bottom line - I miss home food. There's some packaged Indian stuff available at the cafeterias on campus, but it reminds me of airline food.

I'm now at a stage in my student life where I prefer my own cooking (note: I do not enjoy the process, it is merely a preference) to eating food outside. The flip side of cooking is the dishes piling up in the sink, but I'm not going to talk about it. At least for now.

Coming up: A post about Hindi movies I have watched after coming here. And about dispelling another myth - about how people back home assume that I do not keep in touch with Indian news.

Damn.. I just cannot sleep before 2 a.m. Luckily, this is not on my new year resolution list. There is no list, anyway.