Eating Our Feelings: South Indian Breakfast

Waking Up for Our First Vlog









Ulundu Vade

Ulundu Vade (my go-to vade on any given day) is a doughnut shaped savory food made out of urad dal (black gram). It is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside and is flavoured with condiments such as curry leaves, green chilli and ginger. The only way to eat this beauty is by dunking it wholeheartedly into a green chilli coconut sambal and immediately biting a chunk off it.





Parippu Vade

Parippu Vade is harder in texture in comparison and surprise! surprise! is Shaade's favourite. This food adventure if anything has slowly but surely begun to unveil our opposing preferences in food. Mainly comprising of kadala parippu (Bengal gram), parippu vade also contains similar condiments to ulundu vade with the addition of onions and deep fried red chilies. This is best eaten by itself and can be quite addictive (according to Shaade!).





Idly

Idly is a soft fluffy pillow of black gram and rice flour - probably the pinnacle of healthy eating, Go ahead and soak it in a whole lot of curry and mush it with your fingers before shoving it into your mouth. At least, that's how I would do it.





Indiyappam

Indiyappam - a base that goes amazingly with pol sambol (coconut sambol) and a whole lot of curry. By curry I mean beef curry...or chicken...or pork. But alas! we were vegetarian today. So we made do with some sambar (and zero pol sambol - somebody shoot me!) instead.





Sambar

What's sambar you may ask? Or you may not...but I'll tell you anyway. Sambar in a nutshell is a vegetable soup. Crack that nutshell and you get a dhal base with the addition of tomatoes, okra, vegetable drumsticks, golden pumpkin, egg plant, cucumber and onions. We weren't really able to find any of the above mentioned additions in our sambar...but our hungry tummies didn't complain (too much!)





Upma

The Upma presented to us, if nothing else can be described as a semolina cake. Tempered with curry leaves, onions and a few blotches of carrots and plums, it can be eaten on its own or with the aforementioned sambar.





Paper Thosai

The highlight of the morning was the freshly made Ghee Paper Thosai. The image below portrays our initial confusion as this crispy mountain of delight was placed in front of us. I won't lie - I was a tad bit intimidated.





Jehani (Left) and Shaade (Right) as they look helplessly at the mountain in front of them

Plain Thosai

You would think from our expressions that we would stop at this...but nooo, our blind courage took us a step further as we ordered a portion of Plain Thosai as well.





Jehani (left) as she realizes her folly of ordering more food than her tummy could handle





Personally, I prefer the thinner version of a plain thosai but that was the least of my problems at this point. It didn't help that we ordered another cup of milk tea to wash down all the food we were eating. We should have ordered a plain tea instead - sigh! #regrets





Uthappam

So, back to our ever anticipated question of the day: What the f%#$ is Uthappam?





Sadly, it still remains a mystery. Guna forgot our order of uthappam altogether and we were way too stuffed to argue.





However, I will leave you with the promise that we will find out what the f%#$ uthappam is someday (not today....but someday) and shut this case for good.





Until then...





Peace out!









~Jehani~













P.S. Watch our first ever VLOG!!!





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?", Sindu (our co-conspirator/cameraman) asked in a moment of bewilderment. We were not very sure ourselves; hence our journey to one of the most popular South Indian restaurants in Colombo - Saraswathi Lodge.Our very first vlog should have begun on the most energetic of notes, but me not being the biggest morning person (sleep is my friend), overslept and woke up to the voice of an overly-agitated Sindu just moments before we had to leave. No coffee and little to no time to wake up should have been a recipe for disaster if not for the hot cup of milk tea we were served while we waited outside Sarasawathi Lodge for a table. Who knew people woke up this early to have breakfast on a Sunday morning!The wait was long and our hunger overpowered all other senses. Sometime at around nine o' clock, a table was finally available. We rushed to our seats and ordered pretty much everything breakfast-like on the menu. How much Indian food can two girls eat on a Sunday morning? We were about to find out.Our server Guna promptly brought us an array of pre-made food consisting of ulundu vade, parippu vade, idly, indiyappam and upma accompanied by a kadala curry (chickpea curry), green chilli coconut sambal and red chilli onion sambal