Are you familiar with the Vacation Food Phenomenon? It’s a term I just made up to describe this curiosity: Any food eaten on vacation tastes better than the same or equivalent food eaten back home.

Am I right?!

Back in September, I visited Vancouver and had the most amazing salad, courtesy of Vij’s Railway Express food truck. It was delicious – and I can only partially attribute that to the Vacation Food Phenomenon. The locals seemed equally smitten with this Indian food truck’s offerings.

Like any good food blogger, I had to recreate this inspiring salad when I got back home.

I stuck to ingredients that I already had on hand to save on cost, and ended up with a salad that tasted quite a bit like the original – if my memory serves me correctly.

This was the original salad (below). For authenticity, feel free to add some sliced red onion, fresh peas, and puffed rice. I left those ingredients out so I could use what I already had on hand in the kitchen (and to save some money, of course!)

A photo posted by Haley (@cheaprecipeblog) on Dec 12, 2014 at 7:18pm PST

Like foods flavored with Indian spices? Me too! Check out this Indian-spiced bar mix that I made earlier this year.

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