Soooo many stories about Gujaratis and snacks. Sooooo many!
Here’s one: as we packed to leave Pune each kaki came with things for us to take. Each one has a little plastic carry bag of khakra and another of something salty: chivda—poha, mumra, cornflakes, chakra chivada (a whole convo on khakra chivada some day)—, chakli, tiki wada, bajri wada, (store bought Bakar wadi for S.), gathiya, sev, otters? Also breads: dasmi—sweet and spicy versions, thepla, did I say khakra? Did I mention that we get regular roomsli khakra plus rotli khakra plus bajri khakra if we are lucky and rarely heavenly dasmi khakra? But we’ll need sweets! Kaju katli from store, kopra pak, gujjia if we’re lucky, gulab jamin for our kiddo, Bombay halva cause it lasts, chikki cause Pune, Bundi lado, rava laddu, that Marwari sweet gewar Fred loved for him, and of course Parle G biscuit ten pack! And we’ll need dry fruits: kaju for sure but badam too. Anyway. After most kakis had dropped off snacks for us to eat on the road we needed to buy an additional suitcase so S went to get it. We finally get out the door with a suitcase and a half of snacks for the road and into my hand always very fresh spicy dasmi to eat in the car on the way to the airport and the sweets from people in Bombay and sometimes Kamshet and we get on the plane. Of course we are offering dasmi to everyone in our row on the plane but everyone has their own! We get to Newark and we get thru immigration and customs and we meet the final Boss: the food and agriculture officer. Because it’s Newark and it’s India flights time—I can only assume—the food and ag officer is Mehta. Mehta says to us: do you have any food in your luggage? S and I literally collapse into hysterical laughter and he takes a look at me (covered in henna and amulets etc) and I say : we have a suitcase of nashta. He laughs and waves us thru.
Soooo many stories about Gujaratis and snacks. Sooooo many!
Here’s one: as we packed to leave Pune each kaki came with things for us to take. Each one has a little plastic carry bag of khakra and another of something salty: chivda—poha, mumra, cornflakes, chakra chivada (a whole convo on khakra chivada some day)—, chakli, tiki wada, bajri wada, (store bought Bakar wadi for S.), gathiya, sev, otters? Also breads: dasmi—sweet and spicy versions, thepla, did I say khakra? Did I mention that we get regular roomsli khakra plus rotli khakra plus bajri khakra if we are lucky and rarely heavenly dasmi khakra? But we’ll need sweets! Kaju katli from store, kopra pak, gujjia if we’re lucky, gulab jamin for our kiddo, Bombay halva cause it lasts, chikki cause Pune, Bundi lado, rava laddu, that Marwari sweet gewar Fred loved for him, and of course Parle G biscuit ten pack! And we’ll need dry fruits: kaju for sure but badam too. Anyway. After most kakis had dropped off snacks for us to eat on the road we needed to buy an additional suitcase so S went to get it. We finally get out the door with a suitcase and a half of snacks for the road and into my hand always very fresh spicy dasmi to eat in the car on the way to the airport and the sweets from people in Bombay and sometimes Kamshet and we get on the plane. Of course we are offering dasmi to everyone in our row on the plane but everyone has their own! We get to Newark and we get thru immigration and customs and we meet the final Boss: the food and agriculture officer. Because it’s Newark and it’s India flights time—I can only assume—the food and ag officer is Mehta. Mehta says to us: do you have any food in your luggage? S and I literally collapse into hysterical laughter and he takes a look at me (covered in henna and amulets etc) and I say : we have a suitcase of nashta. He laughs and waves us thru.
S reminded me that I forgot the sankat paya and peda from Nanda our sometimes cook.
Haha I always look them dead in the eye and say "nope"
Bobby's to the rescue! I love thinking about how snacks (aka, snax) = security.