What a paratha is..

For dinner today, I decided to have some onion parathas that I had bought from the indian store, the last time I went shopping. Jon and his girlfriend stephanie were also cooking dinner for themselves. I put a pan on one of the burners(is it called a burner even if there is no 'fire'?) As I proceeded to remove the paratha from the pack and put it on the pan, Stephanie asked what that was. This was definitely not the first time I was asked about the 'weird indian food' that I often eat. But some foods are more difficult to explain than others.

For example, when I had to explain to oliver what pani puri is. Taruna was with me, and though she was doing a better job of elaborating the details involved in preparing and eating pani puri, Oliver was still clueless. Dal, which you'd think is simple to explain, is actually not. Because canadians rarely know about pulses. And, if you're like me, you go on to explain that this particular type of dal is 'toor dal', which complicates matters further. But paratha should be simple, right? its bread after all...

And that's what I said, "its a type of bread." But looking at stephanie's confused face, I proceeded to elaborate. I shouldn't have. "Its basically wheat flour stuffed with onions.." And she says, "looks unhealthy!" I was stumped. Jon just goes "she speaks her mind." (or something to that effect.. I was too out of it to remember!" I didn't want to get into an argument with them. Thought it would make an interesting topic for my blog. I still kept going, in my head, "well, what is YOUR bread made of? Some high tech synthetic polymer compound?"

Jon started talking about mandeep. says he has some bread with everything stuffed in between. I hadn't seen mandeep eat in a while, basically because he's always in his room all the damn time. I assumed he was talking about stuffed naan. But frankly, there are so many kinds of flatbreads that I wouldn't know. You should check out the wikipedia page for paratha. Meanwhile, my paratha was done, so I opened my jar of 'achaar' and put some on my plate. And steph goes, "Mango Pickle?" Great! so you can read the label. "Can I smell it?" I didn't mind, I let her.

And all this while, I had my earphones on, and I was listening to music so I couldn't hear all the 'ridiculous' things they might have said. But after I was done with the parathas, the crisp flakes of the 'slightly' burnt paratha made me crave some papad. I figured this would stir up some more questions. But jon just stared at me blankly. Steph noticed that too, and they joked about it. I guess steph thought she had enough 'indian food 101' for tonight. LOL. So the explanation that I had thought up in my head was of no use anymore. hehe.