Building the pyramids
One thing I’d love to see, aside from an American chaat chain and hot samosas at theaters, is teabags with little satchels of Splenda built in. Sure we’ve all got our preferences — one spoon or two — but the unmotivated will make do with whatever comes in the bag. I speak for lazy bachelors everywhere when I say, with a tear in my eye, that I would happily sacrifice a spoonful for my country if it means I could waste more time on the Net.
The tricky part is figuring out whether the sweetener goes on top or bottom. If it’s a standard Lipton teabag, it would probably go on the bottom. If it’s one of those upscale, pyramidal loose-leaf bags, it could go on the top. But gourmands probably wouldn’t be interested in built-in Splenda. They’re too busy sorting their single-source artisanal sea salt in geographical order, using a polar projection for artiness. And what of the mesh? The tea part could be a loose weave, but the Splenda part would need to cradle the powder — a tighty-whitey teabag.
The best part of bachelor cooking is the feeling that you’ve invented something new when you’ve actually just duplicated an entire category of ethnic cuisine. Take potato skins. I left ‘em on in college just to get to my aloo gobi with speed. But apparently fried skins are huge in the South. And who knew that Thai food relied on peanut butter in rice? Next you’ll tell me that hummus in your basmati was pioneered by the Greeks, when we all know it was some disconsolate bachelor cutting corners in his tighty-whiteys.
Previously: Indian food hacks,
on Monday, March 24th, 2008, 3:42 pm in Food, Humor › 
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Peanut butter in rice sounds quite revolting! Don’t tell me you actually have a bachelor recipe which involves mixing peanut butter with rice.
Dunno’ about tea-bags with Splenda, but i recently found real good masala chai bags! Its just black tea and spices in the bag and you would need to add milk and sugar, but the spice blend is quite right. I found it in Whole Foods, its a brand called Allegro. Pretty good for use at work. Infact, its decent by itself, without any milk and sugar.
Ground peanuts in food are a very Indian thing-Maharashtrian cusine, for example, makes use of ground peanuts in several dishes. Peanuts in phodnicha bhath/Chitranna are great. As for peanut butter in rice, i’ll pass, thank you :-D.
It’s delicious! Like Thai peanut rice, but thicker. Here are the ingredients:
1. Peanut butter
2. Rice
hummus and rice?
really?
no way.
i’m a splenda-holic too..and carry some in my purse because SOME PLACES don’t carry it.. (cough cough), who the hell uses pink and blue anymore when you have the godly yellow color?
of all the brands of Indian tea I tried only one I like is wagh bakri masala chai tea bags..they have chai masala in them I dont need to add anything and it tastes good when I microwave milk and water for 2 min and put a tea bag in it.
best potatoes I found are microwavable potatoes with wrap around them..2 min microwaving..they are soft, peel easy..
peanut butter and rice..never tried that..sounds weird..
coconut rice with just grated coconut(frozen one u get from deep company),coconut milk and rice with a lil bit of spices tastes ok..but It is really fattening so I dont like it that much
tomato rice with cooked tomatoes, somph ,lavang/cloves, cooked rice tastes ok…
green peas jeera rice with ghee chowka tastes good…
lemon rice is easy to make..just oil, haldi, chana daal, urad daal, mustard seeds, karipatta, mirchi and then cooked rice..then add lemon juice and salt on top..
u can try all these with raita…they are easy to make and taste ok..but they all are not that healthy though they taste ok.
my mom used to make a healthy lunch dabba for me in five minutes…these days I pack my lunch box sometimes with this easy biiyani…add some oil and ghee, fry onions, add pulav or biryani masala and all vegetables whatever is at home cut thin or u can buy grated carrots and vegetables that u get in stores, let them get cooked for five minutes , add cooked rice to it and u can even put peas or anything into it..eat it with cucumber raita, tastes good healthy..
khichdi is easy to make with multiple pulses (green gram daal, red daal, yellow daal), rice , jeera and a lil bit of ghee..it is healthy and easy to make..
Just peanut butter and rice, by no means would that equal the Thai peanut rice!! What about the sweet, sour and spicy flavors :)
This is disgusting. No sweetener, real or otherwise, goes in until the teabag is taken out from the cup. Gross. Gross. Gross.
Well, some coffee swilling bachelor has already done it with coffee; keeps me happy!
Word, tamasha. I was trying to wrap my head around the concept of a sweetener-included teabag and kept coming up with really awful looking/tasting “tea” OR a ridiculously complex origami contraption. Whatever happened to whole tea leaves in a diffuser? Crumb-bags are fine in a hurry or on the go, but the finer stuff is just better and worth the extra steps and the precious calories you burn in going through them.
Will you marry me?
Talking of cooking fundas….This totally generic recipe made it to the NYT!!
Neale,
It is probably because Devi and its chef/owners are well known within New York. Fresh Direct now sells pre packaged ready to cook foods based on recipes by Floyd Cardoz from Tabla.
Tastes a bit like dolmas.
No way. You leave the teabag in so the chai gets stronger and stronger the more you drink, until you hit the bottom and get an oxidant overdose. I realize this goes against centuries of orthodox thought, naniji.
Thanks, UMM and prakruti, for restoring my faith in ready-to-drinks.
DP and tamasha, that only works if you don’t drink 3x/day. And what if James Bond had been like you? ‘Come at once, Mr. Bond. The world is in danger!’ ‘Wait a minute, ol’ chap… my tea is steeping in the diffuser. This could take awhile.’
She loves me but proposes to another. Your vintage disposition :)
Umber Desi,
How good is the Fresh Direct stuff?
BTW, i got the nicest chicken vindaloo from Whole Foods the other day ……from their 7.99/lb section. It started with the quality of the chicken meat. And a distinctive taste of freshly ground pepper/cloves.
i’ll take chick-pea over peanut butter (with my rice) any day.
i need to marry brown dbd.
Neale,
I haven’t tried the Fresh Direct stuff yet, I have seen pictures on their trucks around NYC and checked it out on their website, I am not sure if anyone else here has tried it. I love the Indian food from whole foods, the only thing I don’t like is the nan.
chick pea wrote:
Bean there, done that :)
:)
The Indian food from WF is generally OK, but I always think a more local place is best, even if it’s sketchy. If the taxi drivers eat there, it’s got to be good, right?
Manish, I love you like an uncle.
Oh, snap.
Tamasha,
You are right about local places, I love the Pakistani place on 13th and 1st and there is a great Pakistani dhaba called Pakistan Tea House in Tribeca which I love.
Teacher-ji, I assume you meant “I love you like I would an uncle”? Unless you are talking about the leery-touchy-feely-when-intoxicated-at-indian-events type love.
Seriously. No thanks. No squeezy-squeezy. These moobs are made for walkin’.
Peeps, I’m on vacation. I cannot string together real sentences.
BTW, the “Indian food” from Fresh Direct (you might not be able to see it if you’re not signed it - and is it only a NY thing?) is actually based on entrees from Tabla. It’s not your usual/comfort Indian food.
OK, last thing:
New York test drives Tabla’s FreshDirect (one word, apparently) meals.