As you may know from other posts, we’ve been working on a project that we call Eat Around the World (EAtW). Basically, every fortnight, we choose one country. This fortnight’s was India. In our fortnight, we learn about the country, and on as many nights as we can, we make a dinner from that country. This week (though we still have another to go), we’ve only had one Indian curry… but we’re having one tonight!
Facts about India
Animals
India is well known for its king – the tiger. Tigers are large ‘big cats’, which are orange and have black stripes with the occasional white. They used to be my favourite animal and they’re of mine now. To me they look cute, but to others they look fearsome beasts ready to tear you apart, which is really what they are. Tigers’ sides aren’t symmetrical, as many people think they are. In this case, this means that one of their sides has a different pattern of stripes than the other one.
Gibbons are the only apes in India. They live up in the north, mainly in Assam. Assam can be found if you look on the map at the tiny strip of India that surrounds Bangladesh, and then opens out into another large part of Indian country. This part is Assam. Gibbons, in the morning, or when they are startled, ‘sing’. Locals call one of the forests they live in ‘The Singing Forest’ as a nickname. The ‘singing’ actually comes from sort of alarm calls. There are different types of these to make other gibbons aware of different predators and so on.
Lions live in the west, where most of the deserts are in India. The most common lions in India are called Asiatic lions. They have funny-looking folds in their stomachs which can identify them. You may have heard that male lions have manes. They do – but not all of them have them round their faces. Asiatic lions have them more round their chest and lower neck. I think they are really cute big cats. I love lions almost as much as tigers!
Mapping
In the north are the Himalayas. This is a great mountain range that stretches across part of the top of India, a tiny bit at the bottom of Pakistan and also of China, some of Bhutan, and nearly (well, almost nearly) all of Nepal. These mountains look like bleak, snow points in winter, but in some of spring and all of summer, flowers like buttercups and daisies sprout all over the grassy-covered mountains. Some of the first people who walked on the Himalayas founded the Valley of Flowers, a beautiful, flower-carpeted area in the vast mountain range.
In the west are the dry, bleak deserts. Many creatures live there, not just the Asiatic lions – there are also wild asses, and many more which neither you nor I have heard of. This might sound a bit strange and I know it will make you laugh but I haven’t learnt a lot about the deserts in the west so I don’t know much more than that!
In the south are the rainforests. Here lie the vast, thick masses of forest and trees, and also many animals like funny-looking, purple, fat frogs – everyday creatures that people will walk around and forget about but that we would think very interesting. So in the south are lush rainforests, in the great Himalayas, and in the west are the dry deserts. Can’t go to one place in India and have a whole opinion about it!
Gandhi
Mahandas Gandhi (nicknamed Mahatma Gandhi, Mahatma meaning ‘Great Soul’) was the leader of plenty of peaceful protests to make India independant. Many of these ended up with hundreds of Indians – including women and children – getting shot by the British. I appreciate what Gandhi did. He was arrested lots (often in our film he said ‘Of what charge?’ and no one could answer), and he went on many hunger strikes. Eventually, he succeeded in making India wholly independant. ‘An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind’ is one of Gandhi’s famous quotes.
I watched and wrote a review of the film Gandhi:
I found this film very hard to understand and I wasn’t much of a fan. At least, I didn’t blow people away with my five-star rating, because over half of it I didn’t understand and I think I would like it more when I’m a grown-up, or when I have studied Gandhi a little more. However I think that Gandhi was right, and I appreciate what he tried to do and what he succeeded in doing.
Food
India is well known for its curries and spices. For our EAtW project, we had lots of these.
For our first Indian dinner we had a butternut squash curry. It was tastier than I thought even though I don’t like butternut squash very much. We (that is, Tilly and I) brought down some floaty chiffon scarves and pretended to use them as head-dresses and sarees. It was really fun.
For the next dinner, we had an aubergine and tomato curry. This time it was Tilly’s turn to like something with her worst-favourite food in it! We both thought it was delicious, although I think that the tomato sauce was a bit like pasta sauce, and not very Indian-curry-style. However, we still found it fantastic!
A few days later, the day before yesterday, Mummy and I made our own Indian-style curry. It was red lentil dahl. It was absolutely amazing, and is one of my favourite foods! I’d had it before, and it was especially good with the spinach.
From one of my cookbooks, Mummy and I then made a keema curry (originally named Minced Moo Madras, though I find that just slightly unappetising). We had also had it before. This time we added cinnamon and cardamom pods and had turmeric in our Basmati rice, which made it yellow and tasty.
Just before it we had chai, a traditional Indian version of tea. Even Nanny had some! (Quick fact: did you know that tea comes from India and is not British?) It tasted like cinnamonny tea, and smelt of Christmas cooking! While we had our chai, Nanny coloured in some of a mandala, and did quite a good job, I think (Nanny likes colouring)!
