Bengali Jolkhabar [breakfast and evening meal]

Part 1

I spent my early childhood in Papua New Guinea. The breakfast that my mother regularly made was milk and cornflakes, milk and bread slices with sugar, bread and butter with cheese, fried sausages, ham etc. I liked the red meat the most.

We’d spend year-end vacations in Kolkata. I remember rushing upstairs to the kitchen screaming, “I want pork.” Grandmother was scandalized and asked my mummy if we really had pig’s meat for breakfast. I was under the impression that all kitchens around the world cooked ham and sausages in the morning.

Grandmother shook her head in dismay, “Your sister ate like a good girl. She loved milk with flattened rice, jaggery and bananas.” I had a hard time eating the same food that she had found delicious. I raised a tantrum, “I want cornflakes.” Though it was available in the 1980s, the branded Kellog’s cornflakes was yet to be launched in my country. My grandmother refused to buy the unbranded one for me.

Instead, she introduced me to flattened rice, puffed rice and popped rice as a substitute for cornflakes. I’d bawl when I had to eat them. Gradually my tummy got used to these delicious Indian cereals and I started to like their taste.

I began relishing khoi or puffed rice when on winter noons I’d hear the street vendor sing out loud, “Joynagarer moya.” This heavenly healthy sweet that hails from Jaynagar is made of aromatic popped rice blended with nolen gur [date palm jaggery], ghee [clarified butter], cardamom and poppy seeds.

During evening outings, I’d request my mother to buy Chire Bhaja or rice flakes being roasted in the iron pans in the sand with peanuts and salt. Nowhere in Maharashtra am I yet to find the similar flavour of Bengal’s jhal muri when I buy bhel. This is puffed rice mixed with chopped vegetables, spice powders, peanuts, chilli powder, rock salt etc. That’s how over the years my taste buds started liking not just cornflakes and popcorn but our traditional cereals for snacking as well.

#bengalibreakfast, #westernbreakfast, #indiancereals, #westerncereals, #childhoodmemories, #nostalgia, #1980s, #tantums, #wonderyears

https://pixabay.com/photos/naru-narkel-naru-balls-dessert-5720667/: Image by Shourav Sheikh from Pixabay