Ganeshpuri Food at Yogini's house 😋

Thanks to Alan Harmon for his request that I post about the food here. It's wonderful! Now, Yogini is known for serving delicious and bountiful meals. My stay includes breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hare is a wonderful chef.

I'm not one to take pictures of my food. I let go of that when Alan requested them. So, yesterday, I took pictures of everything. Enjoy!

There is a woman who sells fresh vegetables and she comes to Yogini's house every morning.

The bowl on her head is full of veggies. The bag in her hand holds her scale and her weight.

She's weighing out some Methi (fenugreek) for us.

And some lady fingers (also known as okra).

We have fruit salad and homemade yogurt at breakfast every day. The fruit salad has papaya, oranges, apples and bananas. The bananas are tiny compared to those we find in the States, and sweet. A little honey and lime juice on top is perfection! Sometimes there are grapes in the fruit salad, which I avoid. The travel doctor told me to only eat fruit I can peel.

We also have a hot dish for breakfast every day. I requested dosas, and got them yesterday. Yum! A dosa is a thin pancake made from ground lentils and rice. It's often served with a spiced potato mixture inside. Hare added tomato and onion instead. Dosas are delicious with fresh coconut chutney!

To be honest, I think everything will be more delicious with fresh coconut chutney. I don't know how I've made it this long without coconut chutney in my life!

We also had lentils, which we eat at most meals in one form or another. The lentils and yogurt are our main sources of protein. These are brown lentils without much spice, topped with sabji. Sabji is the name for all vegetable dishes. This sabji is mostly tomato, with methi leaves (fenugreek) and spices. Hare is well trained in spicing his food for the western palate. Indians take things much spicier!

I topped my lentils and sabji with muri, a puffed rice snack, to give it some crunch. So tasty!

Prior to lunch, we were served vegetable pakora, which is a crispy vegetable fritter. These are Methi pakora, or fenugreek. It looks like parsley. We also had onion pakora. You can find pakora in most Indian restaurants in the States, but I've never tasted pakora as good as this!

This is lunch. And this is how full my plate looks for most of our lunches. There are 5 different dishes here, not including the rice and chapati. Chapati is a type of Indian Flatbread that Hare makes fresh and serves hot for most meals. The chapati makes a great scoop for most of the other foods on the plate. The first bowl on the right is sabji with eggplant. The eggplants here are smaller, greenish yellow and less bitter than the eggplant at home. The next bowl is dal, which is a soup made from lentils. I love dal, and it is served at most lunches and dinners.

To the left of the dal is pan fried radish. These radishes look like white carrots. They are sweeter than the red radishes we have at home. I sprinkled a little salt on top... heaven! In front of the chapati is more pakora. You can't go wrong with crispy, crunchy pan fried veggies! Well, I suppose you can. Lol! There's another sabji next to the rice, with potatoes, green peppers, onion, tomato and other tasty veggies and spices.

For dessert, we had Shrikhand (pronounced Shekund). It's a sweet yogurt that is thick and creamy - ice cream-esque. This Shrikhand has almonds (badam) and pistachios (pista) in it. It was actually a little too sweet for me, so I mixed in some homemade yogurt. So tasty!

For an afternoon snack (not that I needed it - I was still full from lunch!), we were served Muri with a sabji of tomatoes and onions. It reminded me of Pico de Gallo. You throw a spoonful of sabji in your bowl of Muri and it is a flavorful, crunchy snack. Yogini was bemoaning the fact that we had no limes, because it calls for a squirt of fresh lime juice on top.

And the coffee 😇. Hare knows just how I like my coffee here, and caffinates me well each morning. I don't have an afternoon cup, or an afternoon snack every day. Usually I'm taking a rest at that time - doing ujjayi and asana and napping. Yesterday, we went to Muktananda's Ashram in the afternoon, so our schedule was a bit different.

Dinner begins each night with a soup course. This is beetroot soup. I've also had a beetroot and carrot soup, a corn soup, and asparagus soup. It's not actually asparagus, but close. They call the vegetable drumsticks.

Dinner last night consisted of chapati, pan fried tomatoes, sabji of peppers, dal with yogurt (which gives it the creamy look and a tangy flavor), kitchari (a rice and lentil dish with light spices that is topped with ghee - very easy to digest), and sabji of methi (fenugreek) and tomatoes.

This picture is from my 2019 visit. Yogini had me over for lunch. I include it here because some things don't change. Yogini continues to be a generous hostess. Food is one of her love languages... one of the reasons we get along. Lol!

Some things do change, like her chef. Hare is the current chef and is pictured at the top of the post.

She is quite the food pusher - always encouraging you to have more. When I finally throw in the towel, she'll say, "But you haven't eaten anything", no matter how many helpings I've had!

I'll continue to snap pics of my food here, and add to this post.

Here's breakfast today (Monday, February 27).

This papaya was so sweet and juicy! Yogini gave Hare a hard time for not serving me fruit salad. I enjoyed the papaya alone - it was a nice change of pace! In the bowl is upma, which is a thick porridge similar to cream of wheat. Upma can be made from dry roasted semolina or coarse rice flower. It can be served sweet or savory. Today's upma was savory, with small bits of tomato.and onion, and just a little kick. It was delicious! I had 2 bowls full, and Yogini tried to guilt me into a third one. I had to say no, or else I would have been sleeping, rather than writing this post!

Lunch on Monday, 2/27

Yogini asked me to invite my friend Mohini over for lunch today. She brought these Methi (fenugreek) Puri (I think that's what they are called). They are a Flatbread with some crispy parts and some chewy parts. Quite delicious alone, though they can also be eaten with chutney. They made a lovely appetizer!

Lunch today included chapati and rice, dal, sabji of pumpkin with so.e tomato and spice mixed in, and sabji of peas and methi.

There was also some crispy pan fried eggplant. I dumped the dal on my rice.

At the end of the meal, Hare cooked up some papadam, which is thin crisp bread made of bean flour. It's cooked over dry heat (the gas burner flame) at Yogini's, but can also be deep fried until crisp.

Dinner Monday, 2/27

You probably recognize the dal and rice in the bowls. Next to the rice is a sabji - aloo gobi (cauliflower and potato). It was delicious! We had some more pakora - methi, onion, potato, and green pepper. On the other side of the chapati is a cabbage sabji, which was also delicious!

Breakfast Tuesday, 2/28

We had corn on the cob at breakfast that was cooked over the open flame of the gas burner. It's served with butter, salt, chili powder, and lime juice. Hare prepared mine for me so I could see how it was done. He pressed the lime into the salt and chili powder and rubbed it on the corn. He had already buttered it.

We also had poha, which is a flattened spiced rice dish with onions, peanuts, and curry leaves. Have I mentioned that Hare makes a great coffee?

Lunch Monday, 2/28

We started with a lassi, which is a yogurt drink. I've had sweet lassis in the states, usually mango. This was a salty lassi flavored with jeera (cumin). It took a minute for me to get used to it, and it was delicious! The flavors were salty, then cumin, then creamy tang.

Lunch's main course had the standard rice and chapati, pan fried bitter melon, dal, and sabji of potatoes, cauliflower, and green peppers. We had ice cream for dessert. It's called butterscotch here, but it doesn't taste like the butterscotch ice cream back home. This is flavored with cardamom and almonds. I'm sorry I didn't get a picture of it - I was too busy enjoying it!

The soup was outstanding for my last dinner! It was carrot soup, but there was something in there that gave the soup a creamy and savory flavor underneath the carrot. Too bad I was saving most of my room for dinner, or I would have had seconds.

For my last supper, Karan (Yogini's manager) made Chili Paneer especially for me. It's one of his specialties. Paneer is a fresh, acid-set cheese made from cow's milk or buffalo milk. It is similar to cottage cheese, and I think it's better. Paneer is served in a variety of sauces, which really determine the dish. Chili Paneer is an Indo Chinese dish with a spicy sweet sauce. The Chili Paneer is in the dish next to the dal, which is next to the rice. There were two different sabjis, but I couldn't tell you how they tasted. The Chili Paneer was so delicious that I didn't eat anything else. It exceeded my expectations, and I am hopeful I can find a preparation half as good in the states!

To top off an amazing dinner, I got the last of the "butterscotch" ice cream. I remembered to take a photo before I ate it all!

My last breakfast was upma, a hot cereal similar to Cream of Wheat. This upma was savory, with tomatoes, onions, and the perfect amount of heat - just a little kick. We also had puri, which is a fried bread of unleavened flour. Bharti, Yogini's caretaker, made them for my travels. I was sent off with 10 puri packed up in my bag. They are good for up to five days, which makes them ideal for travel. Mine did not last two days, let alone five. They were delicious, especially since I could taste the love in them! In the corner of my pic, you'll see a hint of my coffee, prepared every morning just how I like it by Hare. You'll also see a hint of the glass of fresh squeezed orange juice that Bharti would make me every morning.

I was quite spoiled at Yogini's house. Her meals rivaled those of any Indian restaurant I have been to! I am grateful to have been nourished in Ganeshpuri on so many levels.