Agreed... and seconded. The ready to eat meals, especially the MTR variety are a disgrace to the name of food and are specially designed to kill the taste buds so that the next ready to eat meal tastes uniformly palatable to the eater. Having spent eight years in different parts of India, living outside home (though I am being pampered and fattened at home as I write this), I have finally decided that the only ready to eat meals which do not make me feel like I am eating leather, glue and a combination of other discarded office stationery, are the Kohinoor brand. If you are in a condition where you HAVE to buy the ready to eat variety, you are best of buying them. They are slightly more expensive than the MTR but at least they taste like food.
The best option is of course to get the Kitchens Of India stalk that is available in fairly nice large bottles. The stalk can be easily combined with boiled vegetables/meat in order to produce food, which, while it is not inspiring, doesn't make you think of words like Klatch, Splatch and Zapak. Let me know if that works for you... Nishant On 5/30/07, Abhijit Menon-Sen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I happened to come across some "ready to eat" meals in a grocery store a few days ago, and decided to try two of them: MTR's "Dal Fry", and a packet of "Aloo Mattar" from Ashirvaad (each in the region of INR35). I ate them with rice for dinner today. Both packets claim to "serve 3" (small children, I assume). When I poured them into saucepans to heat, I found them swimming in oil (which I'd expected). I use so little oil at home that most things seem oily to me, but I'm not above indulging in the occasional sinfully delicious and oily meal outside. But the "delicious" part is a necessary prerequisite, and both packets failed to deliver in that regard. Those "carefully selected and mixed" spices made the dal taste just short of horrid. The potatoes and peas tasted completely unlike the gravy they were forced to share a packet with, and had a curious tinny aftertaste. Everything's sitting in one solid lump somewhere inside me right now. Never again. -- ams
-- Nishant Shah Ph.D. Student, CSCS, Bangalore. # +91-079-26405559
