Beef...it's what's for dinner

Every Monday night we cook a nice meal and eat dinner at home with our friend Don Foster. He's a fellow American, and after dinner we all go to a local children's home for the evening. For a few weeks we had different soups (carrot & coriander, vegetable, cheesy broccoli), but that got a little too boring so recently we've turned to beef. We've had tacos, chicken-fried steak, and tonight we had spaghetti (with an amazing salad, but it didn't have beef in it).

The interesting thing about beef in India is that it's not a really popular food (Hindus do not eat beef). However, the Muslims and Christians really like it, so it can be found (just more difficult to get on a Friday). Even more interesting is what you have to go through to get beef around here. We have found stall #8 in the market to be a good place to purchase beef - mostly because they have built bird houses in their stall to attract little sparrows that eat the flies. The bad thing about the butcher (and all the butchers in the market) is that he cuts the meat on a large tree trunk, which means that there are always little pieces of wood in the meat when you get it home. Luckily a rinse with drinking water takes care of that problem. Also, if you want ground beef, then you have to grind it yourself - with a good blender, this works pretty well. Then you just have to cook the daylights out of it (just to be sure), and you have a great meal!

Here's a photo of stall #8 for you to enjoy!