Sambar, Rice, and Spoon

Cookery shows have been my favorite since I was in school. Although at those times I used to tell my mom to make all those dishes. Recently, I have made some stuff, following these shows. It's kind of fun. Once in a while, I even see those clips, where I already know how to make the dish. I do this, just so that, I can see some difference and try it out.

So, I was watching this sambar recipe. Well, incidently, I know to make sambar, with the powder (which mom/M-I-L make) or ones where we grind the powder. Now, anytime anybody asks me, how do you make sambar? there is no single recipe. Every house, mind you, not every community or every caste, but every house has its own taste of sambar. The sambar powder mom makes is different from what my M-I-L makes, and who knows, someday, I might have my own recipe(thats in the far future). So, I just tell them the basic recipe if they already have a powder.

Now coming back to the show, the chef prepared the sambar, and for the taste, he mixed it with rice and started eating it. He was eating with spoon. As he ate 2-3 spoons, he kept on thinking what was missing, and then he realized, it was the spoon.
He makes this statement " Sambar, Rice, and Spoon, never go together". I was laughing out loud when I heard this. I have heard this a lot of times since my childhood "Who eats Sambar Rice with spoon?? " and sometimes its totally true. Atleast at home, most of us grew up eating our food using our hands without spoons. Exam times, study times were different when we would have the liberty to use spoons, but otherwise it was always hands.

Infact, until I had a lot of north Indian friends, I dint even seem to notice. Well I have seen them using spoon for a dosa. I have never understood that part. My roommate was one such girl. She used to make the dosa piece into a cone and put in sambar using a spoon and then eat. I would lose interest in eating dosa in such a way. Some of us even tried to tell her, how we eat it, but i guess she never left her comfort zone.

Well, all you people who feel eating rice and sambar using your hands is weird, let me tell you its not. Infact, using the spoon for this very reason is injustice to rice and sambar :)
Well, on a different note, when I go to Indian restaurants in US, and I happen to eat sambar rice I use the spoon, only because, I am lazy to go and wash my hands in restroom and they dont give a finger bowl here. But at home, it's always my god-made spoon :)