A tour of our Indian kitchen

We have a pretty big kitchen here, which is stocked with all the basics now. Here is a view from the entryway. You can see the fridge, counter top stove and laundry area beyond.


We got a pretty inexpensive non-self-starting, 2 burner stove. I'd conceived of these as glorified camping stoves, but the burners are as capable and even as any I've used in the states. Yesterday we had the 30L gas tank installed. Anil said to turn the gas off at the source if we would be gone for say two weeks, leaving it on the rest of the time. I turn it off whenever I am not cooking. We don't have smoke detectors or anything.


Here's a view of the rest of the kitchen. Ovens are pretty uncommon, though not unavailable. It would be fine now, but I'm sure in summer I won't want such a thing around. So I've embraced the microwave, which managed to produce some surprisingly acceptable, humble meals over the last couple of days. And of course a rice cooker. As you can see, there is plenty of cabinet space.


I may have spoken a bit about the Geysers in an earlier entry. There isn't a central water heater for the whole house, as there would be in the states. Each bathroom has its own heater with a pretty small capacity, but it gets surprisingly (like the fires of hell) hot, if you leave it on long enough. The kitchen also has a small in-line water heater that comes out its own tap. I mostly just use cold water to avoid the burning.

We are still looking into bottled water delivery and in-house filtration. Since I've been going to D-mart nearly everyday anyway to slowly accumulate food staples and kitchen supplies (salt, sugar, rice, pots and pans, tupperware, towels, tea, spices, etc.), I just get a few bottles of water at the same time.