Jackpot!

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times. I hate math. I really really don’t like it at all. I carry around a calculator whenever possible. It’s not good. However, the one area in which I’m fairly competent in it is food, of course. Whether it’s converting a recipe from imperial to metric or figuring out how much of what ingredients to buy at whatever cost, it’s the one area where I actually enjoy a little bit of math. It makes the world feel a bit more orderly.

Which is why I was so excited with the little bit of spice pricing that I did this week. Did you know that 86% of the world’s spices are grown in India? That’s a lot. Because so many of them grow here, they’re very cheap. In the states, if you want good spices, you either have to go to a well-reputed spice shop and sift through the hundreds of pre-ground mixes or go online. With the first option, you’re likely to buy something you don’t need. With the second, it’s hard to tell what’s good, because you can’t see it. Penzey’s is one place you can go, and I like it, but still, I wish there was a better, cheaper way to get spices.

I thought that India might have the answer, so I made a list of spices that I would want to purchase and use back in the states. I went online to three different distributors to find the price for a half kilo of each of these spices. I also went to the website for the Indian post to see how much it would cost to mail a heavy package to the states. After converting my findings to rupees, I went to a good spice store here to see how the prices would compare. Before all of that, of course, I made sure to check out the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol regulations on mailing spices into the states, and they have no problem with it.

Here’s what I found. Make fun of the table if you want, but I’m okay with being a nerd.

Spice	Approx U.S. cost (rupees)	Approx India cost (rupees)
Cinnamon (Dalchini) – 500 g	400-700	110
Black Cardamom (Bari Elaichi) – 500 g	800-1300	550
Cumin (Jeera) – 500 g	550	200
Ajwain – 500 g	360-850	140
Fennel (Saunf)– 500 g	360-550	95
Coriander (Dhania) – 500 g	360-400	65
Turmeric (Haldi) – 500 g	400-600	120
Fenugreek seeds (Methi Daane) – 500 g	275-550	38
Cloves (Laung) – 500 g	950-110	250
Anise (Choti Saunf) – 500 g	550-600	115
Star Anise (Chakraphool) – 500 g	750-1200	150
Nutmeg (Jaifal) – 20 pods	350-600	70
Saffron (Kesar) – 1g	500-800	225
Total	6605-12970	2128

Score! That’s a huge savings. At worst, spice here cost a third of what they do in the states. At best, a sixth. Some spices, like black cardamom and cloves, aren’t very common in Indian cuisine or are rare, so they’re more expensive than the rest, but that’s still all relative and much cheaper than their American prices. I wanted to get a lot of everything, which is okay in terms of freshness, because whole spices will last two years if kept dry, cool and away from light. I can even get whole turmeric, which is, impossible to find in the U.S., and Kashmiri saffron, which is incredibly hard to find even when you look online.

Now, for shipping. One can go to the Indian Post website and enter all the information about a hypothetical package they want to send, and they can find the cost of mailing it to whatever country. For a 5-6 kg package, which is how much this will weigh, it will cost about 2500 rupees to mail it to the states. Add that to about another 2500 rupees for the spices (rounding up), and it will still cost about 1500 less than the lowest estimate for buying in the states. If I go for the high estimate, it will cost 8000 less.

For those of you who want it in good ol’ American cash money, one dollar is 46.6 rupees as of today.

So, you tell me. Is it worth it?

Indra's Arrows

If you’re reading this blog, you probably know me. You probably also know that I’m not a very sentimental person. Furthermore, you’ll probably hate me a little for not taking a camera to India. Yeah, yeah, I know, it seems inconceivable that I would travel to a different country and not have a camera. Pictures just aren’t important to me. Memories, more so. I hope that my friends and family can understand that.

Today was one of those days where everybody I know wishes I had a camera here. It started by raining last night and continuing throughout the day. All day. No stopping. Monsoon is coming, everybody! Today, there wasn’t a lot of rain, but it just went on forever. It was impossible to get dry. By about 4 in the afternoon, the rain let up as the other Americans and I walked home from the college.

One of the MSU students, Liz, excitedly called us all up to the balcony. It was awesome. The sun was just beginning to peek out from behind the receding rain clouds. I wrote about a similar topic a few months ago, but today was different. Twelve hours of rain did wonders to Palampur’s panorama. The mountains displayed a fresh coat of perfectly white snow in the distance, and the nearby hills were an incredibly deep shade of green. The sun wasn’t too bright, but somehow that made the contrast even more visible. To compliment the colors on the environment, there were two – count ‘em, two – gorgeous rainbows opposite to the setting sun. The Hindi word for it is indradhanush. Indra is the rain god, and dhanush means “arrow.” Cool!

I’ve never seen rainbows so bright. I’ve never seen so much deep color. Wade was napping, but I went down and gently woke him up. In response to his grumbles, I said that the sky, hills and mountains were clearer than I’ve seen them in the 5 months that I’ve been here. That got him up, reluctantly. He wasn’t happy about me interrupting his beauty sleep, but at least he got to see the gorgeous landscape. Too bad he’s colorblind. Sorry, Wade!

I bet you’re wondering if I wish I had a camera now. Well… no. Sorry. I still like my memories. However, if you’re lucky, you might be able to see some later on Wade’s blog at wadeji.tumblr.com.

The Great Wall of Rice

Today, I won’t be writing about just India. This post is about food and culture, so it’s still sticking to the main theme somewhat. It just happens to be about food and culture in a different country, inspired by a morning article in the Times of India. It also has to do with rice, which is a huge staple not only in India, but in the rest of the world.

Consider the Great Wall of China. It has been around for about 1500 years, and it doesn’t look a day older than 500. Other monuments built in that era in different parts of the world have long since been turned to dust and ash, yet the Great Wall still stands. Now, scientists from Zhejiang University in China have completed a study that explains one of the main factors contributing to the wall’s longevity. Turns out, it’s food. Rice, to be exact.

(Warning: Nerdy scientific explanation about food that you’ll never really need to know alert!)

There are three main kinds of rice: short, medium and long grain. In addition to describing the shape of rice relative to other grains, the distinctions also describe the presence and ratio of the two main starches that make up a grain of rice. These are amylose and amylopectin, which do different jobs. Amylose is a relatively short, simple molecule that can cause gelling, but is soluble in liquid. Amylopectin is long and highly branched, does not dissolve in liquids, and makes grains of rice stick to each other and liquids to gel more efficiently than amylose.

Long-grain rice, like basmati nd jasmine, contains much more amylose than amylopectin, and when cooked, the amylose available dissolves into the cooking liquid and is drained off. Also, amylose has chemical properties that keep too much water from soaking into the rice and causing the little amylopectin available to stay inside the grains. This causes the rice to separate; individual grains don’t stick together. Long-grain rice is good for making rice as a side dish to soak up a gravy or sauce. It’s the number one kind of rice used in this area of India.

Short-grain rice, like Arborio, contains a lot of amylopectin and very little amylose. Since the amylopectin is not water-soluble, it remains in the solution and causes liquids to gel up and become very sticky. This kind of rice is used to make paella or risotto, dishes where the rice is cooked in a flavorful liquid to create a sticky, creamy and delicious broth.

Medium grain rice contains roughly equal proportions of amylose and amylopectin, and thus has roughly equal characteristics of short- and long-grain rice. It’s sticky when cooked, but not as much as short-grain rice, and it holds its structure in a dish, but not as much as long-grain rice. This kind of rice is commonly used in sushi or rice soup.

What does all of that have to do with the Great Wall? Turns out that sticky rice soup made from short- to medium-grain rice grown in China was used in the mortar to piece together the wall. This isn’t exactly new information, as historians and archaeologists have known this for years. However, Zhejiang’s recent study has determined why exactly rice was important in the mortar. The amylopectin in the soup helped make the mortar nice and thick, the same way a good risotto dish is thick and creamy. This soup was then mixed with limestone to form the mortar for the bricks. Amylopectin and calcium carbonate from the limestone formed a unique, strong inorganic-organic compounded that was much better than other mortar materials of the day.

Again, this probably isn’t new information, but it was also recently discovered that amylopectin also seems to inhibit the natural crystallization of lime. In normal mortar, the inorganic compound (basically some sort of rock) continues to crystallize and change over hundreds of years, weakening the structure of the building in which it is used. Instead of the mortar eventually forming a big, messy, unstable chunk of calcium carbonate crystal after 1500 years, the microstructure that was originally created held up against weathering and further crystal growth. It’s a much more efficient and long-lasting way to build something, and rice (specifically the amylopectin in rice starches) makes it possible.

Moral of the story: rice is a culturally important food for nearly the whole worlds, so much so that it has several functions outside of its nutritional value. Oh and if you eat rice and limestone every day, you’ll live for 1500 years.

Wait, that’s not right. Kids, don't eat rocks. Unless it's salt, which is technically a rock. But that's another post.