Object Number 7: Houseboat Food

I am not sure that any aspect of the huge range of the food in Kerala can be contained under the heading of a single object, but if there is one thing that resounds and reminds when you are back home, it is the memory of the food.
Often, the most memorable meals are the ones taken on the houseboat. The houseboat cooks are not trained chefs, but often village men who have learned their craft from the best cooks of all, their mothers and wives.

A selection of vegetable dishes, often a chicken curry and, if you are lucky, a kareemi fish cooked wrapped in its own banana leaf appear, accompanied by the huge, red-streaked grains of Kerala rice. Anything and everything can appear on your banana leaf plate, beetroot, cabbage, bitter gourds, yard-long beans, tiny, puffy papadums and a red-hot sambal, and it all keeps coming. A plate of raw cucumber, onion, tomato and carrots will probably be safe to eat, and when you are so stuffed that it is a good job that your only task will be to sit and watch the backwaters go by, the leaves are thrown overboard to add to the pollution and to feed the fish and the crew go astern to finish up what's left over.
A plate of carved pineapple and bananas appear next to finish you off completely.
The lucky passenger will have a dedicated cook who pulls out all the stops at breakfast too. A traditional breakfast of curries and sambal will be available, but if you are like me and can't face hot and spicy breakfasts, you might get appam, a tapioca pancake, puffy, fermented iddlies along with floppy toast and an omelette,
Although the food is moderated for pathetic Western palates it will still be fiery with pepper and aromatic with all the spices which have been grown here for millennia. Each spice is worthy of an object in its own right, as are the dhosas and parathas and variations of coconut products, the lethally fried snacks and street food. I still have plenty of objects to go!