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Food Habit

While packing food for a road trip recently, I found myself thinking how we decide if something makes sense to take for a trip and now easy or difficult it would be to find a place to sit and eat it. Sandwiches in their own bags and something to drink from a spill-proof bottle are the reliable and fail-safe options. Reasonable people would settle for that because it is sensible. But for me, eating like I was still at home is a big factor in choice of food - I am creature that likes being comfortable and will prioritize comfort over commonsense sometimes. 

This also means carrying a lot of extra things to make it all work. When I pack for a road-trip. I am often reminded of a story my mother used to tell of one of our distant relatives. The man had eight kids and worked for the Indian Railways post-Independence. He travelled close to free with his large family with his railway pass but food still had to be paid for and he was known to be thrifty. 

Apparently they had a huge custom-made wooden box with many compartments that housed all kitchen utensils for the family along with a stove. This box traveled with them everywhere. They could be anywhere and still have a home-cooked meal and on budget - it was no different from being at home. The family would live in a rented house for a few months during summer, the man would go back to work and return to pick them up a the end of the school holidays. Those kids managed to see parts of India that would have been impossible for a family that size on such limited income. 

I found this story fascinating since I first heard it as a kid. This relative was deceased well before I was born so the story is more like a myth that lives to this day. I imagined a family of ten traveling by train to far flung corners of India with their hold-alls and that huge wooden box, making a home instantly wherever they landed. It must have made a strong impression on me because I am trying to replicate my variant of that wooden box. Reading this story of how food made to supply rations to soldiers during WWII is still in our lives made me think of food and habits that transcend generations.

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