I was hungry and it was your world

Bangladesh has amazing food. Tasty, beautiful, well textured... what more could I want?

The best part of the monsoon is mangos. Every day, between breakfast and dinner, I consume 3 or 4 pounds of the firm yellow-orange sweet tangy fruit. It is THAT good.
Seeing as how 2 of my 3 meals consist largely of fruit, you might expect that soon my clothes would fit rather loosely. However, you would not be accounting for lunch.

Most days when Sheuli asks what I want for lunch I say "Dhal, Bhat, and Shobji." Dhal is a round orange-yellow legume. Bengali's have it with rice at almost every meal. Sheuli cooks mine to a thick, bottom of the pea-soup pot type consistency. She adds cumin, tangy tomatoes, caramelled onions, and a sprinkling of cilantro. It is very tasty, and fulfills my protein requirements. Bhat is wonderful fragrant Bengali rice. Shobji are vegetables. Sheuli is good at finding fresh vegetables and has overcome the Bengali tendency to overcook and fry everything in oil. Lunch has 2 or 3 vegetable varieties, which might include pumpkin, green papaya, green beans, carrots, red spinach, eggplant or okra. I used to hate eggplant and okra, now I special request them.

Lunch is eaten with my fingers. The pumpkin chunks break against bits of potato and mash together. The fluffy lukewarm rice and hot chunky dhal play off each other. Food tastes different when eaten with my fingers.

PS. Ali, could you please paste the Sheuli's dhal recipe in the comments section or email it to me?