The two pictures of meat shops were taken just a three minute walk away from our home. All over Shillong you will find different shops like this selling different meats. In Laitumkhrah, there is an actual meat market where they have different stalls for different animals. You can tell what kind of meat they are selling, by a head of that animal hung somewhere in the stall. So a mutton stall will have a head of a goat hanging somewhere near the meat. Usually for beef though, they will just have horns hanging somewhere and not really the whole head.
Just recently someone opened a "convenience shop" about 15 minutes from our home and we have been deeply grateful. You can go there and get everything you need at one place instead of going to 3-4 different small shops. They even sell western condiments like Heinz ketchup and Ragu sauce. However we don't buy much of these because they sell here for about twice the price that we can buy them in America. They have also started selling frozen, packaged meat, although it is much cheaper to buy it from the little shops shown above.
Vegetables here are pretty cheap and fresh and we usually go to a big market to buy them. It's a beautiful sight full of many colors and smells. We buy everything from tomatoes, to garlic, to bellpeppers and cucumbers there. It is orange season right now and you can buy them almost anywhere. When it's not orange season, I'm longing for it to come quickly. There is nothing quite like a Shillong orange. You can get 4 for a little less than a quarter.
At our base we eat alot of rice, dahl, and potato. Several times a week we will have either pork or beef as well. Chicken is very expensive here and so we don't eat it that often. Most of the people at our base are from the North East and love meat and chilies. Usually we have something with every meal called chutney, which tends to be incredibly spicy. We also use a lot of "smelly" things to cook with the meat. One is fermented bamboo shoots, or bastinga, and the other is axone, fermented soy beans. Their smell and flavor are very powerful, but somehow it greatly enhances the flavor of pork.
Every morning for breakfast Houser will have something called Wai Wai. It's like Top Ramen and he never gets tired of eating it along with some bread. Many people here make fun of him for being so committed to it. Sometimes we eat together in our house, and sometimes we eat with everyone at the base. We try to go out sometimes for a sort of "date night" and eat at a restaurant. My current favorite is a place called Bombay Biites where they have incredible naan and chicken.
