Peanuts and Stones

This morning I felt like eating some "pulsu-atakalu" or "huli-avalakki" or in layman terms, the south indian version of rice flakes. Pretty darn simple to make; in fact, in this case, extremely simple to make. All that I had to do was to wash the rice flakes in warm water (to moisten the flakes of course), mix it up with some of the "avalakki pudi" (powder) that my mom sent from India and voila! ready to eat!

As I was enjoying my avalakki, sitting on the couch, looking out of the window, enjoying the sun's rays entering into my living room, I found this attractive looking piece, that looked like a peanut (the powder has peanuts), but a tad bit darker and it seemed as if the peanut was coated with some kind of a, well, coating (maybe chilli powder or just some flour etc). Usually I would be in a great hurry to put it in my mouth and bite--- this time, thankfully, I was very cautious (no idea where I got that cautiousness from!) and gently put it into my mouth and as soon as I tasted it (with  my tongue of course), I spat it out back into my spoon. It was a horrible piece of red colored STONE! Literally! Uggh! Just imagine if I had bitten into it--- ohhhh, my poor teeth! Well, I am glad I saved my teeth the trauma of biting into that horrible piece of stone!

But I am amazed that even after all these years, food adultery is still happening! I find this even in case of lentils (the yellow kind- you know, toor dal, mung dal etc). I have to wash those lentils at least 4 to 5 times before the metanil yellow (I remember this from way back in elementary school where we studied about food adulteration and various food adulterants) is washed off from the lentils. Really, I mean, when on earth will this stop? Look at the picture of the stone I found in my breakfast this morning and see for yourself!

 Identify the real one! (I put this up on my fb profile pic this morning too! haha!)