Jal-Jeera, a One of a Kind Drink

We all got to experience some Indian culture first hand tonight at dinner. It all started yesterday when Solomon asked us what our favorite foods were. One of us said sweet potatoes, thinking you know, sweet potatoes. So tonight at dinner we sit down to a plate full of white boiled potatoes. Not remembering our conversation last night, we expect them to taste like normal salty potatoes. Not quite. Instead of giving us orange sweet potatoes they cooked normal potatoes in sugar water to sweeten them. Literally making sweet potatoes. Believe it or not they were actually pretty good and tasted just like sweet potatoes.

Not long after the sweet potato discovery we were presented with a green water with ground mint and pepper on top. We were told this was the Indian drink Jal-Jeera which aids in digestion. Curious, we all took a big gulp. It was interesting. Here is the wiki definition, please read for further explanation.

“Jal-jeera, or jaljira, is an Indian beverage, or else the powder used to flavor this drink. In Hindi, "Jal" means water and "Jeera" means cumin. The beverage form is essentially lemonade and jaljira powder, and is a popular summer drink in India. It is sometimes served as an appetizer, as it is intended to "startle" the taste buds.

Jaljira powder generally consists of cumin, ginger, black pepper, mint, black salt, some fruit powder (usually either mango, or some kind of citrus zest), and chili or hot pepper powder.”

When it says it is made to startle the taste buds, boy is that correct. I cannot upload a picture right now, the internet is not being friendly. So feel free to Google the drink yourself.

Today was very eventful at Dr. Gurucharan’s office. It was implant day! Apparently the staff enjoys days Dr. Gurucharan does implants because everyone seemed to be very chipper and happy this morning. I learned a ton about the jaw bone and size of the implant during the procedure. The procedure only took him about 20 minutes which I found to be very fascinating. I’m not sure if that is because he had a lot of other patients today so he was working quickly or if that is the legitimate time for an implant procedure. Whatever the case, the procedure was done and the patient was happy in the end.