One of the things we are enjoying about Southern India is the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables that are readily available year round in thousands of street side stands like this one. India is very careful about what they let into the country, and much of the produce is not genetically altered. In addition the fruit is picked ripe, resulting in much more flavor than what we are accustomed to. We are still discovering many new fruits, and will never know what all the different odd looking vegetables are, but we have learned how to cook Plantains.
Fruits and vegies are also very inexpensive. The haul of fruit here cost about 250 Rupees, or $5.00.
Of course with all the palm trees around here, we see plenty of coconuts. One variety is sold by the roadside, which the vendors open at the top for a straw to drink the juice. Here I am trying to break into the other "hard" variety that we are more familiar with.
Much of the population here is vegetarian, and cows are considered sacred, so we don't get much beef, and what we do get is definitely not grain fed! But chicken is generally available, though much smaller than what we see in the states. We also see a lot of fresh fish being sold at "fish markets", or from the back of a bicycle, but it's been hard for us to get past the smell and the lack of refrigeration to purchase any. 
Char has three weeks off work over Christmas break, so we are spending a couple of them touring around Sri Lanka on a rented two wheeler. I'll be sure to take the camera........
