Do It Yourself

This may be surprising; there are no supermarkets - the way you know them in the west - in Bhutan. In the developed world, fresh pasteurized milk and eggs and drinkable water from the tap are taken for granted. But here, in this small developing country, the milk has to be boiled to make it safe, and soft-boiled eggs can be deadly. Also, to purify the water, you need to boil it, then wait for it to cool, and finally transfer the water to a water filter.

So basically, we don't have a lot of processed food. My dad makes home-made yogurt (the packaged one produced locally is not to our taste) and my mother makes bread - and pizza - at home. In the past few years, more and more bakeries have opened in Thimphu and the bread and pastry situation has improved. There are not many bakeries, because the usual carbohydrate in the meal is rice, so bread is not commonly used.

A family in the US with all the food they eat in a week

Photo: http://world.time.com/2013/09/20/hungry-planet-what-the-world-eats/photo/usnc04-0001-xxf1rw-2

A family in Bhutan with all the food that they eat in a week
Photo: http://world.time.com/2013/09/20/hungry-planet-what-the-world-eats/photo/bhu01-0001-xxf1s-2/

Rice

Rice is the most common food in Bhutan. Each meal, either breakfast, dinner, or lunch, is usually served a big heap of rice, which is the main dish. Sometimes the rice is red, white, or even yellow, but it's rice. The children in my class, almost everyday bring ema datsi with rice, or any other datsi dish with rice. I don't bring rice every day, and one day after peeping in my lunch box and seeing no rice, a girl said: "You never bring real food, do you?"
And the cheek of it!

In Dzongkha, rice is mentioned as toh. Toh also means food in Dzongkha, which shows how often rice is eaten.

Local meals tend to consist, especially in monasteries and local houses, of simply rice with a "curry" like ema datsi.

Ema Datsi, Kewa Datsi, Shamu Datsi...

Ema Datsi

Shamu Datsi

First of all, what is datsi? It's the Bhutanese cheese, a soft, melted cheese which the locals use to make local delicacies (and bound to disagree with your digestion, too). Ema means chilli. Kewa is potato, and shamu is mushroom. Did you, then, guess what these foods mean? Ema Datsi is the national dish, a plate of chillies served mixed with datsi. Not only is it the national dish, it is also one of the spiciest dishes. I've tried it only twice or thrice, and got out with a fiery tongue. I'm not saying it's bad! But is it ever spicy! Kewa datsi is pretty much the same thing, but, as you might guess, instead of chillies, it is served with potatoes. The datsi in this dish is quite hot, because otherwise the taste would have been bland. The shamu datsi is my favourite, because it's full of mushrooms, and  I personally adore mushrooms, especially the sangay-shamu and button mushrooms sometimes found in the local market in Thimphu. These are big, tough mushrooms, which, in good cooking, can be simply heavenly. Anyway, back to the subject. The datsi in the shamu datsi is also quite spicy, but not as much as the ema datsi, of course.

Kewa Datsi

All the Bhutanese love these dishes, and mostly eat them every day... with... rice, rice, and more rice!

Chugo? Yumm...

“Have a bit of chugo?” is the question which most foreigners are so very eager to refuse - understandably. The unappetizing looking cheese is a fave snack in the less developed villages and towns. It’s actually real yak cheese, and... well, takes at least 30 minutes to chew. Yes, it’s a hard cheese which smells like an especially smelly yak. The chugo, which is sold in Bhutan for about 70 ngultrums a packet, is marketed in America as a special treat for dogs and sold in three chugos a packet which cost... 50 dollars.

Chugo is not exactly a mouthwash, so I recommend you to use some toothpaste if you want to get married.