DO YOU FALOODA?: A Gastronomically Challenged Blogger's Very Brief Views on the South Asian Refreshment Drink

Some people would call me gastronomically challenged, simply because my preferences in food are rather unusual.

Sure, I preferred imitation meat to the real stuff well before officially becoming a pesco-ovo-lacto vegetarian and have never been a fan of ice cream (although I will occasionally indulge in orange sorbet). A finicky eater as a young girl, I practically lived on olives, canned mandarins and beets. As a baby, I refused to drink milk that hadn't been chilled in the refrigerator for at least a half an hour.
For these and many other reasons, no one really trusts my opinions about food. They think my taste buds are delirious and irrational due to years of abuse and neglect.

Of course, I doth protest.

My taste buds happen to be very heightened, in my opinion. For instance, I can tell how chai is prepared from a single sip and vegetables that aren't fresh immediately offend my vegetarian sensibilities. Forget being gastronimically challenged; as far as I'm concerned, I'm an epicure (I can already hear the outcries from family and friends who believe otherwise).

In any case, I thought it would be fair to preface my first post about Pakistani food with this disclaimer: my taste buds may indeed be delirious and irrational from years of abuse and neglect so you may want to take what I say about foods with a grain of salt. FYI.

Now, onto the falooda.

Falooda, according to Wikipedia.com is "a South Asian refreshment drink made by using milk, vermicelli, sabja (basil seeds), tutti frutti and sugar along with huge amounts of ice cream. The popular flavours in which falooda is available include rose, mango, chocolate, fig, and many others."

I ate the tall cup of falooda pictured above in about thirty seconds, not because I enjoyed it but because the cool drink worked wonders battling the heat of Karachi. Honestly, the drink left a strange aftertaste in my mouth and was crusty towards the bottom. Plus it was too damned sweet.

I have a feeling that I've just opened the door to hate mail from falooda lovers across the universe.

Oh well. Bring it, I suppose.