People in this village, as I mentioned earlier, are a little suspicious of refrigerators. I offered some day-old refrigerated leftovers to Leela, a local housewife who's helping us with the cooking. She politely declined, explaining, "If I feed that to my children, they'll get sick."

Leela may be wary of refrigerators, but she loves our new blender (they're called "mixies" here). When she grinds coconut and spices for each meal, it can take about an hour when she uses the traditional grinding stone.

I love hearing the sonorous rub-rub-rub of the heavy grinding stone in the morning, but I've now resigned myself to the mixie's high-pitched whine. When she uses the mixie, Leela can whip up coconut chutney for breakfast in about 10 minutes.

About 20 years ago, mixies were a luxury item. Now even in this little fishing village, they're a must-have. Everyone admits that stone-ground chutney tastes best, but in a culture where people routinely cook three fresh meals a day, using a mixie can reduce meal prep time by nearly three hours. Who couldn't use an extra three hours in a day?

The irony is that the mixie sits silent many mornings, because there's no power to run it, and Leela's back to the daily grind. So the power failures work to my advantage sometimes -- whenever the current goes, we get tastier meals.