It all started many years back when people all around us started discovering that they have diabetes, hypertension, thyroid,cholesterol etc at young age. Colleagues, neighbours, relatives, friends of friends all started telling horrid stories of heart attacks and blockages. It started sounding scarier everyday. So the chapatis for dinner slowly creeped in and we came out with this regime of having wheat in the night. Then there were rounds of the news that the four whites are the killers namely maida, salt, rice and sugar( did I get them right??)
The Maida boycott !
Maida means no pizzas and no bread, so occasionally when we wanted to make sandwiches we bought wheat/oats/ multigrain bread and thin crust pizzas. In the process most of the junk food/ snacks were abolished from the household except the ones that shouted out "wheat flour" in the ingredients.. See people in India are not yet gluten phobic so wheat is ok as of today. Many people are not aware of the difference between refined wheat flour and wheat flour till date. But not us..we had Google in hand and we utilised our wifi bills to research the possible flours available in the planet earth. So after much researching our flours got sorted. We chose wheat grains, soya, black lentils and some more hand picked grains and made our own flour to have a healthier and stronger chapati( not strong as in to chew). But the chapati making process still keeps changing..with oil, without oil, with ghee after making chapati, just one drop of ghee while making it, so on and so forth. Pooris have Been tagged as a luxury. Potatoes are for kids and for guests. Greens, yellow and browns, orange and white (to an extent) vegetables are only given a gate pass easily in our kitchen.
Coming to the next white monster- Rice.
Instead of the monstrous mill processed rice, the broken wheat, hand pounded rice, brown rice, couscous, quinoa and some more things took over like a rapid fire all over the city. No one made white raw rice and some who cooked went for boiled rice. The world around us was changing and every single person whom we met was more food consious and was reporting weight loss of 10s and 20s of kgs! People stopped putting those 5 kg/10 kg in provision list.
Then came the time of millets. The millets hit like a tsunami. People and news said that the millets were most nutritious grains grown for generations which our ancestors grew and ate. They costed double than the rice but were more filling and didn't cause drowsiness ..even food blogs of the 5-6 females whom I used to follow, rapidly started posting millet recipes like a termite attack. We stocked all kinds of millets, mixed them, made idli/dosa and even Adai with them. All went fine when there was this millets blog that said thyroid gets high with millets and it aggravated the thyroid...so millets are on a hold temporarily.
Meanwhile even a 5th white character namely milk was under the lens after some milk providers scandal. Milk cannot go out of Indian diet but yes cow's milk can replace the most staple brand of Chennai, the Aavin's 3 coloured packet milk! So we hunted down a milkman who could race down to our house every morning harping his scooter horn all over the neighborhood waking up all school children(and us too). No full cream, half cream and toned fooling ...only cow's pure milk. Then automatically (as if someone saw us buying cow's milk) the information flowed from forwards about how people can inject even cow's without calves to give milk and that we need to boil cow's milk for 15 minutes to destroy all the known germs . We asked the milkman how is the cow and the calf..he told the calf is better after a recent illness..ok so assured that this is a "good" cow. And we just boil the milk once which apparently takes around 15 minutes..so check.
Then the method of cooking came under microscope. Pressure cooker, rice cooker, steam cooker, boil water in normal vessel and "put the rice and switch of the flame " method, soak rice as soon as you get up and pressure cook for only 2 whistles method. New methods keep life interesting. It doesn't get monotonous. Non stick is bad, aluminium is bad, hindoleum is bad, pressure cooker is bad, any cooker is bad, even cooking for long is bad.
Organic stores have opened and all over the country there is this online grocery concept that has spread like a wild fire. Sugar has been replaced by palm sugar. Salt is going behind to give way to rock salt. Millets instead of rice. Tea and green tea have tulsi, ginger, pepper, Brahmi, and so many things that when you have your tea you feel you are having an Ayurvedic concoction. We have Khadi, 24 mantra, Fresho, pure 4 sure, KP namboodiri, patanjali, and 1000 more organic shops in India alone. Everything has a non arsenic, non toxic non paraben, non SLS counterparts. Honestly it is good to know that we have more exposure to healthy options as opposed to the times before when only unhealthy limited options were available and our parents just had to stop buying some things because they did not get an healthier option. Even an instant noodles has at least 10 more options.
I remember Mohun's cornflakes in my school days. That was the only cornflakes. Porridges had only Bonny mix. Otherwise at home Sattu maavu ganji with milk (and sugar) or buttermilk ( with salt). Above average household had the luxury of milk with Boost, Bournvita, Maltova, Viva, Horlicks, Complan. But simpler days...welcome to the complicated era of innumerable choices. Ultimately toddlers still chew their shoes, throw the apple pieces on floor and eat the fallen apple pieces, mop their food all over their face, legs and lick them..children get their immunity with nature and they'll all grow to be individuals with their own set of health issues blaming their parents for not bringing them up as their grandparents did...so I'm going to chill for a while before I get my herbal tea with cardamom, organic pepper and ginger ;-)
The Maida boycott !
Maida means no pizzas and no bread, so occasionally when we wanted to make sandwiches we bought wheat/oats/ multigrain bread and thin crust pizzas. In the process most of the junk food/ snacks were abolished from the household except the ones that shouted out "wheat flour" in the ingredients.. See people in India are not yet gluten phobic so wheat is ok as of today. Many people are not aware of the difference between refined wheat flour and wheat flour till date. But not us..we had Google in hand and we utilised our wifi bills to research the possible flours available in the planet earth. So after much researching our flours got sorted. We chose wheat grains, soya, black lentils and some more hand picked grains and made our own flour to have a healthier and stronger chapati( not strong as in to chew). But the chapati making process still keeps changing..with oil, without oil, with ghee after making chapati, just one drop of ghee while making it, so on and so forth. Pooris have Been tagged as a luxury. Potatoes are for kids and for guests. Greens, yellow and browns, orange and white (to an extent) vegetables are only given a gate pass easily in our kitchen.
Coming to the next white monster- Rice.
Instead of the monstrous mill processed rice, the broken wheat, hand pounded rice, brown rice, couscous, quinoa and some more things took over like a rapid fire all over the city. No one made white raw rice and some who cooked went for boiled rice. The world around us was changing and every single person whom we met was more food consious and was reporting weight loss of 10s and 20s of kgs! People stopped putting those 5 kg/10 kg in provision list.
Then came the time of millets. The millets hit like a tsunami. People and news said that the millets were most nutritious grains grown for generations which our ancestors grew and ate. They costed double than the rice but were more filling and didn't cause drowsiness ..even food blogs of the 5-6 females whom I used to follow, rapidly started posting millet recipes like a termite attack. We stocked all kinds of millets, mixed them, made idli/dosa and even Adai with them. All went fine when there was this millets blog that said thyroid gets high with millets and it aggravated the thyroid...so millets are on a hold temporarily.
Meanwhile even a 5th white character namely milk was under the lens after some milk providers scandal. Milk cannot go out of Indian diet but yes cow's milk can replace the most staple brand of Chennai, the Aavin's 3 coloured packet milk! So we hunted down a milkman who could race down to our house every morning harping his scooter horn all over the neighborhood waking up all school children(and us too). No full cream, half cream and toned fooling ...only cow's pure milk. Then automatically (as if someone saw us buying cow's milk) the information flowed from forwards about how people can inject even cow's without calves to give milk and that we need to boil cow's milk for 15 minutes to destroy all the known germs . We asked the milkman how is the cow and the calf..he told the calf is better after a recent illness..ok so assured that this is a "good" cow. And we just boil the milk once which apparently takes around 15 minutes..so check.
Then the method of cooking came under microscope. Pressure cooker, rice cooker, steam cooker, boil water in normal vessel and "put the rice and switch of the flame " method, soak rice as soon as you get up and pressure cook for only 2 whistles method. New methods keep life interesting. It doesn't get monotonous. Non stick is bad, aluminium is bad, hindoleum is bad, pressure cooker is bad, any cooker is bad, even cooking for long is bad.
I remember Mohun's cornflakes in my school days. That was the only cornflakes. Porridges had only Bonny mix. Otherwise at home Sattu maavu ganji with milk (and sugar) or buttermilk ( with salt). Above average household had the luxury of milk with Boost, Bournvita, Maltova, Viva, Horlicks, Complan. But simpler days...welcome to the complicated era of innumerable choices. Ultimately toddlers still chew their shoes, throw the apple pieces on floor and eat the fallen apple pieces, mop their food all over their face, legs and lick them..children get their immunity with nature and they'll all grow to be individuals with their own set of health issues blaming their parents for not bringing them up as their grandparents did...so I'm going to chill for a while before I get my herbal tea with cardamom, organic pepper and ginger ;-)
