Hungry Planet

My article this month focuses on a beautiful book called "Hungry Planet" by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio.

I love reading and go through stacks of books from the local library every month, but this book was exceptional in the way it touched me, so I wanted to share it in this space.

The premise of the book is that the authors visited homes of ordinary, average families in twenty four different countries. They spent time studying the food habits of the families in the context of their community and way of life, their likes and dislikes and food preferences. Each family gets a detailed profile in which the cost of their average weekly food is laid out. The authors take evocative photographs in which each family is pictured with their weekly groceries beautifully arranged around them. No matter if the family's groceries are a lavish carload or a meagre few, the food is treated with honor and lovingly placed in these evocative photographs.

The result of this extraordinary work is a snapshot of the way the world eats today. We as in the collective "WE". All the different continents, races and nationalities, as well as the rich and the poor, the urban folk and the rural folk, the producers and the consumers, all taken together. Now, I have been blogging about food for a while, and often do think of food blogs as a snapshot of the way ordinary people eat. But it is clear that food bloggers, while usually being representative of the middle class, are way more privileged than the average human. Anyone with internet access, literacy and not living a hand-to-mouth existence is in a special category. This book provides a glimpse into the lives and dinner plates of people that we may rarely come across, from countries that remain enigmatic, such as Bhutan, Bosnia, Mongolia and Chad, as well as chronicling the food habits of people in nations that are more familiar to me, such as Germany, Mexico, India and the USA.

In these days of global food shortages being discussed in all the news media and touching the lives of many of us, the irony of the title of this book, "Hungry Planet" is not lost on me. Looking at the non-judgmental photographs across these pages that objectively capture the huge disparities in the way families eat across the world the message that struck me was, how nice if we could share a bit more. The book created renewed respect in my mind for the status of food in our lives and a new recognition of the people who grow our food.

I lingered on the pages of this book, piqued with genuine curiosity. Of course, every family is just one representative of that particular nation and does capture all the nuances of life in that country or speak for every family living there, but the information is very interesting anyway. For instance, what does the weekly shopping list in Greenland look like? (It is supplemented to a large extent by hunting and fishing). Does the Indian family's weekly groceries look anything like my family's when I was growing up in India? (It does...the family is the Patkars of Ujjain and you can see them surrounded by a large spread of vegetables, fruits and prepared foods, including a huge stack of rotis!). What is the difference in grocery spending between the industrialized and some other nations? (Unbelievable...the German family spent $500.07 for their week's groceries while the family from Mali spent $26.39. The former had almost all packaged foods while the latter had almost none.) One can spend hours poring over the essays, numbers and pictures in this book, and they tell us so much about the way we ourselves eat. I marveled at the vast number of chili peppers (4 baskets) eaten in a week by the family in Bhutan (the authors tell us that in Bhutan, the chili pepper is treated as a vegetable and not a mere condiment), gasped at the number of beverages consumed by the German family in a week (more than 2 dozen bottles of assorted drinks), shook my head at the ubiquitous presence of the Coca Cola bottle in family groceries from every continent, and felt a pang of sadness at the meagre food supplied to the refugee family in Chad (including just 77 gallons of water for the whole family for all purposes for the whole week...compare this to 25-50 gallons of water used in an average 5-minute shower). In essence, this book is a must-read. It does not preach, it simply lays out a wealth of information and keen observations that are interesting, informative and though-provoking. Please do look for it in your local library or bookstore and you will not be disappointed.

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This Post was written by Nupur from One Hot Stove.

Musical beginnings and a tiffin from leftovers

February has so far been a music filled month. We had the One Tree Music Festival in Mumbai (Bombay) on 2nd-4th Feb with an incredible line up of rock and blues. Day 1 was Alan Parson's Live Project, Day 2 - Walter Trout and the radicals, Day 3 - The one and only Buddy Guy. Are you guys swooning at our good luck? True blue music lovers can read reviews of Day 1 and 2 here.

Continuing with the musical month, we attended this absolutely ethereal concert yesterday at NCPA . Ustad Zakir Hussain on the tabla and Ustad Sultan Khan on the sarangi, along with his budding genius of a son. The concert was from 7-9.30pm, by the end of which I was transported to another planet. Anyone who has heard both these musicians live will swear by it. I had kept dinner ready by afternoon, preparing for the fact that we'd be home late. But as luck would have it, a group of us went straight from the concert to Mondegar's Cafe in Colaba which is a 5 minute ride. Being the lady in the sari etc, I stuck to wine while my buddies guzzled the beer.

Tiffin this morning was no hassle at all, with all the leftovers from yesterday.

List of left-overs

Atta for the rotis (Indian bread)
A vegetable spread
A spring onion dry curry with chickpea flour (Inspired by Nupur's Cabbage Zunka)

I got them out of the refrigerator when I woke up this morning. All I had to do was assemble them into a delicious quesadilla kinda tiffin.


The whole wheat flour dough (atta) was rolled out into Shaheen style Kerala porotta without the oil brushings though, about 4" in diameter and 1/4" thick. The vegetable spread was then generously patted on one side of the parathas which were then layered with the 'zunka'. I folded them in half and voila - tiffin ready.

Was this balanced, you may ask! Carbs from the bread, veggie dose from the spread, greens from the spring onions zunka and protein from the chick pea flour in the zunka made it perfectly balanced. Another small box for a spiced up yogurt dip and it doesn't get yummier than that!

You can do the same thing for your kids. The veggie spread is a great substitute to mayo or readymade sandwich spreads once in a while. It also lets you sneak in some veggies in a way they really cannot find out. You may ofcourse reduce the chillies to make it more kid friendly. You could also roll them into frankies instead of folded semicircles to secure the stuffing in a better way. Pita pockets are very kid friendly as in the stuffing cannot drop out from below as kiddies are busy trying to chew a bit off the top.

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This Post was written by Nandita from Saffron Trail

Cutting-Edge Safety

 

My sessions in the kitchen usually begin in a typical fashion- by pulling out a knife from a drawer and a cutting board from the back of the counter, and by the ritual chopping of a few vegetables. However, my introduction to cooking did not begin with any sort of training on knife skills or knife safety- like most home cooks, I am self-taught when it comes to these things. A few months ago, I was volunteering as an assistant in a culinary training class taught to unemployed adults (in an effort to find them employment in the restaurant business) and got to participate in a real knife skills class taught by a real chef!

It was a pretty eye-opening experience, and I stared with awe as the chef taught fancy-schmancy French knife cuts like bruoise and batonnet, all with ridiculously exacting proportions. The real ideas that I came away with were regarding knife safety in the kitchen. The knife is such a commonplace kitchen tool that we sometimes forget that it is a bona fide weapon!

Here are some very basic (far from cutting-edge) tips that have become a habit for me now. If you have a child who is a budding cook, it may be a good idea to teach them these basic tips as they start out in the kitchen. The first few tips call for being conscious about where the knife is at all times, even while you may be busy cooking:

1. Never cover a knife. Say there are dishcloths lying around a messy kitchen. Be conscious of the fact that a dish towel should never be placed so that the knife underneath is hidden. Next thing you know, the cloth and the knife will get pulled up in one go.
2. Don't place knives in a sink. Once other dishes and soapy water cover the knife, the blade becomes dangerous to the next person reaching into the sink.
3. Do not grab blindly for a knife, or grope in a cabinet for one. Reach for the handle deliberately and grasp it well before lifting it.
4. If a knife falls off a working surface onto the floor, do not reach out and try to catch it before it falls. This is a tough one, because we tend to act on reflex and try to catch stuff before it falls. With a knife, remind your brain to just stand back!
5. When the knife is sitting on a cutting board, place it at the edge of the cutting board that is farthest from the table edge (and you), parallel to the table edge, with the blade facing away from the table edge.

I have tried to depict this in the picture above. The next two tips are helpful for kitchens with multiple cooks, like when friends come over to cook:

1. Never hand another person a knife. Lay it on a flat surface and let the other person pick it up from there.
2. When walking around the kitchen with a knife, hold it down by your side, perpendicular to the ground with the blade parallel to your thigh. This keeps the blade out of the way should you stumble and fall forward, etc., or when you are walking past other people.

Other tidbits:

1. Here is a knife tip that most of us are already aware of: a dull knife is much more dangerous to use than a sharp knife. This is because one needs more force to use a dull knife, making it more prone to causing injury if it slips.
2. Storing knives in a knife rack or a wall-mounted magnetic strip is a great way to keep from having to rummage from them in crowded drawers. If they have to be placed in a drawer, keep the drawer free of other clutter.
3. Here's one trick that my mother taught me: place a dish towel under the cutting board to hold it in place while it is being used.

Finally, if there is a minor cut despite all precautions, wash the cut carefully and keep some anti-bacterial ointment and band-aids handy. Here's to safety in the kitchen! If you have your own knife safety tips, please share them with us.

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This Post was written by Nupur from One Hot Stove

Dear Food Diary...

"You are what you eat". We hear this maxim so often that it sounds tired and cliched. In any case, it is something I occasionally say to myself in an effort to move towards a better diet. This month I tried something a little different. For a week, I kept a food diary.

A food diary or a food journal is simply a detailed record of what a person eats. For a period of time, one has to jot down *everything* that crosses the lips. The purpose of keeping a food diary is not to become obsessive about food or calorie-counting. It is quite the opposite- it helps a person to  truthfully evaluate their current food habits and realize where there is room for improvement, and where they are doing quite well. This can help to maintain and reinforce all the positive habits we have already acquired, and to take small steps towards changing some of the more unhealthy ones.

Keeping a food diary requires only a small notebook and a pen, but you need to hang on to these and take them everywhere with you (trust me, it is all too easy to forget the little things we munch on throughout the day). The minimum details that need to be entered into the food diary are, of course, the food (what did you eat and how much of it you ate) and the time of day when you ate it. In addition, certain other details can be very useful too, such as mood (eg. to determine if you tend to eat certain types of food when you are bored or tired or unhappy), or noting whether you were alone or with someone else, and your activity (eg. whether you eat while driving or watching TV or working at your desk). All of this reveals patterns of eating that we practice consciously or unconsciously. It is important to be brutally honest while writing this information down (I was overcome by remorse when I had to write down that I had eaten half a big bag of tortilla chips in one sitting!) and to include beverages and not just solid food (know how many calories there are in that grande frappachino?). A food diary can be kept for as short as 2-3 days or as long as one likes. I thought that a whole week was ideal, because it covered weekdays and weekends and was more representative of my typical eating habits. Nutritionists often suggest keeping a food diary for a few days, making small diet changes if necessary, and then perhaps keeping a food diary again a few months down the line to get an idea of dietary improvements.

It was an interesting experience to keep a food diary. It was easy for me to see at a glance what I am doing right and where there is room for improvement. I could clearly see my snack-attack moments- the fact that mid-mornings and mid-evenings were woefully littered with junk food. Little moments of snacking added up to a startling amount of my daily food intake. On the other hand, my main meals are quite healthful and full of vegetables. I tend to eat when I am bored and when I am watching TV, but not when I am reading or at the computer. I very rarely eat desserts with the exception of needing something sweet to dunk into my tea. I eat very little fruit. Since keeping the food diary, I have put some small changes in place. After all, what is the point of spending a lot of time and effort cooking nutritious meals if you are going to throw it all away by eating so much junk food? I won't ever stop eating chips and stuff like cheez-its (those addictive snack crackers) because I love these foods too much (and don't see the need to banish them altogether) but now I take the time to enjoy them instead of gobbling them down ravenously. I dole out a portion into a small bowl and savour every bite (no more eating out of the bag). You know how parents of small children go around with little bags and boxes of snacks? Now I do the same! I carry portions of snack foods with me everywhere- fruit leather, dry fruits, roasted nuts, or chivda (a spicy snack) made with cereal.  It feels good to slowly let go of the baggage of habits that were doing me no good.

If you want to see an extreme example of a food diary, take a look at the book "Everything I ate: A year in the life of my mouth" where Tucker Shaw has documented and photographed *everything* he ate during 2004. He eats a lot more junk food than I do! We don't have to go that far. My personal goal is a simple one- to be a mindful eater. A food diary is just a simple tool to help me get there. 

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This Post was written by Nupur from One Hot Stove

10 Reasons to be a Volunteer

Who is a volunteer? Someone who gives a bit of his or her time, free of charge, to a cause, or an organization, or an event, or another person. When people speak of volunteering, it often becomes this big issue of giving to others, performing “social service”. Well, I volunteer for strictly selfish reasons. I do it for myself. Here are my top 10 reasons for being a volunteer whenever the opportunity arises.

1. You learn new life skills and to get a peek into a profession different from your own: Volunteer opportunities often give an inside view of a profession other than your own. Folks who volunteer to build homes learn all kinds of useful carpentry and plumbing skills. Those who volunteer in community kitchens get to be "chefs" for a little while. I have learnt to scale up recipes to 100 or more servings with ease, and to make complete meals out of odd collections of the ingredients at hand. Many volunteer opportunities are exercises in management and organization.
2. You get fabulous opportunities. Being a volunteer can provide the opportunity to travel abroad, learn new languages and so much more. Those who volunteer to run marathons sometimes get access to professional trainers. I recently got the chance to teach a cooking class. I have also had the opportunity to attend classes taught by professional chefs by simply being the volunteer helper for that class.
3. You get some exercise. If you are bored by the thought of exercising alone in a gym, consider a volunteer position which could get your muscles to work, such as working in a community garden, lifting heavy pots and pans in a community kitchen or doing a walk/run for an event. Some of my most inspiring friends are "regular" people who have become athletes and run in marathons.
4. You get to be around motivated people. It turns out that the people who spend their free time doing volunteer work are often wonderful souls with big hearts and great attitudes. I have learnt a lot from being around these inspiring people, and have made valuable friendships with those who volunteer at the same places that I go to.
5. You get a chance to meet people very different from yourself. Most of us have friends who are in the same tax bracket, age group and socioeconomic group as ourselves. When you volunteer, you meet people who may come from completely different backgrounds and it is an eye-opening exercise to get to know them. I learned to appreciate people as individuals, that the elderly person who needs donated meals is not a statistic but has funny stories to relate and life experiences that I can learn from. My biggest lesson in sharing came from a malnourished homeless child (in a school for street children) who, when offered a cookie, broke it in two and gave me one half. Over the years, I have been learning to get off my high horse and learn “where people are coming from” and it sure has made me a little sober about my views and attitudes.
6. It provides a surge of positive energy. It is just depressing to watch the news or read the papers and see nothing but injustice and destruction everywhere in the world. But going out there and doing something small- smaller than even a drop in the ocean- can provide a ridiculous amount of hope and happiness. It makes you feel like you do have some amount of control over what goes on in our world.
7. It makes you feel more connected. When I moved to St. Louis, I had several months on my hands while I looked for a job, and in a new city without many friends, the days could become long and lonely. When I started volunteering, I suddenly felt useful and connected, as if I was now part of the local community. In a few weeks, people at the place where I volunteered started to rely on me as their “vegetable cook” and I finally felt like this city was home, where I had a place in the grand scheme of things.
8. You learn to count your blessings. Seeing the relentless hardships that people encounter- crime, poverty, disparities, illness- makes me grateful for everything I have. When I get into a petulant mood and start whining about small things that go wrong, I am more compelled to stop and look at the big picture and allow myself to be happy and contented with my own life.
9. You develop a problem-solving attitude. There is no end to the problems in this world and it is all too easy to rant about them. It is much harder to do something about it. The volunteer spirit teaches you to think about ways to do something about any problem you come across rather than watch helplessly or simply complain.
10. It is a great team-building exercise. At the community kitchen, I often see groups of coworkers come in to volunteer as a group. It is fun to see the "office" barriers drop and how the group dynamic improves as they make banana bread (or whatever) together. Many people who have children don’t feel like they can take time away from their families to do volunteer work. But for children of school-going age and beyond, the whole family can volunteer together. What a great way to teach children some solid values!

Being a volunteer is a state of mind. It can be something that we do for a hour or two every week or month or it can be a one-time thing. It is something thoroughly enjoyable and fulfilling and it is such a pity that more of us don’t do it more often. Whether you donate blood, spend the morning planting flowers in a community garden, conduct a bake sale, run a marathon, train your pet to be a therapy animal and take it to hospitals…there are volunteer opportunities for everyone, in every place, to fit every schedule.

I think it is really important to think of volunteering as something we do for our own happiness and well-being rather than some form of charity that we do for others. As giving BACK; as gratitude for all our good fortune, rather than simply as giving something away as if we were such magnanimous souls. As something we do on an everyday (or weekly or monthly) basis as an integral part of our lives rather than something we plan to do in the intangible future, in that mythical moment “when I have more time”. I say- the time is now! Do something good for yourself- become a volunteer.

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This Post was written by Nupur from One Hot Stove

Birthday Traditions

April is my birthday month, and around this time of the year, I always think back to the birthdays I celebrated as I was growing up. My busy and harried parents always made time to throw a birthday party for me (and for my sister on her birthday). Year after year, they planned, baked, mixed royal icing, blew balloons until they were blue in the face, armed themselves with a ladder, sticky tape and crepe paper streamers, decorated the living room and put together a homemade party with the works- guests, games, decorations and a decorated cake!

One of the most vivid childhood memories I have: my parents would put together a themed cake (exactly the way Dharm recently shared the birthday creations he makes for his kids). My favorite one was a swimming pool one year (I was an avid swimmer at the time), complete with wafer-cookie springboards, green jelly as the water and little figures (crafted from sugar) bobbing in the pool. A couple dozen kids from the neighborhood would be invited for a party. We would play time-tested games like "Passing the Parcel", "Pin the tail on the donkey" and "Musical Chairs" but my mother had her other favorites too. One of them was the "Memory Game". She would place 20 common household objects on a tray- like a bowl, a banana, a matchbook, a pair of earrings, a newspaper, etc. The tray was brought out, everybody got to look at it for exactly one minute and memorize the contents; then the tray was covered with a dishtowel. The person who could remember the most number of objects correctly was the winner of some tiny but lovingly wrapped prize. Another game that I remember was the "Treasure Hunt". My mother made dozens of exquisite little paper butterflies and hid them over the yard. Teams of 2-3 were given a little map and then went on a butterfly hunt. Now that I think about it, my parents tolerated trampled flowerbeds, a ruined garden and muddy footprints *all* over the house to let us play this game.

The cake and the birthday song are pretty universal elements of a birthday celebrations, but every culture does have its own special traditions. Not all Indian families celebrate a birthday with cake and candles. A sweet something is certainly a must at every celebration in India- some of my friends had a traditional Hindu celebration called the "aarti" with a little lamp lit in their honor, with their parents holding the lamp in front of them, followed by a sweet treat popped into their mouth. In India, it is considered rude to open gifts in the presence of the giver, so birthdays consisted of a long and agonizing wait; the presents could only be opened when the last guest had left! Another Indian tradition: when cash is given as a gift, you are not supposed to give a round figure like 10 or 100 (rupees or dollars or whatever). You always give amounts like 11, 51, 101, symbolizing that it is a gift that is not complete and that it "keeps on giving", so to speak.

Celebrating the birthdays of children results in fun and happiness all around, and memories to last a lifetime. But as people get older, they occasionally say things like, "I'm too old to celebrate my birthday". I disagree! After all, the life of a grown-up is often not an enviable one- it is too full of cares and worries and boring stuff like bills and tax returns. Children get plenty of attention and adoration, but adults are usually the ones looking after the needs and wants of others, not the ones being taken care of. A birthday is the perfect time to shower some special attention on a person, fuss over them a little bit and tell them the simple thing that we all need to hear from time to time: "You are special. The things you do are not being taken for granted. Your birthday is an important day for us to celebrate". Now that I am all grown-up (or so they tell me), I enjoy learning of new birthday traditions and trying to include them into my own little family. Here is one that I particularly like- letting the birthday girl or boy (no matter whether age they are) choose the menu for the day. If they want to eat pizza for breakfast and doughnuts for dinner, so be it. It is their day! This tradition sounds especially fun for birthdays that fall on an otherwise humdrum weekday.

For my sixteenth birthday, my aunt gave me a tiny book as one of the birthday gifts that she always showered me with. It was full of little quotes, and she had highlighted one that read, "Ever since you were born, my days have been happier". To me, this is the essence of celebrating a birthday. To both give and receive such a sentiment is indeed a joyous thing!

Do you have any special birthday traditions in your family? Please share them with us!

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This Post was written by Nupur from One Hot Stove

Tiffin Tuesday - Happy Egg

A breakfast/snack box - since I have started training Aikido I also started feeling hungry in the morning!

In the middle is a happy egg weebl, then there are two pieces of bellpepper filled with caponata (from Nupur's recipe) and decorated with fresh herbs, then there are some grapes, two dates, two physalis, bell pepper sticks, and the last of the tiny cheese tarts (see below). They were cute, but expensive, since I ended up not liking one of three...
The bread is extra so it doesn't get soggy. It's a ready-baked baguette roll from the freezer.
That should last me a bit...

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This Post was written by jokergirl from WereRabbits.