WHAT MAKES FOOD TASTY?

•  A good hunger.
• A timely meal or snack.
•  A Good Cook.
•  Fresh ingredients.
• .The weather or climate.
• The water and soil in which the ingredients are produced.
•  A good recipe. 8. The order in which the ingredients are added.
• The temperature and time required for every stage of the cooking.
• The serving of the dish at the right time, temperature- fresh off the wok, griddle or pan or frozen or cooled.
•  The consistency of the dish for ease of eating.
• Food that is served with love, a smile and pride.
•  Hygienic food
• In the right quantity; not too much but small and many helpings.
•  Food that is eaten in amiable company and in jollity.
• Mother’s cooking.
• Cooked by one who has the touch of taste.*****
• Seasonal food.
• Dishes that complement each other. *****
• Our body functions on minute electrical impulses that transmit signals from and to different parts of the body- circuits that start or stop processes and actions. Every person has a unique aura or an electrical envelope; these static charges are what emit vibrations (vibes). These vibrations impact on every living and inanimate thing within the zone of influence . In my opinion the mere touch of a person brings about a very small change in the molecular structure of anything thereby altering the characteristics of that thing. Taste comes from the chemical characteristic of an ingredient and the chemical composition gets altered differently by the touch of different persons. The same dish made by different persons using the same recipe and ingredients tastes different. I infer that it has to do with the touch of a person. So it is a person with the touch for taste who come s up with a tasty meal.

ARE THE HANDS CLEAN?

In one of Jeffery Deaver’s books I found mention of Locard’s Exchange principal which states that every contact leaves a trace. In forensics it means that the perpetrator of a crime brings something to the crime scene and leaves a trace and takes back a trace of things from the crime scene..
By extension Locard’s principal applies to contact of individuals in every activity, everywhere and every time. Everything that you get or receive has been touched by hands. We do not realise how many times and how many surfaces we touch knowingly and otherwise. Our hands are constantly in motion leaving a trace where we touch and picking up traces of whatever can get transferred to our hands.

Those of us who are hygiene conscious wash our hands many times a day but those who serve us in shops, cafes, ticketing, home delivery and everywhere do not keep their hands as clean as they should. Counter staff, cashiers, waiters and food handlers visit toilets, touch all kinds of surfaces and things and sub-consciously collect traces of invisible contaminants, bacteria and viruses. Such unwashed and cleaned hands then are in contact with food, crockery, cash and parcels directly and indirectly and with you when you receive anything through those hands.

The exchange of money is a big vector for large scale transfer of traces of infectious things!. At some establishments food handlers show their hygiene awareness by using gloves but this is an eyewash if you observe carefully. They use a single pair of gloves off and on and day after day, so the gloves now become carriers of trace material! It is better to serve food with scrupulously clean hands. Cooks and kitchen helpers are not the only offenders in trace transfers to you but each and everything that you get has in the supply and delivery chain been handled in total ignorance of a hands clean policy and the majority of the population has never even heard of the Locard’s principal.

So on reading this please give a thought to” Are the hands clean?” and share this article with your friends and contacts. Are we forgetting to wash our hands after a handshake with the “ civilised “ and well dressed persons who may be unhygienic in habits and who too hasn’t heard of Locard or a hands clean necessity. A person’s hands go to every place conceivable and always carry trace contaminants that they transfer time and again to all things and people they touch. We can do very little about the hygiene of other people’s hands and must trust our immune system to counter whatever gets ingested into our systems. By being conscious of our hands being clean we can cut down risk of infection and cross contamination .

GIVE ME Less!

After sleeping, the activity which occupies most of our lifetime is cooking and eating. In homes such as ours what to serve and how much is decided by the Lady of the house. What we gratefully receive is not always what we desire and in the quantity we need. Helping yourself at the dining table in homes where families still eat together is the healthy and satisfying way.

In a departure from Oliver Twist, my refrain is ” Give Me Less”. When you eat the body signals how much and when but often we eat more   than needed and that works against our body. Sages have said ” Eat a third of your stomach volume and leave a third for water and air”-   this says it all. An adult may need 2000-3000 Cal? per day and a sportsman in excess of that but when the active life ceases our needs fall. We do not realise as we head into middle and then old age.

The aging process is just the opposite of growing up. It takes a baby 10-14 years to develop into an adult body and another 4-5 years to mature. Likewise from about 60 we go into a retrograde phase till we reach the same state and condition of a baby. The exceptions follow this too albeit a bit later. When this is happening our body begins to shrivel and the organs become smaller and/or weaker in their capacity for work( I read that the exceptions are the nose and the ears which continue to grow, being the reason why elders have such big ears and noses!)

Since the life style of elders is sedentary the body needs a very controlled amount of sustenance. The body emits at this stage all kinds of sounds in protest but people suppress these   by medicines and do not regulate their diet. In homes the elderly are generally let go on their own at a time when they require as   careful a balanced and timely diet as babies do. This requires tact, understanding, respect  and affection from adults in the home without  upsetting the elders- they still have most of their developed senses intact. Just like babies the elders need small amounts of food in 5-6 instalments so that their frail systems can accept, digest and tolerate the intake. This caring of elders is   a huge responsibility equal to baby care by the adults in the family and at times even by the teens. The young would do well to realise that one day they too would be elders. The caring of elders gives a big psychological satisfaction and the benefit of ready repositories of experience and advise. The one thing that elders look forward to is variety in food in small packets; their face lights up when a small snack comes their way at a time when they long for it but often do not ask for it for fear of offending the house! In some homes the tendency is to dole out huge portions at mealtimes in one go even to elders, compelling them to say ” Give Me Less” for they abhor wasting food. Give me less has another connotation: Small amounts of food many times during the day. If you are not able to do this, allow the elders a free hand to help themselves from ready to eat stuff which you must provision.

A BORN AGAIN VEGETARIAN SPEAKS

I was born into a Brahmin,vegetarian food eating family.

I do not know how my parents took to eating eggs occasionally as no ancestor, typically Brahmin vegetarian had ever eaten eggs or any non-veg food. We loved boiled eggs and my brother from the company he kept liked omelettes. Somebody had suggested that my mother partake eggnog(flip) to build up stamina for badminton ;  she swallowed this  like medicine but she did not need it as she was endowed with great staying powers on vegetarian food! Still, we ate eggs once a week: I do not know what our orthodox and conservative relatives thought of us. It was  my job on the cycle to fetch eggs from the sopmewhat far off shop. I became a confirmed egg eater and   had to opt for non vegetarian[NV] food in the mess to get eggs for breakfast – so the other NV dishes at lunch and dinner were readily accepted by my buddies. I could eat eggs at any time and at any meal and as a snack- boiled, fried, sunny-side up, scrambled, omelette,  egg bhurji and poached eggs where a  cook could make these well. On Sundays, after a very strenuous time at racquet games I would be famished. I relied on eggs for energy and proteins so much that I would often  eat 6 to 8 eggs any way I fancied till my hunger was sated!. Eating out with company I would order egg curry while others had meat dishes. For a year as a grass widower I survived on noodles and eggs.  In my UK visits we would often have a heavy breakfast of eggs at a  greasy spoon cafe. Back in India I found that the eggs now had an unpleasant smell that would put me off eggs for long periods. In February 2012  I last had eggs and since then  have not craved for eggs.

Now I can be called a born-again vegetarian and like all vegetarian Indians there is an innate revulsion  in eating off dead animals! Our systems are not designed to handle meat and our dietary needs are well met by vegetarian fare if you can learn not to pamper your taste buds and can  curb your desire for non-vegetarian food. Besides non-veg. is far costlier, getting lesser and lesser, is revolting to the uninitiated, takes longer to prepare and cook, needs spicing up to mask it’s bloody smell, is hard on our digestion and can lead to obesity and certain diseases. Non-veg. food is also known to cause food poisoning if it is not handled hygienaclly. It is a myth that  non-veg. eating persons are stronger or healthier. Non-veg. food can be offensive in major sections of India and to Indians. Generally non-veg. food is known to go hand in hand with alcohol and  words “ sharabi” and “ kababi” go together; it is sometimes said that NV food makes you like the animal that you eat!. The production and distribution of meat involves inhuman treatment of animals, poor hygiene, synthesized production and animal slaughter that if seen puts off the most hard-hearted person from meat. The fear of tainted meat always exists in India where climatically the people are better off eating vegetarian food.

In the past 50 years, the growing population, the increasing number of people taking to non-veg food, the over-exploitation of meat, sea-food and poultry has made the hard core non-veg’s life difficult as it is becoming exorbitant. The sizable population which has gone non-veg is due to: the myth that it makes them stronger or more potent; due to its addiction with alcohol induced NV eating, and merely to keep up with others. The reality on date is that people who swear by NV food  every  day cannot  afford it; in fact it costs a pile to put a NV dish on the table for a family of four- in that amount they can live well for a week!. As per me in India NV food is all about pampering the taste buds as it is no way superior to veg food nutritionally or health wise.  This fact is hard to swallow for the NV persons who quickly frown in disbelief when the needed or desired NV stuff is either not available at affordable prices or in short supply. I can see  that the times ahead will be hard for the NV consumers and they will have to do with veg food or burn a hole in their pocket for NV food !  I am  glad that I can live happily on veg food of the  simplest type.

As a born vegetarian I saw signboards “ Jhatka Mutton” I was intrigued and  remained so because meat was taboo in our home. After marriage I had to make a pretense of eating the meat dishes at my in-laws home, so as not to offend them. Later under the influence of alcohol I took to meat and a little later did not say no to fetch meat and fish from the market! I learnt  the gory details of  “ halal “  and  “ jhatka”-  in both the animal was made to suffer and die to feed humans Halal  is akin to  kosher  but  to me meat eating   is repulsive!

Worldwide the seafood/catch has dwindled and where it is the staple, serious problems are ahead. In India too the Bengali’s favourite Hilsa is in  short supply and there are plans to import   it from SE Asia. I also see that the droves of Meat on Hoof  going from pasture to pasture have reduced. The compulsive NV eater has been driven to consume  more chicken thereby driving up the price- most of the poultry in India  is artificially inseminated and raised for the table. It seems that this does not matter so long as they can taste the meat!. One time we had a hard- core meat eating family over for a meal. Though they ate a very well made soya nuggets curry with zest they thought that it was mutton and complimented us on the the availibility of good mutton in our area Hard times are ahead for the NV people and due to rising prices  and  they are turning to vegetarian produce and creating a shortage and price rise there too! The lowly pumpkin and the lavki( bottle gourd) now cost as much as the other “royal” vegetables. As  children we used to collect the pumpkin seeds and after they had dried out in the sun we ate the delicious and health-giving kernels. Nothing was wasted in the old days: most vegetables and particularly the potato was eaten with skin intact. In fact we used to place a potato or an onion in the hot ashes of the sigri to roast and ate it with relish. At the risk of perhaps being repetitive I have to add that in our growing up days the foodstuff that came to the market was only the best  therefore    the common man ate  wholesome food and it was eaten hot off the fire in an age when the fridge had not come into our life and made us eat stale and warmed-up food. In  addition to the seasonal vegetables, a leafy green called bareja( grown under betelnut leaf cultivation) was eaten in the summers with great relish. From the many lakes in my hometown came water chestnuts or shingadas that were cheap and in plenty: boiled and roasted the flesh was most delicious  and  nutritious.

Only now, people are  learning the healthy benefits of gourds, jackfruit and papaya and  drink the juices of the bitter and bottle gourd at the new fad juice centres. Tthe population has  greatly outstripped the supply and  ordinary homes are compelled to eat lower grade grains and vegetables- it is no wonder that they say 60 % of India is unwell and unhealthy.

When I ate out alone or with family and friends I would be the lone vegetarian who then ate eggs. So, my choice was invariably egg curry and rotis/ nan with butter.   At Shere Punjab Bombay near  VT I would eat baingan bharta instead of egg curry. I always preferred one dish only with rotis and I called it “ Ek goli ek dushman”.

Since I quit eggs   my choice is very limited and when nothing looks appetizing I  go for stuffed parathas because nothing drastically can go wrong in these at any eatery or restaurant- I can enjoy stuffed parathas at any meal and breakfast too!

The born and sworn NV people often taken vicarious pleasure in heaping scorn on vegetarians,  saying with derision and tauntingly,” I cannot survive on  amtya- bhajya ( pulses and vegetables)” in Marathi, and calling leafy greens as “ ghaas phoos” ( grass and weeds) in Hindi. I think that generations of meat eating has   made them intolerant, narrow-minded and haters of vegetarians! Treating a vegetarian at a restaurant or home is considered a drag as a vegetarian dish has to be ordered or made! The non-vegetarian likes to smirk at the vegetarian as a ” ghaas phoos” ( grass and weeds) eating person and thinks that a vegetarian is a weakling. That is very debatable…….

The truth is that being a non-vegetarian is considered to be macho and in homes a non-veg dish will be made   after much slog but a lot of fuss  will be made over the simpler vegetarian one- cooks   are losing the art of making lip-smacking vegetarian dishes. Everybody thinks that NV cooking is difficult; those in the know will tell you making delectable vegetarian dishes is a higher culinary   skill.

Another misconception that  prevails  is that NV food has greater variety. In restaurants the menu is tailored   for NV dishes as these   provide the biggest margins of profit. Vegetarian dishes are cheaper and truth be told there is a far greater variety in vegetarian food! I know that all this may not go down well with non=vegetarians who pride themselves as ” superior”. This   begs  the question, Why do we eat? If the answer is : To Live and be healthy then vegetarian food is unrivalled. If it is, ” Live to eat” I have nothing to say! A vegetarian will be content with whatever is available locally but the non-vegetarian , say a mutton and chicken eater will get nothing in an exclusively beef and pork country and will have to survive on de vegetarian food! I have known staunch non-vegetarians to recoil at the very idea of eating cockroaches, dog, camel, bush and roo meat.

Diary of an Insomniac: Waiting for the Dawn Chorus

Diary of an Insomniac: Waiting for the Dawn Chorus.

Diary of an Insomniac: Waiting for the Dawn Chorus

At 70, my physical state and health has been shaped by my past lifestyle and habits. Never a big sleeper, an early to bed person, age and the current routine  awakens me in the small hours progressively more days  in a month. The witching hour has gone as I lie counting down the hours left for dawn so that I can start my routine- housework, home administration and paperwork, my morning walk, fetching the milk, checking if all is well in our apartment building and welcoming a new day.

At times I get the feeling that my body is signalling that the end could be near ; then the feeling passes and I spin to myself one of many fantasies to get back to sleep. At this juncture I tell myself that there cannot be any ruing about anything  after I am gone. It is better to   do whatever I can and should do, now, when I am still able and active and do it with all heart and soul without any expectations in return. If I wish to give anybody anything I should do it now. If I want to bring a smile on any face I should not tarry. If I sense that somebody has a need that I can fulfil I should do it soonest. If I see a wrong being done I should not hesitate to point it out and show the correct way very politely and gently. If I can spread cheer by saying a few good words that cost nothing, I should do so   to the many people   who serve me in different ways . We take these people for granted just because we pay for it( actually they too are doing a service to the community and the nation). If   I   can   help anybody I should not hesitate. Such thoughts calm my mind  and help me to get  back to sleep but not before I recall a quote that I first saw in a doctor’s clinic years ago: ” I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to a fellow creature let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again” and   my own credo ” Do good, be good and feel good”

A couple of hours before the birds commence their  dawn chorus, my sleeplessness compels me to watch and listen to the night sounds and sights. It is still the dead of night but not for the traffic ferrying the BPO personnel; the night is still and the silence pronounced. I can  pick up the combined and continuous buzz of the insect world; it is quite similar to the barely audible sound of the blood coursing through my body when  I close my ears with my palms. It is the same sound we hear   when we put a large seashell to our ears and believe that it is the sound of the sea!

The cacophony of a pack of dogs yards away is distinct as is the persistent yapping of an unwell mutt or a temperamental pet dog. From the main road comes the hissing of car tyres on the empty road and the roar of the slipstream as they Doppler away in the distance. When the atmospherics are favourable I can hear the toot of the railway engine though it is 7-8 Kms away. The distant thumping of the car audio amp, the typical car AC sound and the crunch of tyres over a plastic container get amplified in the night’s silence; just because I at times   I find it hard to hear certain frequencies does not mean that my ears cannot become keen! I hear the rumble of a water pump, the flushing of a toilet, a baby crying briefly and a senior citizen or an ailing person coughing or emitting bodily sounds in the adjacent buildings. As all such things occur I lie awake as   most of my sleep quota and need  has been met; at this time my mind is fresh and becomes hyperactive and a churning of ideas, memories, possibilities, outcomes and things to do crosses my mind. I use the memo function on the mobile phone to note the keywords in case I forget the rapidly spewing thoughts. I will later expand the keywords when the urge to write comes.

Meanwhile on my bedroom walls the passing and distant vehicles project chiaroscuro effects and shadows of objects in their  headlights- silhouettes come and go till the dark and the quiet take over for minutes ; due to this I am able to gauge the passing minutes accurately. Generally a quiet descends between 3am and 4 am and the insect noises get accentuated, lulling insomniacs like me to drop into a snatch of sleep out of sheer fatigue of being up for hours!

ATTENTION SEEKERS ON TV

For years I have  been seeing on TV the spectators’ behaviour in sports arenas, on TV shows and in crowd backdrops. The moment the camera pans on them or they get a hint from the cameramen that they are in the frame and going live their behavior changes drastically; they do things that they have never done or do again: many cheap antics, actions and postures to catch the public eye!. Such spectators at sports venues are not sports enthusiasts   but merely thrill seekers who like to make a spectacle of themselves to gain cheap popularity for a few seconds!. Therefore they come as garishly dressed as possible and singly and in groups do their utmost to attract the camera persons attention instead of watching the contest! They will do anything to be shown live to audiences on the idiot box and on screens rigged around the stadia. In the process they make the life of genuine sports lovers at the venue miserable with unnecessary noise and riotous behavior. These thrill-only seekers   used to flock cinema theatres till cinema became putrid, predictable and Now with more money in their pockets they crowd sports centres, cricket in India   where they can misbehave to their heart’s content and make a spectacle of themselves. They are nameless nobodies and in all   probability losers and non-achievers who think that being shown on TV is the be-all and end-all of their lives. As soon as they have made asses of themselves they are forgotten. The video camera   broadcasting live has the same effect on spectators as the snake charmers flute( been ) has on the   trained snakes. It is similar to   Pavlovian conditioning and the TV networks get their bizarre images to give a breather to the anchors and the commentators.

Connected with crowds is the way people fall over themselves and others to obtain an autograph. Actually it is a quick scribble from a star or celebrity who has this onerous duty. It is one thing to be a serious collector of autographs but getting hastily scribbled signature of sorts not only on paper but on clothing and bodies is not an autograph. In my schooldays I too got a few autographs of sports persons but I recall   that an autograph used to be a carefully worded message from your favourite person, urging the fan or the youngster to   become an achiever. One message I recall was ” choose not your friends   by their outward show, For a feather floats and a pearl lies low” and ” Play like your mother”.

The least a celebrity or star must do is to write ” Best Wishes” for lack of anything else and sign it properly. Today the fans accept anyhow signed scrawl and call it an autograph.

THE HUMBLE ONION

The Humble Onion

 

The fare in the home where I grew up till I was 17 was simple, vegetarian and with no frills. Mainly chapattis with dal and/or a vegetable dish, repeatedly. As none of us were gastronomes or gluttons the variation in our food came when eating at a ceremonial or marriage feast or eating out at the Indian Coffee House or at Borwankar’s thali place( called “ khanaval” in Marathi). Food was as said of the best quality grain, pulses, milk and fresh seasonal vegetables and fruits. Nothing exotic was bought or eaten and without any vitamins, supplements or tonics we grew up strong on a vegetarian diet. Only occasionally there would be a plate of cut salad or a coleslaw usually of pumpkin,  radish, cucumber or onions and tomatoes tempered with spices and green chilies’. Onions and garlic and ginger were not eaten on a scale that we use in our home today- primarily a non veg cuisine needs the meat to be dressed, marinated and smell-tamped with heavy spicing with the sharp smells of onion, garlic and ginger. Out of habit the non-vegetarians eat onion even with vegetarian food! I was a born vegetarian, turned omnivore under the influence of company and alcohol in that order and am a born again vegetarian by choice Relish otherwise came out from annually   homemade pickles of mango. Lemon or chilly or on a rare occasion bought out from the Banaras paanwala shop in the city. Like some communities onion and garlic was   not prohibited but   were sparingly used in the cooking in our home  because simple vegetarian fare did not require to be masked of smells that are peculiar to non-veg food.. In the extremes of the summer heat the humble onion was smashed open with  the fist, deeply inhaled and eaten fresh with some meals- it was a most potent protection against nose-bleed and   heat stroke. The servants and labourers at their midday meal often asked us for an onion or two to go with their frugal meals. We gave these smilingly as we knew that   as they ate under the shade of the trees the onion was a good medicine for these poor folks.

Only later I found that a few Sikhs from some parts of Punjab always ate onions at every meal and that non-veg food had to be accompanied by onion on the side. In fact the large scale use of onions in non-veg cooking was seen by me only after marriage but I could not take to the onion as an add-on at each meal. In the home though, in lending a hand in the kitchen, I am   as a factotum charged with the disliked job of cutting and chopping large amount of onions; a job   nobody likes but I do it manfully. The amount of onions we eat today in a week is the amount we ate in a month in my growing up years. Like garlic eaters, onion eaters too smell for hours of the strong odour that onions leave on the breath!! The smell is so strong that it can become a malodorous miasma, a few notches below halitosis! For the tipplers the onion is a must whether it is in “ pakodas”, or in fried peanuts or merely added to white spirits like gin or vodka or as we did at Port Blair in eating onions in vinegar with our daily drinks!

In our home as in other Brahmin homes the onion had the same importance as eating: we ate to live! In those non-fridge days fresh hot food off the wood-burning fires was served, eaten and finished at early lunch and dinner before daylight faded. This was so to avoid leftovers   and to avoid insects in food in houses then lit by kerosene lamps. If outstation guests arrived after sunset to stay over they (generally) had to be fed.   By the time the guests had cleaned out the coal dust they had picked up in steam engine   trains, the ladies of the house had to rustle up a filling and passable meal by relighting those smoky fires or “ chulaas”. Always at hand were rice and gram flour and the ubiquitous spices box from which steamed rice was   cooked to go with a glutinous concoction of gram flour in a watered   spicy gravy sans onions, and was called just ” besan” or “ pithla”. This was eaten by the travel weary and hungry guests with gusto. The trains in those days had n o catering and the en route stations had little to sustain passengers on long journeys.

Today the   concoction goes by other names like “ jhunka” and is incomplete without onions! Mind you, in those days guests did   not intimate their coming in advance as it was the norm to stay at a relatives place almost as a right- hotels were only for the rich and where there were no relatives or friends and contacts of relatives there were the dharamshalas. Staying at some relatives place while on duty, courses, examinations, interviews or training was the accepted practice and at times absolutely unknown chaps too came over. We had a young man  who stayed months while undergoing training. He was from somewhere in Khandesh or Jalgaon and I am sure that the matter of his stay involving any monetary exchange never came up: he must have been referred by some relative of ours to come and stay with us and that was that! The term paying guest was unheard of till a film by that name came! It was this mutual   norm that led me to stay at a Bengali family’s home for a night at Allahabad’s Lukergunj in 1961 though I cannot recall their name at all; they must have been referred by my father’s Bengali bridge friends! All that has   now changed; permission is needed   from the lady of the house by guests wishing to come and stay over and it is granted for a specific number of days only if at all. Socio-economic ill wind and the disdain for relatives by bias has brought about this change and alienated even close relatives from each other!