Healthy Indian vegetarian

"Eat well and spend well on food, as a healthy body is the key to a healthy mind"

Excerpts from Thr Hindu of Jan 7, 2006 article:"Fuelled by her passion for dietetics, she quit pursuing her B.Sc Mathematics and took up home science at the SIET College. Since starting her career as a demonstrator with the Queen Mary's College, she has gone up the ladder — to the rank of a Reader in the Department of Home Science at the College. Dr. Chandra Venkatasubramanian, talks to Swahilya on her first love - good food!....

On finishing her Master's degree, she worked as the Chief Dietician in M.V. Diabetes Hospital in Royapuram. After 29 years, she now teaches food science, advanced dietetics, community and therapeutic nutrition and food service management. She has also served with the dietary department in Hospitals and the hotel industry.

She has brought out a recipe book called `Eat' and a manual on therapeutic diets in collaboration with the Post Graduate Department of the Home Science Department in her college.......She has tried out several novel combinations for her family. Dal with dates or mushroom, tomato-onion masala, sprouts and vegetables with more vitamin C content and easily digestible foods are just few of her innovative recipes.

Her 87-year-old father still has all his molars intact and she attributes it to eating chappatis with dry salads, sprouts and vegetables. Her evening tiffin of idlis is usually served with a bowl of vegetable and dal.

Debunking myths about the differences in the calorific value of rice and wheat, she says the answer to the problem of weight gain is in the chewing. "Rice does not require chewing while chappitis stay a longer time in the system," she says. The nutrients are the same in rice, wheat and ragi, but they should be taken in the form of chappatis and not as porridge, she says. Fruits are best eaten raw, she says.

Her recipe to good health is to eat slowly, enjoy the food, never hurry and never think one can skip breakfast and make up during lunch. Nutritious food, coupled with exercise such as walking or running is the only way to fight stress and weight gain and not through any fad diet, she says.

The first sign of stress for anybody is falling hair, she says, critical of the idea of starving to stay slim. The after effects of starving or severe dieting are very bad. Fat is a transport agent, lubricating the body, and it is required in moderation, she says. "When you look at food, quarter of the stomach is satiated. Begin with a glass of water, attack the proteins and vegetables first and then go for the chappatis and rice," she says.

Food lays the foundation for the future generation, according to Dr. Chandra.


THIS IS JUST TESTNG TO SEE EFFECT ON GOOGLE SEARCH: GOOD CURRY gOOD CURRY GOOD CURRY

The links below give recipes for Cranberry Thokku and for "Whole Cranberry Sauce with Lime and Fresh Ginger" ....We have tried them both and found them to be delicious too . Cranberry helps in preventing specific infections while Ginger is both anti-inflmmatory and helps in general immune system boosting, especially in winter (though the sugar in the sauce may pose a problem?).

Just single click on the recipe names to go to the recipe web sites..and try them!

Cranberry Thokku

(The recipe for the item below is in the bottom of that web page...)

Whole Cranberry Sauce with Lime and Fresh Ginger

This combo I tried almost tastes like "Panchamridham"...

Ripe mango pulp, Blue berries, Blackberries and grapes all put in a blender (try different ratios to come up with more sweet or sour taste to your preference) and blend to right consistency...chill and serve

no need to add sugar.

...may be with banana also added it will taste more like 'panchamridham'...ideal to have before going for brisk walk and return home hungry with enough vitamins already added to the system!

Cooking different varieties of Indian curries on daily basis can be time consuming. To make them in bulk, store the leftover in the refrigerataor and reheating as needed is one option which married career couples follow but there are two problems with this approach:

1. Best flavor of freshly cooked vegetables are lost and even to some degree made worse by refrigerating and reheating

2. Some of the vitamins which get partly destroyed in the original heating get even more lost in the storing and reheating process.

Two ways to avoid this and have frehly cooked in small quantities and served hot vegetable dishes are:

1. Use ready made and sold mixes such as "MTR instant sambar mix" etc. (problem : some of them may contain unhealthy levels of partially hydrogenated oils and other preservatives)

2. Prepare partially cooked leftovers in the frig and cook small quantities of different vegetable mixes daily just before meal time and add part of the precooked curry mix.

For example,

"Sambar premix" - Boil tamarind water salt and sambar powder and after the smell of tamarind and sambar powder evaporates , add cooked Toor dhall. Keep lleftover of this sambar premix in the frig. (You can also make poricha koottu mix this way but it is better to add shredded cocunuts to the vegetables when cooked and served hot on daily basis for better flavor (the 'North arcot' style)

On daily basis, start (not more than half hour before meal time) with the 'thalichu kottal' process (fry some kadugu with pinch of perungayam, Vendayam, red chillies and karuveppilai as needed...spices which give the cooked food good flavor when cooked fresh) and add water with vegetables. Since the veggies are in small quatities, you can stay near the stove and make sure that they are not overcooked (and this lose flavor and crunchiness) and add the sambar premix stored in the frig.

If the rice is hot there is no need to reheat the fresh cooked sambar and with some experience you can avoid having leftovers of this cooked vegetables mixed sambar or 'koottu'

...Enjoy your meal!

First make Ginger juice in a juicer (about 100 grams of ginger) . If a juicer is not available, this can be done in a blender but the filtering may take time

Blend a teaspoon of 'dhania' (coriander seeds) and 'seeragam' (cumin seeds) in half cup of water in a blender and filter out the juice and mix this with ginger juice.

Squeeze two halves of lemon and add either honey or two teaspoons of sugar to the mixture. Add more water if the mixture is too pungent to the taste.

Drinking this on empty stomach in the morning is believed to be good for the digestion system in South India

Mixing beet root juice (organically grown beets preferable) with yogurt in right proportion gives it natural sweet and sour taste.