A fussy naysayer's take on healthy food ;) :D

Dec 2018

One of my fondest memories of food is Ma leafing through recipe clippings painstakingly collected from newspapers & magazines; and whipping up mouth watering delicacies. Sunday lunches were a much awaited affair, with varying degrees of contribution from all of us - home grown vegetables from Dad's garden, me sitting on the kitchen table and regaling everyone with entertaining stories, and Aaru lending a supporting hand ;)

While I would love to say that I was the most well behaved kid (ahem!), looking back I must accept that I was actually one of the fussiest eaters around. If the food had something green, was not deep fried, didn't have potatoes as one of the components, my first answer would be naaaahhhhh! It's amazing that my mom found solutions for all my food tantrums and full credits to her on making mealtimes something to look forward to. Moving away from home and staying alone in Chennai made me realise that I was definitely not a fan of cooking. My staple diet was coffee with cornflakes, muffins, apples, maggi and dosas of course! This state of affairs continued even when I traveled on work trips to South Africa and Zambia.

Fast forward a couple of years, and I find myself married to a health conscious foodie. When both of us started cooking together, though I wasn't a great cook like Ma or Aaru (who makes delicious parathas & pizzas), I fell back on the established path of cooking Indian dishes that I grew up with - mullangi (radish) sambhar, sabudana kichdi et al. Hubby is undoubtedly the better cook, and being a global desi in the true sense, loves experimenting with different types of cuisines :D. While we were navigating this South pole & North pole choices in tastes, my progress on this food experimentation journey was accelerated by:

• Our love of travelling to new places: The more we travelled, the more it became obvious to me that being a fussy vegetarian dampened the experience. Though globalisation meant that there were McD's around every corner, I was slowly warming up to eating an apple strudel at Vienna, purple flower flavored rice at Shanghai et al. The deal breaker was not finding even one vegetarian item at McD in Yogyakarta, Indonesia - I had to survive on steamed rice and french fries during the two day trip.. definitely not an experience I want to relive again!

Purple flower flavored rice at Shanghai restaurant :)

• Busy life @ Mumbai: As our jobs became more demanding, we realised we had to find smarter ways to eat healthy food and that's how I stumbled upon this power breakfast recipe:

Muesli/ Rolled oats with fruits (green apple/pear), nuts, chia seeds and juice of my choice - mixed fruit, cranberry, soy milk with cocoa powder.. make it as happening as possible!

• Presenting snapshots of hubby's culinary expertise from around the world:

In-house sizzler: Foccaccia with mashed potato, tofu and salad :)

Brown rice spaghetti with baby carrots and salad..yum :)

Can you think of a more interesting way to eat coriander.. here's to coriander pesto pasta!

Besan chilkas: Yummy and healthy snacks full of protein:)

Brown rice with Shahi gobi and peas simmered in rich tomato cashew gravy:)

Pulihora (tamarind rice) and kanda (yam) fry... nothing can compete with this delicacy:D. This typical South Indian dish always evokes amazing memories of lovely times with family.

Healthy dose of greens for lunch:) 

Broccoli and cheese salad... still naaaahhhh :P 

Ensuring healthy mix of carbohydrates and protein :)

Jeera rice with salad twist :)

Chowmein with purples and greens ;)

Stuffed capsicum with brown rice and soya chunks :)

Pad Thai, ranked No.5 as per CNN World's 50 best-foods. 

PS: Our own Masala dosa is no. 39 on this list :D

Who would have thought that a fussy eater would post a blog about food one day;) And who says healthy food can't be yummy...Not me!!!:D