Children with picky eating habits can frustrate even the most patient mothers. Here are some clever food ideas to handle the challenges!

By Lavanya Donthamshetty

So, how do you feed the fussy eater?

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Time for fireworks, festivities, family and fun! A look at the regional and seasonal variations in our festive menus and a recipe to soothe your stomach.

By Lavanya Donthamshetty

We are in the thick of festival season in India right now – the 9-days long Navratri/Dusshera is in full swing and the mother of all festivals, Deepavali is just waiting in the wings. The newspapers are full of details of Golu and Dandiya nights but for the foodies out there, it just means it is Primo Food Time! Just think of the festival fare; depending on the part of the country you live in, it could mean different types of sundal every day, varieties of payasam/kheer, crispy fried vadas…. I better stop before I drown in a puddle of drool!

Indian festivals traditionally are a celebration of what is in season. Pongal/Sankrathi food is about freshly harvested rice and sugar cane, coupled with a good old-fashioned carnival atmosphere, to celebrate that year’s bountiful harvest. The various regional New Year celebrations happen around springtime, just when the mango season starts. Thus, for Ugadi/Tamil New Year etc, we eat dishes featuring raw mangoes – manga pachadi, raw mango dal, raw mango rice etc.

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A lush herb garden easily adds a touch of brightness – both to your home and to your health!

By Lavanya Donthamshetty

Any idea what a ‘perandai‘ (edible stemmed vine) is? Can you differentiate between ‘kandanthippili‘ (Long pepper in English, Tippali in Hindi) and a regular twig?

Three weeks ago, I signed up for a cookery contest, along with my sister-in-law. The topic was ‘Grandma’s Recipes: Homemade medicines’ and as we sat about discussing what to do, my mum showed us what looked like a parcel of short twigs. Even as we were cackling about making a merry fire with it, mum started explaining about the wonder condiment called Long Pepper.

Amongst its many uses, it can relieve you of body aches, menstrual pain, fever and general malaise.  It is gentle enough to be given to children and has no side effects. The rasam made with this herb is an excellent cure-all for all kinds of aches and pains, feverish symptoms and head cold. If you are feeling under the weather and need a pick-me-up, then the kandanthippili rasam is the way to go, we heard.

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There is no one ‘best diet plan’. How to choose a healthy diet plan that suits you – and a delicious paneer recipe!

By Lavanya Donthamshetty

Hands up if this is you: health-conscious, visit the gym at least thrice a week, do cardio, lift weights, swim lengths or get some other form of exercise regularly – and – eat sensibly but have nothing to show for it. You cross the i’s and dot the t’s as dictated by the gym trainer/nutritionists and are getting more than a little frustrated that you are not reaching your health goals – be it weight loss or losing belly fat or simply feeling more fit. If this is you, chances are your diet plan is not working as effectively as it should.

I am sure the nutritionist attached to your gym has given you an extensive and exhaustive ‘balanced diet plan’ of what to eat when (‘Buttermilk at 10.00 AM’ followed by two Marie biscuits an hour after) but how sure are you that the advice is sound? I have friends gymming in Mumbai and Bangalore with more or less the same list of ‘must eats’. Obese, under-weight, prepping for a half-marathon – well, I have seen no separate diet profile for anyone.

Building the best diet plan – for you

Based on personal experience and what I have gleaned from friends’ complaints, the nutrition advice doled out by the gym boffins is generally faulty. Take my case: I was a petite 5’2”, carrying an extra 15 kilos and considerable inches. My gym buddy, though much taller, had different fitness goals. I was a vegetarian; she ate everything in sight. Despite these, we followed more or less identical fitness routines and diet. No wonder these so-called healthy diet plans fail us!
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There are as many cliches on the subject of breakfast as breakfast recipes, but this meal still gets less attention than it deserves.

By Lavanya Donthamshetty

So, what did you eat for breakfast today? Idli-chutney? Crisp dosa with sambhar? Poori masala? Parathas and chole? Or, like more and more harried families, sugary cereals and milk? At the start of a busy day, one is so focussed on dealing with the lunch boxes, freshly pressed clothes and getting out of the door on time that a healthy breakfast, more often than not, is treated as an afterthought.

In many South Indian households, the question of ‘what to make for breakfast’ is resolved by means of the ubiquitous idli-dosa batter. Grind it on Sunday and you never have to battle with the ‘What the hell am I going to make now’ question at 7.00 a.m. weekday, again. Simpler still is to break open a box of branded cereal, microwave a bowl of milk and be done with it. In fact, as it helps getting down a glass of milk down your child’s throat with minimum fuss, you can even chalk it up as a win!

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Can a picnic be complete without a delicious, yet simple picnic basket? Here’s your guide to putting together an easy picnic lunch.

By Lavanya Donthamshetty

After a long time, we decided to go on a picnic recently. It had been too hot the past few weeks but the last two days rained and brought down the temperature, making it ideal for picnicking. I got started on one of my favourite jobs – making up lunch menus. Sadly, that morning the skies opened and we had to cancel our picnic plans.

Though we didn’t go, it got me thinking about the menu I created and what makes for ideal picnic food. Many families have standard options – my mum and grandma prefer the traditional staples of ‘mixed rice’ (puliyodarai or tamarind rice, lemon rice, curd rice) accompanied by pickles and fried vadam or chips. In fact, our names should probably appear in record books somewhere for taking the aforementioned puliyodarai-curd rice combo to picnic at Hyde Park, London! And my brother credits our mum with clearing Trafalgar Square of its pigeons, by the simple act of opening her dabba of lemon rice.

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Poached eggs for breakfast, egg curry for lunch and chocolate mousse for dessert – there’s an egg recipe for every occasion here!

By Lavanya Donthamshetty

I am sure I am showing my age but does anyone remember the old ad that promoted eating eggs? The jingle went something like this:

“Meri jaan, meri jaan, murgi ke ande!(x 2)
Omelette khilaoon, fried khilaoon, boiled khilaoon!
Khilaoon murgi ke, murgi ke, ande hi ande!
Sunday ho ya Monday, roj khaayein ande!!”

Happy, catchy and set to the tune of an old Hindi number, this ad was played often on the telly and I remember it perfectly till date, even thought it might have been 20 years since I last saw it. Whenever I make eggs for my children, this is the ad that runs through my mind!

This isn’t a nostalgia trip, but more for the benefit of our readers who might not subscribe to the vegetarian school of thought. I suddenly realised that in every edition of Eatopia until now, I have just talked about vegetarian food and recipes and I am sure there are many meat-eaters out there left feeling a mite side-lined. Being a true-blue vegetarian, I cannot do much to actually help you carnivores devour your meat. Except – meet you half-way and talk about eggs and some interesting ways of adding them to your diet.

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If you’re always pressure-cooking or sauteing, consider these additional healthy cooking techniques to add variety to your menu.

By Lavanya Donthamshetty

The other day, I was doing something I love: trawling through the various food blogs for some inspiration when I came across this rather arresting statement in an article on street food, “In Delhi’s popular Bengali Market, chefs at Bengali sweets are using-imported olive oil for deep frying”, a statement wrong on so many levels that I just stopped.

Firstly, street food isn’t supposed to be healthy; it is supposed to be spicy, fiery and strip your stomach of an inch of its lining. It has no business being healthy and the sooner the good chaps that dole out those goodies get it, the better for everyone. And secondly, deep frying with olive oil is plain wrong. I know there are many articles out there that say you can use extra-virgin olive oil and as long as you don’t hit its smoking point, the result comes out as good as gold, but it is a dicey move. For starters, I would NOT use olive oil to make sweets. The oil tends to leave an aftertaste which doesn’t go with sweets and where olive oil is concerned, I am with the ‘a little of it goes a long way’ school of thought. Not for me the overly generous drizzling over dishes (I am looking at you, Jamie Oliver!) – just a wee dash is enough to perk up my salads, thank you very much!

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Cooking with children helps to teach them an essential life skill, plus it’s a great way to bond with them!

By Lavanya Donthamshetty

Quick – think “cooking with kids” and what picture do you see? To many, this will mean a scene of utter destruction – once carefully stored items now lying with their innards spilled over, lentils moving in with sugar, caps off squash bottles and the contents spreading in a pool and a fine layer of flour dusting it all. Knowing the terrors that our two-foot horrors can cause in an instant, why would we want to let them loose in our kitchens?

Because – it is becoming tougher and tougher to make them eat anything and every little helps! Because – as more and more processed food hits the shelves, tempting them away from ‘proper food’, us mums need to come up with wilier ways to entice kids to eat the good stuff. Because – every busy parent can do with kids taking on some chores at home!

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A sure-fire recipe for Chocolate Mousse plus a ready reckoner on aphrodisiacs or ‘love foods’ – in time for Valentine’s Day

By Lavanya Donthamshetty

It’s February, Valentine’s Day is around the corner, bringing with it a glut of balloons, cards and any other stuff that can be red or pink. What better topic for this month’s edition of Eatopia than aphrodisiacs? Some say that aphrodisiacs are nothing but myth and others that it isn’t anything more than biochemistry and endorphin release but what’s the fun in that? So let us ignore the naysayers and crack on!

Aphrodisiacs are meant to appeal to all of your senses but for the purpose of this article, we’ll talk about those that are ingested. That cornerstone-of-love tome, the Kamasutra, has whole chunks dedicated to aphrodisiacs but these vary from the weird to the downright toxic. So let us stick to the safe and yummy, shall we?

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