Anuradha Sridharan

I remember vividly the packaging, the aroma and the taste of my grandma's tomato rice, which I used to devour in the train while returning from school. The memories - so nostalgic and so dear to me. Blessed with 2 loving and caring grandmothers who cook awesome food, I'm grateful and at the same time, I deeply regret that I didn't take interest in cooking when these 2 active and special women were alive. I guess I was more than happy in relishing the delicacies prepared by them, that I wasn't too curious to know the background work involved. Now coming to the story, I used to travel by local metro train to go to school everyday. Due to certain circumstances, we had to shift home to a distant suburb. But I insisted I would stay put in the same school for my 8th grade, even if it requires me to travel 1 hour (one-way) everyday. Who can say NO to train journeys, right? :-) My paternal grandmother was living with us and she would pack me a proper lunch box every mornin...

Given a choice, I would shop for fresh veggies once every 2-3 days. But the time and effort required for this activity prevents me from taking that route. Instead, I shop for veggies and fruits once a week (like most urban families do). There were times when I would just buy from supermarkets and dump the veggies wrapped in their individual plastic covers directly in the fridge. As the week progresses, I had no clue of what veggies were remaining. I just grabbed what piqued my attention first and used it for my cooking. Towards the end of the week, I would notice an almost rotten pumpkin slice, wilted greens and a few leftover beans giving me a sad look. I realized that wasting vegetables is a crime, for the goodness they bring in to our health and ofcourse, the escalating prices we had to pay. One of the ways by which you could control wastage is to plan your weekly meals in advance, based on the veggies you have stocked up. Though I plan my daily meals the night before, "week...

Whenever we decide to start eating healthy, the first thing we start off with is to cut down sugar in our tea/coffee. We get all pumped up, make the cup of tea without any sugar and take one long sip and…. it tastes so bad! Without giving up, we try one more time, it still tastes bad and with all the mighty power, we gulp it down. We might try the same thing again the next day or two but then it's a struggle. We end up going back to the old ways. If you are able to eliminate sugar in one go, hats off to your willpower! But this post is for the rest of us who wants to cut down sugar but want a better route rather than the sudden change. A couple of years back, I used to have my tea with 2 tsp of sugar (1 tsp = 5 grams). I usually have 2 cups of tea in a day, which means 4 tsp of sugar. I have almost cut down on other sugar-based sweets/chocolates/cookies/cakes. They are occasional visitors though. Gradually, I reduced the sugar in my tea to 1.5 tsp, tried this for a couple of m...