Anuradha Sridharan

Around a month back, I waved a permanent goodbye to white, processed sugar from my pantry. That's the best decision I have made so far in 2016. "If sugar comes from sugarcane, why does it look so milky white?" - A question I was curious about when I was a kid. After reading up a lot about the kind of processing, bleaching and other processes that go into converting a sugarcane juice syrup into dry lump-free white sugar, I decided to put an end to it. I use jaggery extensively for making Indian desserts like payasam/kheer. I also use it for baking sometimes. I use panankalkandu (palm sugar crystals) for adding to milk or to a porridge/kanji. The only purpose for which I was using white sugar was for sweetening my 2 cups of milk tea everyday. Though I reduced the quantity of sugar as I had written earlier , there was always a guilt feeling at the back of my head that I'm adding this artificial, chemical-laden substance to my tea. I found the perfect alternative in t...

It's been more than 7 months since we took a trip outside Bangalore. That's so unlike me! Many changes in these past few months led us to settle into a routine. Now with one more change ahead of me, I felt it's high time we break out of this routine and head somewhere, up the mountains. Once, I was having a conversation with a friend. She asked me, "Are you a mountains person or a sea person? I'm a total sea person. Any holiday, I'll head to the beaches. What about you?". I quickly responded, "I'm a mountains person always. Mountains and I share a special bond. They make me come alive. I'm so relaxed and at peace when I'm surrounded by hills, greenery, forests etc". So when I plan a vacation, I always look for places surrounded by mountains. I had narrowed down on Chikmagalur and Sakleshpur. We had already drove to Chikmagalur (although way back in 2009). This place Mugilu came up a couple of times in my social media feed. What a...