Anuradha Sridharan

Hibiscus tea My little one teaches me something new about parenting and child nutrition almost every single day. Having grown up in a traditional South Indian household, I have noticed that the default food that is fed to toddlers and pre-schoolers is “dal rice” (paruppu saadham). It is nothing but rice and boiled thuar dal mashed together with ghee. I tried giving the same to my daughter from the time she was around a year old. She hated it completely and would make funny faces. I had tried multiple times for around a year or so but no luck. Though she is not a fussy eater, she just didn’t like it. I didn’t worry much since she was getting proteins from curd, cheese and other lentils. When she turned 5 years, I served her the dal rice for lunch one day. She devoured it and said, “it’s yummy”. After that, it has become a regular now and dal rice features once every 3-4 days. The lesson that this experience taught me is "Don't give up on healthy and nutritious foods. Keep ...

A couple of days back, I was at a supermarket, shopping for groceries, when a new promotional coffee stand inside the premises caught my attention. There were 2 guys standing, along with few coffee packs lined up in front of them. Curiosity caught the better of me and I asked them what it is. The tallest among the two (Let’s call him A) quickly responded, “Ma'am, this is Nescafe Latte. You can quickly prepare coffee when you come back from work or when you have guests. Please taste it”. Being a coffee lover, I thought why not and said, “Just a sample”. A instructed the other person(Let’s call him B) to make one for me. B promptly emptied a sachet of coffee mix and added hot water till it reached half a cup. When I said “enough”, he stopped but A instructed him in a low voice that the coffee will taste sweet and that he needs to add more hot water for one sachet. B followed the instruction and he handed me a full cup of hot coffee. Meanwhile, my little girl who accompanied me start...