Food stories

Indians traditionally always make sprouts at home. Healthy, crunchy, fresh and without plastic packaging. It is a good replacement for commercial sprouted beans! My Ayurvedic Vaidya always used to tell me, sprouts that have just emerged, are chock-full with the best enzymes and B Vitamins needed for your body & nutrition. In India, it took 48 hours/ 2 days, in The Netherlands (cold coutries), it could take between 2-3 days max. I use Mung beans, Brown Lentils, Aduki beans, Indian chickpeas/ Chana and Black-eye peas to make my sprouts. Besides the nutrition, home-made sprouts are also cheaper than the packed...

Dals and pulses are an essential part of most Indian daily meals. Not only for vegetarians, but also those who eat meat, will cook a Dal most of the days. A variety of beans and pulses are grown all over India, as part of the crop rotation. Pulses comprise a major chunk of the protein intake, and Dal is the split version of beans or pulses. When I emigrated to The Netherlands, and as always ate vegetarian 5-6 days a week. The relatives of my partner and some friends, started worrying over my eating habits and insisted I eat meat...

My journey into wild-harvesting and cooking seasonal, fresh and healthy, began at the age of eight. Our family had moved to a new house on the then outskirts of Poona (Pune), surrounded by the farmland of the landowner, which was being sold as plots to build. On three sides of our house was as yet farmland with a rich loamy-clay soil. Every June after the rains, leaf vegetables like Taikla (Cassia tora), Amaranth both the smooth & spiny stalked varieties, and two types of Purslane, sprouted abundantly out of this fertile land. Our neighbour, Mrs. Naik, whose family had a...