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Home-Cooked Vegetarian Food for The Hungry Soul
by Kamini Patel AuthorA sage once quoted an adage, ‘eat to survive’. But, today, we follow the rule of ‘survive to eat’.
Dazzled by the ‘all you can eat’ buffet meals; we are focused on eating as much we can in a meal. After all, we’ve paid hard earned money and can eat anything and everything that we want.
The result of this has been the realisation of the fact that more than half of today’s adolescent population that is about to hit puberty is diagnosed with obesity and is bound to acquire heart diseases and diabetes if the trend doesn’t change.
Gone are the days when we used to carry parantha-rolls that our mothers made to school; youngsters these days want to live and die on pasta and pizza with a glaring amount of sweetened carbonated drinks. Youngsters these days will not realise the bliss of waking up late on a Sunday morning and relishing hot plate of Rajmah-chawal that our grandmothers made for us; food that would take away all the stress and all the tension away.
What the meat-lovers miss out on
As primarily vegetarians, we have forgotten what a blessing vegetarian food is to us. With a lot of people being omnivores these days, people will make resolves to try and cook butter chicken just like Moti Mahal makes; or visit the vegetarian recipe blog at the internet while thinking how the sumptuous paratha found in the streets of Delhi are actually prepared.
The beauty of the humble vegetarian food is lost.
Even if there is a vegetarian among a group of meat-eaters, he/she will be mocked at for eating stuff that goats and deer eat. Even if a family is receiving guests at their home, they will specially fend raw meat for their wives to lovingly cook it for their guests as a sign of hospitality.
What even happened to the good ol’ home-cooked vegetarian food?
Food for the soul
Well, vegetarian food; the one cooked with love by our mothers, grandmothers and aunts is the one that we all miss after some time.
I mean, there is only a limit to which a hardcore Indian like me can live on Moti Mahal’s butter chicken or Karim’s nalli nihari?
After a certain time, I WILL yearn for the chana khichdi my mother makes with a ghee-onion tadka to it; oh, the wafts of garlic and onion frying in ghee!
Most Indian vegetarian recipe blogs will tell you the benefits of eating home-cooked vegetarian food. Sure, there are a lot of health benefits attached to this; you will never acquire diseases like hepatitis get cholera or get unwanted microorganisms in your system.
But the bigger picture here is that this is what the soul needs; this food is what the soul demands. There is a reason why all big Indian vegetarian food brands have opened up in all corners of the world; because people crave the yellow dal with a string mirch tadka even in Manhattan and people want to drink Rasam with lots of Curry leaves, just the way their mother makes it!
This is the food that makes us happy- A plate of hot, steaming rice with my favourite dal; few slices of raw onions mingled with tangy chutney and achaar as spicy as the Bhut Jolokhia.
This is the food that makes our soul happy.
Dazzled by the ‘all you can eat’ buffet meals; we are focused on eating as much we can in a meal. After all, we’ve paid hard earned money and can eat anything and everything that we want.
The result of this has been the realisation of the fact that more than half of today’s adolescent population that is about to hit puberty is diagnosed with obesity and is bound to acquire heart diseases and diabetes if the trend doesn’t change.
Gone are the days when we used to carry parantha-rolls that our mothers made to school; youngsters these days want to live and die on pasta and pizza with a glaring amount of sweetened carbonated drinks. Youngsters these days will not realise the bliss of waking up late on a Sunday morning and relishing hot plate of Rajmah-chawal that our grandmothers made for us; food that would take away all the stress and all the tension away.
What the meat-lovers miss out on
As primarily vegetarians, we have forgotten what a blessing vegetarian food is to us. With a lot of people being omnivores these days, people will make resolves to try and cook butter chicken just like Moti Mahal makes; or visit the vegetarian recipe blog at the internet while thinking how the sumptuous paratha found in the streets of Delhi are actually prepared.
The beauty of the humble vegetarian food is lost.
Even if there is a vegetarian among a group of meat-eaters, he/she will be mocked at for eating stuff that goats and deer eat. Even if a family is receiving guests at their home, they will specially fend raw meat for their wives to lovingly cook it for their guests as a sign of hospitality.
What even happened to the good ol’ home-cooked vegetarian food?
Food for the soul
Well, vegetarian food; the one cooked with love by our mothers, grandmothers and aunts is the one that we all miss after some time.
I mean, there is only a limit to which a hardcore Indian like me can live on Moti Mahal’s butter chicken or Karim’s nalli nihari?
After a certain time, I WILL yearn for the chana khichdi my mother makes with a ghee-onion tadka to it; oh, the wafts of garlic and onion frying in ghee!
Most Indian vegetarian recipe blogs will tell you the benefits of eating home-cooked vegetarian food. Sure, there are a lot of health benefits attached to this; you will never acquire diseases like hepatitis get cholera or get unwanted microorganisms in your system.
But the bigger picture here is that this is what the soul needs; this food is what the soul demands. There is a reason why all big Indian vegetarian food brands have opened up in all corners of the world; because people crave the yellow dal with a string mirch tadka even in Manhattan and people want to drink Rasam with lots of Curry leaves, just the way their mother makes it!
This is the food that makes us happy- A plate of hot, steaming rice with my favourite dal; few slices of raw onions mingled with tangy chutney and achaar as spicy as the Bhut Jolokhia.
This is the food that makes our soul happy.
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About Kamini Patel 
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3 connections, 0 recommendations, 17 honor points.Joined APSense since, February 13th, 2017, From Ahmedabad, India.
Created on Oct 3rd 2017 01:18. Viewed 645 times.
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