Slow Food in a Fast Life

Today we are standing on the edge – where we do not know which way to go. We are on the brim of a relentless quest – to run after money or to live life?

We are all living in a society of fast food and big problems.

"He had a nasty reputation as a cruel dude. 
   They said he was ruthless, they said he was crude.
   Eager for action and hot for the game, the coming attraction, the drop of a name...
   Life in the fast lane surely make you lose your mind.
   Life in the fast lane, everything all the time."
  -The Eagles

Due to the low cost and convenience, fast food has become an unhealthy addition to the average India’s diet. The extra-large food portions, which are loaded with salt, saturated fat and calories, provide little nutritional value and increase the risk of developing a variety of chronic diseases and life-threatening health issues in both adults and children. The most common problems India is facing today are:

Obesity

Fast foods like chinjabi noodles, momos etc are a tasty treat now and then, but when your daily diet is filled with foods from fast food restaurants you increase your chances of becoming overweight. Obesity can lead to a variety of chronic health conditions and illnesses.

Be it a residential area or an office compound you are bound to encounter a fast food an in the vicinity.

Diet-related obesity is on the rise in both children and adults; the amount of fast food we consume is partially responsible for the weight gain of millions in this country. One fast food meal, with its large portion size and high fat content, often contains enough calories to satisfy the average person's daily caloric requirements. Limit your trips to fast food restaurants to help reduce your risk of becoming obese.

Type 2 Diabetes

Apart from being genetic, a poor diet often contributes to insulin resistance, which leads to the development of type 2 diabetes in both adults and children.

People who eat junk food are at a greater risk becoming obese and of developing insulin resistance at an earlier age. Type 2 diabetes contributes to other health conditions such as blindness, stroke, kidney failure and hypertension. Lower your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by eating a healthy diet and staying active.

Cardiovascular Disease

Considered the leading cause of death throughout the world, cardiovascular disease is the accumulation of fat and plaque in your arteries that can lead to heart failure, heart attack and in some cases, death. A steady, unhealthy diet of fast foods that are filled with, trans fats, cholesterol, fat and salt contributes greatly to the development of cardiovascular disease. Obesity caused by the steady consumption of fast food also raises your risk of developing heart-related issues. Avoid cardiovascular conditions by following a healthy low-fat diet and exercising for at least 30 minutes every day.

Image Courtesy : Haibye.com

Hypertension

A poor diet that is filled with fast foods that are high in sodium are one of the causes of hypertension, also known as high blood pressure. Eating too much salt causes your body to retain water, which will raise your blood pressure. High blood pressure increases your risk of developing cardiovascular disease or of having a stroke. Cardiovascular disease can lead to a heart attack or congestive heart failure and in the worst cases, death. A stroke may cause brain damage, blindness, paralysis and in some cases, death. Avoid hypertension by maintaining a healthy weight, staying active and by following a diet that is low in salt and fat.

Image Courtesy : Haibye.com

A healthy diet needn’t necessarily mean tasteless food. Today we know about plenty of ways to turn the boring dull unhealthy food into something interesting.

You can look a few healthy yet tasty recipes here :  Oats Spinach Masala Buttermilk and Soupy Yummy Oats

Go ahead, don’t hold yourself from experimenting. Love yourself and your family and ensure you do the best you can to keep them healthy and safe. 

Oats and Spinach Masala Buttermilk - Healthy and Tasty

Weather forecast in newspaper today - heat waves to strike Delhi!

Yeah right I in any case though Delhi is at its coolest best. I mean, really? I am not aware if the person forecasting the weather has actually ever stepped out of his AC car or may be hell is yet to arrive, in either case i am all set to make my diet inclusive of all the healthy and cooling food items.

So here is another experiment, hope you enjoy it :)

Ingredients

- Instant Oats - 1/2 cup
- hot water 3/4 cup
- Ice cold water - 1 cup
- 10-12 spinach leaves (blanched)
- yoghurt - 1/2 cup
- Roasted jeera powder -1 tbsp
- Rock salt - 1/4 tbsp
- Paprika - 1/4 tbsp
- salt to taste

Method

- soak instant oats in hot water for 2-3minutes and then mix to form a smooth mixture
- put the spinach leaves and soaked oats in a blender and blend till smooth
- mix with Yoghurt, cold water and spices and blend for another 30 seconds (it should be very smooth)
- add water if necessary
- garnish with a dash of paprika and serve immediately.

Eat healthy, stay fit.

Tomato Curd Rice (bliss during summers)

Scorching heat outside!!! The last thing you would want is to get your stomach affected by it...so here is the thing...of South Indian origin, tangy Tomato Rice makes a great one-dish meal, especially to beat the heat!

Serve it with poppadums

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked Basmati rice (you can also use leftover rice)

4 large ripe tomatoes cut into cubes

4 tbsps desi ghee

1 tsp mustard seeds

1 large onion chopped fine

2 green chillies slit lengthwise

1" piece of ginger grated

2 tsps coriander powder

1 tsp cumin powder

1 tbsp garam masala

1cup curd

Salt to taste

Preparation:

Heat the oil in a deep pan and add the mustard seeds and green chillies. When they stop spluttering add the onion and fry till soft.

Add the tomato and ginger and mix well. Cook till the tomatoes turn pulpy. And hen add cued to it. Keep mixing, do not stop till the curd cooks.

Add the coriander, cumin and garam masala powders, salt to taste and mix well. Cook on a low flame for 3-4 minutes, stirring frequently.

Add rice and mix for another 2-3 minutes. Close the lid and turn off the gas.

Serve with poppadums and jaljeera .

Enjoy!:)

Orange Mousse

Great day..Sarurday! Wanted to write a blogpost for a while now, just things which kept me a little occupied. But its good, good to write a blogpost again. What better than write a receipe post, a dessert!

Oranges! A flavour most of us love or atleast end up liking. It isnt a joke that 95% flavoured candies in the world have atleast one orange variant.

So thought to comeup with something i saw on a show a while back and here we go...Orange Mousse!

Sounds Exotic and Tastes Delicious!!!!

Coming straight to the point -Ingredients:

* Half Litre fresh orange juice
* 1 cup sugar
* 4 slices of orange
* 2tbsp. gelatin
* 2tbsp. Orange Zest
* Hollow orange skin
* whipped cream

Procedure

* Boil half litre juice in a pan. After 5 mins add 3 tbsp. sugar to it and boil for another 10minutes, till the quantity reduces and the liquid starts to become thick. Add 1 tbsp orange zest and cool the mixture.

* On a separate pan, caramalize 3 slices of orange. Heat the pan, put the slices (low flame) and sprinkle some sugar. Wait and toss till golden brown.

* In 10tbsp of water, dissolve 2tbsp of gelatin and keep for 5-7 minutes, until it completely dissolves.

* Add the gelatin mixture to colled orange juice (the one made as per step 1)

* Pour the mixture in hollow orange shells and refrigerate for 30-40minutes, until set

* Whip the cream until it form peaks and add 1 tbsp orange zest in it.

* Top the refrigerated orange mousse with whipped cream and mint leaves

*Serve and RELISH!!

Hope you enjoy preparing it as much as i did :)

Maggi to ‘Meri’ Maggi – The Journey of Maggi Noodles

Drizzling outside, sitting near the window with a friend and suddenly she shouts, “Let us have Maggi!!!” Oh how we love our ‘Maggi Bonding’. 2 in the night or 5 in the morning, somehow this magical bowl never seems to disappoint us. Maggi is a “my” brand. Each one of us relate to it. Despite having it since our childhood, given an option we still love to skip our meals to have a bowl of hot Maggi. From a midnight snack to best friend on a vacation, Maggi has always been there.

Maggie, the nestle brand was launched in India in 1982. So far Indian consumers were conservative in their eating habits, but the launch of Maggi brought a paradigm shift to the way Indians ate. From the traditional Indian dishes rather rose the culture of – instant noodles. Initially Nestle tried to position the Noodles in the platform of convenience targeting the working women. But it found that the sales are not picking up despite heavy promotion. Research then showed that Kids were the largest consumers of the brand. Realizing this, they shifted the focus to children and their mothers and repositioned the brand towards the kids using sales promotions and smart advertising. With taglines like “Mummy Bhook Lagi”, “Bas 2 Minute” created a personal connect between the brand and the consumers. Post which Nestle revamped its marketing strategy to keep the Maggi brand fresh in the minds of Indian consumer and reposition Maggi as a ‘health product’.

The brand has over the year changed its positioning as well – from a 2 minute noodles, now they talk about health – for the health conscious. No brand can ignore the power of consumers – Consumer is the King and the memory of the consumers is short lived. Unless the rand creates numerous touch points and innovates the way it communicates, people tend to look the other way, towards the other interesting brands. Maggi has generally stayed away from taking the celebrity endorsement route. The only exception was roping in actor, Preity Zinta for a brief period, to promote the Rs 5 Chotu Maggi and the Maggi family packs.

To make consumers part of the brand’s journey, Maggi launched a commercial which spoke about various memories people associate with as been conceptualised by Publicis India and works on the favourite emotions of Indians – Nostalgia!

Follow the link to read the complete article:

http://foodathonindia.blogspot.in/2013/02/maggi-to-meri-maggi-journey-of-maggi.html

This valentine's fall in love with Oats

Oh my God!!  Have I turned FAT? Please say no…what? Yes?

Ok. Time for action.

I have been hearing about Oats for a long time now. As a matter of fact I DO know they are healthy and somehow breaking the popular belief that oats are not tasty – I actually do feel, they are ‘Tasty’.

I eat them for taste and health rather than just the latter.

It is about HOW you make it. Being interested in food, I love playing with flavours, textures and presentation. So I thought how to make oats best as per my taste and went ahead by playing safe and made typical ‘Poha style oats’.

Poha has been a part of every Indian’s daily diet. Lots of vegetable, spices, flavour and aroma. Just replacing the rice flakes with healthy oats.

Posting the recipe for all to try and fall in Love with Oats this Valentine’s J

Ingredients (Serving : 4)

• ½ cup peas
• ½ cup chopped cauliflower
• ½ cup chopped carrots
• 1 cup chopped tomatoes
• 1 tbsp. Black Pepper
• ½ tbsp. White Pepper
• Salt to taste
• ¼ cup sweet corn
• ¼ cup mushrooms
• 3 tbsp. dry roasted garlic
• 1/4^th cup chopped green coriander

Directions

• Put 5 spoons of Olive oil in a heated pan
• Add all the vegetable to it along with tomatoes and salt (tomatoes and salt help it to cook quickly)
• After 5-7 minutes check if the vegetables are cooked well enough and add 3 cups of oats to it
• Fry for 2 minutes and add black pepper, white pepper and salt as per taste
• Add atleast 6-6 ½  cups of water
• In case you like thick consistency add 5 cups of water, but this type of oats taste best soupy. Also the globby texture reduces to a large extent when enough water is added
• Boil and then cook on medium flame for another 5 minutes
• Garnish with green coriander and roasted garlic and serve hot in a soup bowl

Just to let everyone know…Oats is the only food which is healthy for every kind of individual. This power packed food is right there..grab there and lead a healthy-tasty life. Try once to agree.

Four Seasons Wine Trail at Delhi

A recent invite to a Wine Trail made me realize I had been on a look out for something so niche for a while now.

Event Details:
Event dates: 19th January
Time: 4pm
Location: Ardor, Outer Circle, CP New Delhi.

Image Courtesy : Bhujbal View

Image Courtesy : Bhujbal View

Image Courtesy : Bhujbal View

As per the description it was supposed to be a Structured Wine Trail, where a wine sommelier would take one through the finer nuances of wine. The event had earlier been executed in Kochi, Mumbai and Bangalore and I hence had great hopes from it.

Image Courtesy : Bhujbal View

While the venue chosen was a fine decision but turned out to be a bit of turn-of because of lot of background noise due to some construction work (or whatever it was).
The wine instructor from Four Seasons, was a fine lady with immense knowledge but somehow lacked in putting her point across. The presentation was knowledgeable but way to bookish for everyone to register and remember. Despite requesting for some kind of brochure/email as a note for all the information shared, nothing was shared which kind of delayed my blog post.

Nonetheless some great information was shared like 30ml of wine for men, and 20ml for women per day was extremely healthy. Entire procedure of Wine production was explained. Since I do not have a detailed presentation from them, you can refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winemaking for all the details.
Four Seasons Wines Limited produces wines from grapes grown around Sahyadri valley in Maharashtra, India and at its state-of-the-art Four Seasons winery near Baramati, around 65 kms from Pune. It aims to drive interest in wines and wine consumption by offering good quality wines at reasonable price points with packaging options as well as education and engagement.

Four Seasons Wines basically markets wines under the two brand names ZINZI and FOUR SEASONS. ZINZI is an easy drinking wine that is targeted at the youth. With an unconventional and vibrant packaging, Zinzi Red and White wines are already available nationally. Along with giving young wines a whole new image, Zinzi is all set to change the way wine drinking is perceived by novice wine drinkers.
FOUR SEASONS, the flagship brand of the company, captures the colors and moods of the four seasons, with three reds (Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and Merlot); three whites (Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc and Viognier); and, a Rosé (Blush). The Barrique Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon and Barrique Reserve Shiraz are the premium offerings of the Four Seasons portfolio. These wines have been aged in imported French oak barrels for 9 months before being bottled.

Wine Tasting encompasses four major steps:

COLOUR: It should be clear and not at all cloudy. Also remember that aging causes changes in wine color.
SWIRL: Swirling of the wine is essential because it helps in releasing the flavors and aromas of the wine. Swirl the wine by either using the palm of your hand as the base support or a table top.
SMELL: After the swirling smell the aromas released by the wine. White wine smells fruitier and while red wine smells more berry like.  a
SIP: Wine is not a ‘Hurry-Drink’. Take a sip of the wine and roll it around in your mouth so that you can taste and enjoy all the flavors that the wine has to offer. And then gulp!

The event though was not as per my expectations but definitely left me a little more knowledgeable about wine!