Eating Right in Corona!

We cannot control the Corona Virus or how it will affect and change our lives forever. However we can make an informed decision on what we choose to eat every day and feed our family. A tentative trip to the grocery store and i saw carts full of chips, biscuits, fried items, microwave popcorn, sweet spreads, cans of sugary fruits and packets of instant noodles. Isn’t this what has got us in trouble in the first place? Excessive and mindless consumption of junk food, chemicals and sugar and over processed foods that lowers our immunity, creates disease and a carbon footprint that will take our lifetimes to recover from, perhaps if we are lucky?

You are what you eat. If we were to just visualize that as a painting it would make us pause before our next bite. I am all too aware of the years of self-abusive destructive, habits, which are so hard to give up. Just trying to have my tea without some shakaar has me in a tizzy! But try we must to replace the white with the brown, the refined with the whole and then to its most natural, nature form taken in moderation and as a treat hopefully.

For me replacing just a spoon full of sugar for a drop of honey or agave syrup or a fruit or green tea is a journey in self-regulation! So while i do look at the shopping carts in pain, i think if I can make a change starting with just myself and very slowly better my family's palette, it’s something. That is better than nothing.

For example we as a family are vegetarian five days a week. We try to eat local, desi of the season, organic and fresh. We have switched our oil to desi ghee, multigrain herb ‘missi rotti ‘and to cooking with coconut or sarsoen, til or olive oil. Our salt to pink salt and our cheese to homemade cottage and dhai. We vary between eating daals and beans from every spectrum and all the vegetables. Slowly my toughest carni -everything eleven year old son says he loves Baigan and I am a proud mama bear!

I sneak in fresh greens, herbs, leaves and fresh turmeric, garlic and ginger in everything. From eggs, to toast with cucumber and herbs butter to showering it on daals, dhai, in smoothies, parathaas and soups. Instead of salt using lemon and green chillies. Making it home made, old school, delicious and nurturing.

I find my inspiration of snacks from the street side Thaila. If they are selling juicy and sweet guavas with kala namak, to my pathan nuts and grain guy who makes us our own trail mix of grains. To Shukarkanddi, sweet potato masala sticks, to gandairi, sugar cane cut up to suck and real juice lollies for a real sweet tooth! If you can make it at home without the chemicals and excess sugar, colorings, and additives I say make the effort. It’s worth your health and mood in every nutritious bite.