The 200 Food Decisions We Make Every Day ...

Recently, I came across a study which referred to another study by Brian Wansink of Cornell
University. Wansink had found that we make at least 200 food-related decisions every day and ever since I read that, I wanted to explore it a bit more. When Wansink and his colleague
Jeffrey Sobal asked 139 participants how many food-related decisions they made every day, the average answer was 14. But then the respondents were asked to reconsider the various contexts and circumstances in which they made decisions for a typical meal, snack and drink - time,
company, etc and when these were added up, it showed the participants made an average of 226 food decisions a day, 59 of which related to what kind of food to eat. This lead the researchers to conclude that such gross underestimation pointed to the probability that people often engaged in mindless eating.

I thought it would be interesting to record my own food-related decisions and see if they
numbered that many. I didn't get around to maintaining a diary but I did make an attempt over the last three hours and here's what I came up with. (The figures in brackets at the end of each para are the number of decisions.)

Note: I haven't read the entire study, just gists from various sources online, but I thought it would be fun to list all that I could and see how many food decisions I can come up with.

May 23, 2015

• Decide to make pappucharu with lesser dal than usual, so that there wouldn't be too much left over. Use up the half of the bottlegourd and two of three carrots that I had bought the previous day. (2)

• Of the two-and-a-half fistfuls of toor dal that I cooked (above), I set aside some, on the spur of the moment, to mix with the new mango pickle that my mother had sent over. (1)

• I decide to add coconut to the French bean and broad bean stir-fries that I made. (1)

• I decide the small amount of oil I had used in them was enough - one spoon each in all the three items. (1)

• I feel lazy about having to peel the garlic and use it but I go ahead and do it. (1)

• I decided not to use the curry leaves in the fridge as they had all blackened. (1)

• I thought of breakfast but didn't do anything about it. I went without breakfast. (1)

• I had a couple of lychees but realised it was thirst and drank some water. (1)

• I think about adding ghee to the dal and pickle and rice combination (above) but decide it isn't worth the effort of setting my plate aside, opening the ghee jar, finding the right spoon and adding it. The kitchen is very hot and any time spent out of it, even a minute, is well worth a sacrifice. (1)

• I add some oil from the pickle to make up for the ghee.(1)

• Decide to add another bit of pickle knowing quite well that it would be too much, and that it will spoil the taste of the dal-pickle combination. It does. Serves me right. (1)

• Ate a serving of rice with the beans. (1)

• I hadn't eaten the pappucharu. I should eat some. But I miraculously decide to stop. I will cool off with some plain curds and beans instead. Shall I have another helping? Hmm? No.(3)

• I remember to put everything in smaller containers and store it in the fridge.(1)

• I should remember to take the murukkus to office. A water bottle as well. I put the murukkus in a container and put it in my bag. I decide to rely on the water cooler at work for today because I don't feel like lugging around a second bag that's heavy.(4)

• I switch on my computer at work and feel like having strawberry gateau or chocolate cake. I toy with the idea of stopping by for some on the way back home later in the day. I am hungry. Within half an hour of coming to work, which is about two hours after lunch, I dip into the murukku container and eat some. (1)

• I drink copious amounts of water to make sure it all gets flushed out properly when the time comes. (1)

• Then colleague #1 comes over and eats some of the murukku. I keep her company.(1)

• We both dip into another colleague's diet potato lacha but we don't eat much, we go off for coffee. (1)

• At the canteen, the coffee looks too strong to have it sugar-less so I have it with a bit of sugar. (1)

• I drink most of it. Usually I have only half. (1)

• I work a bit, thinking of food, recipes and blogging most of the time.

• Then I tell my colleague who sits next to me, the one with the potato lacha (potato straws), that I desperately want to eat something hot. She offers me the lacha, and I take it, telling her that my BP surprisingly was 140/80 the other day when I went to meet the doctor, and how could it be, I don't have a problem and I shouldn't be having lacha which was quite salty but of course, it was nice because there was an aftertaste of chilli powder.(2)

• I put some on a paper and snack off it. Colleague #1 comes back and helps herself to some lacha, puts a mountain of it on my paper and we both eat off it.(2)

• My murukku container has migrated to my colleague's desk in the meantime. I had put it there to offer it to her and others. I retrieve it and finish it off. I drink hot water from the cooler. Then I work steadily, cravings and hunger pangs making themselves felt. I push them away.(2)

• I leave work at about 8.15 pm, and head for the supermarket. I buy four packets of slim milk. Then two cartons of coconut milk, to replace the two we used up. This brand has a way of disappearing from the shelves for months together. A small tin of condensed milk, simply because I find it. If I don't grab it now, next time I need one I'll have to buy a regular, big one and make more dessert than I want. It can't be stored. (Well, no one needs condensed milk, do they? They only want it. And it's not even as if I make dessert regularly.) (3)

• I decide not to throw out the Black Forest cake just yet. We had bought it to delight our very young niece who loves cutting cakes, birthday or not. It's been seven days since she cut it, and she didn't show much interest in it herself after the first day. It's five days since she and her parents left to go back home and it's lying in our fridge, untouched. (1)

• For dinner, I take out the pesarattu batter I've made in the morning. I eat it with some ginger pickle, after some deliberation.  Just one, I tell myself, a large one, and then some rice with the pappucharu (in picture above). I stick to that decision. I eat some curds and broad beans too but I don't feel guilty. I think of another helping but put a lid on it, literally and figuratively.(5)

• I boil a packet of milk. I wonder whether to chop up a cabbage and store it in the fridge for tomorrow's cooking. Should I add coconut to it or not? Should I look online for a recipe? Something with wedges of cabbage rather than the usual minced? I abandon the idea.(6)

• Then a friend calls and we discuss death, disease, stones in urine and ... no, the list of unsavoury topics ends there. I stir a smidgeon of curds into the boiled milk so that it will turn into curds for the next day's meal. I feel like chocolate and have a small wedge of almond chocolate. I have a bit more, a square. I think about some more but I kill the thought. Then I polish off some lychees. I guess each fruit is to be counted as a decision. I start counting the seeds to see how many I've consumed but abandon the attempt. It's fruit only, nothing heavy. (12-20)

• I've forgotten to update my food and fitness app today. It reminded me once, I put it off. I'm going to do it now. I'm very proud to say this is one exercise I've not given up every since I started it a month ago. (1)

• It's past midnight and I'm typing out this post. Will I have the energy to cook tomorrow or should I simply order in? There's a new restaurant that promises meals of home-cooked quality just around the corner ... (2)

That's about 70 decisions in all. I wonder how much more I have forgotten or overlooked, because I kept remembering things as I was writing this post. I also sincerely believe, though, that like most respondents in that study, probably, that I've been honest about the whole thing. It's like that disclaimer we declare and sign at the end of application forms or declarations: "... these responses are true to the best of my knowledge and belief ..."

Have you ever attempted something like this? Or have you ever maintained a food diary? How did it work for you?

Salad With Some Summer In It - Bittergourd & Mango

If you know me, you wouldn't have come here for a beautiful picture of the bittergourd-mango salad that is the subject of this post. (The photo is way down, this time.) What you will get, instead, is a discussion on the methods of de-bittering the bittergourd, and some memories stoked by the taste of this salad.

What worked for the short, plump bittergourd didn't suit the long one. And what I hoped would be a Mauritian bittergourd salad turned into "let's try this Sri Lankan recipe" and then into my own.

On the de-bittering first: I stuffed the short, plump ones with 'senagakaram', what you might call a chutney powder, a mixture of chana dal powder and spices. I followed Internet instructions and steamed them for five minutes above a bowl of boiling water after scraping the skin thoroughly - I believe the bitterness is concentrated in the bumps covering the skin, and I follow it religiously, but it has also been my experience that they never ever lose the bitterness completely. With this set of gourds, though, I couldn't detect any after they had been steamed, which was truly surprising. (I didn' taste them before I steamed them.) The Spouse has a closed mind when it comes to bittergourds and I happily consumed all the 10 specimens myself over two meals.

Then, exchanging messages with a friend, I came to know about a Mauritian bittergourd salad. What attracted me was the mention of raw onions in the salad. They add such crispness to salads, don't you think? She spoke of how the recipe calls for soaking the gourds in vinegar and something something, she trailed off, she could never bring herself to eat it. So I set about looking for recipes for a Mauritian bittergourd salad but didn't find any that I wanted to make. In one picture, the bittergourd even looked bitter. (Don't ask me how I arrived at that conclusion. It's one of those I-know-it-all opinionated conclusions which are usually way off the mark.)

The next day, I saw three normal-sized bittergourds in the supermarket so I bought those. I had also seen, by this time, recipes for bittergourd or 'ampalaya' salad in blogs of Filipino heritage, and saw some preparation manual where the bittergourds were saturated with salt and soaked in water. I couldn't find the same blog post later but went ahead from memory - and was disappointed to find that they tasted bitter even after the scraping, salting, soaking and rinsing.

But I'm no wimp - in matters of bittergourd, that is - and went on to slice them. I chanced on a Sri Lankan recipe but didn't have any of the ingredients mentioned except the onion so I abandoned that too. I didn't even have limes. I applied salt, chilli powder and turmeric on the bittergourd pieces, fried them and rested them on kitchen paper, then mixed them with an onion and looked unhopefully inside the crisper of my refrigerator. Hurrah, I had a mango! I cut and peeled one side of it and mixed it with the rest of the preparation. I added a little more salt.

(That's the salad in the foreground, in the picture.)

It tasted exactly like the 'mixture' that used to be sold in 'bandis' (carts) on the roads in my town in Andhra Pradesh, when I was a child. I don't remember seeing them later. I am trying to recall what the main ingredient was - peas/ chickpeas, most likely the former - I'm not sure now, but what joy it is to discover a recipe for a long-forgotten and forbidden treat! (I don't know how I got to taste it.) Now I'm wondering if the vendor used mangoes in his mixture. It used to be heaped into a soft, starchy mountain of yellow and red in a big steel plate. Maybe they added some roughly chopped tomatoes too. It used to be decorated with tomato and onion slices, and green chillis stuck out of it. I've tried looking for pictures on the Internet but all of them seem to be modern, chaat-type versions, which this was most certainly not. There was no ' 'sev' in it, no chaat masala, just plain salt and green chillies and chilli powder. I've also seen it sold on the beach in Chennai, long ago. The funny thing is, I don't know where to find those peas! If they were yellow peas, I haven't seen them in the stores. They weren't green. If they were peas, that is.

I have asked a cousin, she does not remember either, but she will ask her mother and let me know. Meanwhile, here's the recipe.

Bittergourd, scraped and sliced: 2 cups
Turmeric: 1/2 tsp
Chilli powder: 1 tsp
Iodised salt: 3/4-1 tsp
Onion, sliced: 1/4 cup
Mango, peeled, chopped: 1/2 cup
Oil: 2 tbsp + a little more to top up

Apply the spices to the bittergourd slices and fry in the oil.

(I don't know if my theory is correct, but to save on oil and oiliness, I use a somewhat deep, curved vessel that allows these slices to get more or less immersed in just 4 tbsp of oil - I'm not sure it's deep-fried, but it's not too shallow either.)

Drain on kitchen paper towels.

Mix with the onion and mango, taste and add some more salt if you like.

Bon appetit!

Keeping It Simple - Green Mango Curry

This post has been long overdue. Not this particular post, but the next post on this blog, I mean. I had plans to reveal my grandmother's recipes, which I found in fragile aerogrammes and a tattered pocket diary on my trip to the US but I haven't had the opportunity to make any of them yet. I have also been having a bounty of fruit and green mangoes as our Uncle has been touring and passing them on to us so that they don't rot in his fridge. That would usually fall to my lot - for them to rot in mine - but I distributed most and consumed just a few.

The mangoes, though, were really hardy. As hard and as sour as ever even after a week. We made dal a couple of times and then there were three. By this time I was tired of dal, I had already made chutney and have the pickle, so I looked for some other recipes to use them up.

I saw some which called for grated coconut or coconut milk, but I didn't want a heavy affair. In one of those weary moments, I also wanted something that reflected tastes native to me, and not acquired ones. Now that was a challenge. I had never come across a mango curry back home so I decided to come up with one myself, using a recipe that I used for a pumpkin pulusu (pumpkin stewed in tamarind) a few weeks ago.

At this point, let me tell you of a conversation I had with a colleague recently. I had been telling her of a cook I had employed briefly three years ago. I had her for six months, three times a week. She would cook only with one hand. The other would be clapped to her ear, holding the mobile phone, and she would be chattering away. Well, chattering is not quite the right word. This person always was discussing something or the other busily, furiously. This happened every day that she came to cook. At this point my colleague said, "But how could she do that, Sra? It's food, and you have to treat it well." She meant we had to treat it with respect.

This stuck in my mind. Soon after, I read something somewhere that said a dish cooked peacefully, in a peaceful frame of mind, that is, would taste much better than one cooked when the cook was stressed. It sounded plausible, and reminded me of yet another discussion with yet another colleague who had said something similar: "When you are not harried when you cook, if you are relaxed about it, it will turn out well, whatever time of day."

What do you think? I have now resolved to find some peace before I cook.

My green mango curry was thus made in a moment of peace, low expectations and yes, a spirit of adventure because I was curious to see how it would turn out without being too invested in it.

Here's the recipe. I didn't use any tamarind or tomato which I would use in a pulusu because the mangoes would be sour enough. I intended to use onions and curry leaves but found out I didn't have any.

Sour green mangoes: 500 gm, washed well, cut into strips with peel on, retain the seed
Gingelly oil: 1 tbsp
Mustard seed, cumin and hulled, split urad dal: about 1 tsp each
Red chillies: 2, broken
Garlic: 5 cloves, peeled, bruised
Red chilli powder: 1 tsp
Turmeric: 1 tsp
Salt: Iodised, 1 tsp
Coriander powder: 2 heaped tsp
Cumin powder: 1 heaped tsp
Jaggery: 1 heaped tsp
Water: Enough to cover the mangoes halfway

Heat the oil and temper with the mustard, cumin, urad dal and red chillies. Add the garlic, saute till it gives off an aroma.

Add the mangoes and saute well for a couple of minutes. Season with the turmeric, chilli powder, salt, coriander and cumin powders.

Add water to cover the mangoes halfway.

Cover the pan and let it boil on a medium flame till the mangoes are soft. You can even mash the flesh of a few pieces to give the gravy some body.

***I tasted it at this stage and it was sour enough to make my mouth pucker.

Reluctantly, I added some jaggery to it. It improved a bit and I left it at that because I wanted a tangy and hot curry, not a sweet one.

It was good with rice, now I am going to try it with dosas. Now, that, of course, is an acquired taste - and more honestly, an attempt to clear the fridge. Bon appetit!

Here's the recipe for another mango curry, with fish in it! 

When I Made an Alsatian Pear-Prune Kugel

I wrote this post almost two years ago. I had wondered why I made things I wouldn't really eat when all I liked about them was the thought of 'achieving' them. I have to say this kugel fell into the same category. It's midnight as I write this and I'm not taxing my brain to check if I have made any such conquests since then and now but I sallied forth and made it anyway - a few midnights ago. Well, I would have waited for morning but my pears - purchased for a fortune less than two days earlier - had started rotting and I did not want to lose more of my money overnight.

I saw this recipe on a newspaper's Facebook page and it seemed so easy - bread is the main ingredient and there's no messing around with whisking and mixing and folding. The thought of a fruit cake/pastry made with little effort save some peeling and dicing was alluring. To add to that, there was the exotica of adding onion to the mix and still have the whole thing coming out sweet.

What was I thinking? That it would taste like the nice sweet noodle kugel I had in a Wegman's in New Jersey last year when I visited? That I would be sinking my teeth into a fruity, warm, East European dessert with so much fruit in it it would actually count for some nutrition? That I would amaze my colleagues in the Refuge of Failed Experiments with a Success? (The RFE is my workplace - most anything gets eaten there but it's nice to go bearing a legitimate success too. I didn't take it there though - most of them are vegetarians who eat eggs only as part of cakes and pastries but this is too much like an omelette - a standalone egg dish, if you get what I mean.)

I thought of many things, not the least of which was the thought of my fruit basket going from full to empty in a matter of minutes, a deal-breaker for clutter-obsessed me - the kugel used up four pears, you see - but then it is now sitting in my refrigerator, with the Spouse eating it for breakfast and as an evening snack. I have told him to give his folks some of it but he seems to have forgotten. In any case, he likes it and so I've decided it's blog-worthy.

It's sweet, of course, with all that sugar, but the onion is enough to add a strong savoury taste and I suppose I didn't expect that.

I tasted some just now, a couple of days later, and it tastes a little better cold and just out of the fridge, I have to say.

I followed this recipe with two or three changes - I added all four cups of diced pears (red ones, no idea what breed) to the mixture instead of reserving one pear for the compote. I added a grated apple to it instead. And as my springform pan has gone missing - I think it rusted and I threw it away - I used an ordinary cake tin.

And my colleagues have persuaded me to bring some anyway, so I will be taking a bit of it to the RFE tomorrow.

Have you ever made a sweet fruity omelette like this? That's what it tasted like!

Bon appetit!

Eating Out in the US - Part 2

I didn't eat all of the things in the photos - the vegetables from the store are included in this post because they are new to me or they looked pretty. I really should have done this post earlier because I've begun to forget what they were called, already.

We ate these rolls at a Thai restaurant in Bridgewater, New Jersey.

Dragon beans at a supermarket in Columbus, Ohio

White asparagus

My Mexican bowl at a fast food restaurant - I really liked it.

Vegetarian pizza at a local restaurant in Columbus, OH

Veggie burger at this restaurant

Sticky bun bread pudding

This was at a French bakery in Columbus that my cousin took me to. Before I read the label, I thought this was some variation on red velvet cake, but it was a chocolate bombe. We passed. There were more exotic treats to try.

My cousin had this pear frangipane tart.

This was a cherry tart that I had. These pastries were extremely rich and filling. They looked small but we could finish them only with some difficulty. My cousin saved a piece of her tart for later.

Don't think I'll have kale chips again, never mind what the world says about them!

This was supposed to be a low-carb dish, but it felt like I had eaten 2,000 calories! It was nice, though. Must have been all that olive oil. There was very little spaghetti but lots of zucchini noodles. 

Most of the menu at this Delaware restaurant another cousin took me to was beef. There were no chicken or vegetarian options so I tried this crisp pork belly from the 'lite fare' on the menu. It was good - and heavy. I have never had this before.

This was a roasted beets & greens  salad with red and yellow beets, arugula, honey goat cheese mousse (that was so interesting), pickled baby carrots, celeriac and pear mustard vinaigrette.

Pumpkin Pappardelle with mushroom, ricotta salata, sage brown butter and kale pesto

I think this was spare rib.

This was at a Vietnamese restaurant in Delaware - this is their yucca dessert with coconut milk.

Eating Out, and at Home, in the US - Part 1

I was away in the US for a month and ate many interesting things. Here are some of them.

"Broccoli? You took a picture of broccoli?" asked my cousin, with an incredulous smile on her face. "That's broccoli rabe, not broccoli," I replied. Eating that cluster of buds/flower was exactly like 'eating' mustard oil. I started on a second one but it proved too much for me - fumes entered my nose and I had to give up. 

That's my breakfast everyday. In the US, my aunt made it exotic by adding herbs from her garden - dill and chives.

We went to a cafe at Brooklyn, and I am glad I went for this berry strudel. 

Wall art at the Brooklyn cafe

Dinner one night at my aunt's place - ravioli, cauliflower saute and mushrooms and snow peas sauteed together

Dinner at a Boston food court - Macaroni and cheese

Wonder what's Ramayana about it - at a Thai restaurant in Boston's Newbury Street

Our starters at the restaurant. They weren't very different from the Thai restaurants here in India.

Prawn curry - I don't remember the style of gravy, it was in Thai

Chicken curry at the same restaurant

From Boston, we drove to Newport, Rhode Island before returning to New York. This was displayed at a small shopping/restaurant complex where we went for lunch. I'm pretty sure it was artificial but I didn't touch it, just in case.

Garlic toast and white bean hummus at the Newport bar where we ordered lunch - really tasty!

Clam chowder

BLT burrito with coleslaw - I hadn't imagined it would be so big. I ended up eating the filling and discarding the burrito!

Things I've Been Learning, Making, Doing from the Internet

Like most other people, I used to call them pomegranate seeds. Only when I started blogging did I learn they were called arils. I knew a lot about food and ingredients but when I discovered blogs, I found myself telling bloggers 'I never knew you could do that' or 'Oh, I do it this way, I haven't tried it your way'. Then one day someone told me something which gave me the impression that to even say, conversationally, 'Oh, but doesn't X ingredient go into it, usually?' could be seen as criticism so I stopped saying it in some blogs. I thought it was just conversation, I know I wouldn't be affected by a comment like that. What do you think?

But I digress. One of the few things I did in my baking-only days were brownies. Like I've mentioned earlier, I was quite famous in my family for them. I had only one recipe - from a cookbook for a gadget called the Twink Inframatic Cuisinette which my mother had bought years earlier. It was an all-in-one, all you had to do was change the plates as required and you could turn out waffles, sandwiches, brownies, cakes, and quite a lot of other stuff in the little baking tray that came with it.

Recently, I went to lunch with a friend, we decided it would be a potluck and I would take a salad and dessert. I decided on brownies and wanted a recipe that would help me finish the dark chocolate and drinking chocolate I had at home. I came across BBC Good Food's recipe for the 'best brownies ever' and replaced the cocoa with drinking chocolate and golden caster sugar with ordinary caster sugar. I must have put it in a smaller pan than recommended because only the top baked and the bottom didn't. Even when I baked it again for 10 more minutes. It stayed gooey, so I just put a lid on it and went to bed, hoping it would somehow solidify by morning. (It didn't, of course.) But it was terribly tasty.

It had to be. That recipe seems to be written with so much love and enjoyment it has to work. Well, I took some of it to lunch and to work, and it was a big hit. I put the rest in the fridge. The greatest surprise was the evening - I took it out and it had solidified quite a bit. Unexpectedly, my kid brother, who lives in another city, visited and when he tasted some, he raised his eyebrows appreciatively and said it was great. He had it with all the meals he had. He didn't make fun of my cooking, as he was wont to, and lapped up every morsel. To look at him, the thought of mocking me didn't even cross his mind. He's grown up, I thought, and my brownie is really, really good! He even had it for brunch. Here's a picture which I took during the making of it, I don't have any of the finished product.

Here's a recipe for flourless brownies.

 One of the other things that I used to try my hand at was apple pie or strudel. The pastry would fail me but the fruit mixture would come out fine. Later, I discovered an apple crumble. Last week, I had one lone apple sitting in my fruit bowl and I thought I'd make a quick dessert if the sweet craving hit me at night. Well, it did and I put it together quite easily.

I remembered something from those days about rubbing the flour into the cold and hard cubes of butter such that it resembles bread crumbs and sprinkling it over the apple. I even remembered reading that you only had to let your fingertips do the work otherwise it would become too warm and not work out. So I did that. I used about 4-5 tsps of flour with the little butter that I cut from a hunk of it so I can't tell you how much it was. I started with the butter and 1 tsp of flour and went up to 5 tsps. I consulted the Internet to check the oven temperature and confirm I was on the right track with the rest of the recipe. Cut the apple into pieces, with the skin, toss a tablespoon of sugar into it, a teaspoon of flour and a teaspoon of cinnamon powder. Mix. Top it with the flour-butter mix and pop it in the oven for 25 minutes at about 180 C.

Months ago, I chanced on something called Dhuska, a recipe from Jharkhand and Bihar, which was described as a kind of puri, eaten with chickpea curry. I tried it but I have to say it came out nothing like a puri and everything like a pakoda, and I didn't think the curry suited it either. It was interesting enough on its own. Pickle made a nice accompaniment, though!

Then, those of us - and I'm at the top of the queue, I'm sure - who have been agonising about dwindling readership on our blogs, can read this post for a fresh look and well-articulated reasons on why we keep blogging. The comments are equally interesting.

Clean, Mean, Crisp And Crunchy Capsicum and Apple Salad

When I meet friends that I don't see often, I rarely go without taking lots of photographs. Apart from holding on to the memories, there are other reasons that are quite selfish. It is in the quest of the perfect Facebook profile picture where I look as slim and as happy and as put together as possible. Needless to say, only how I look reflects in my picture so I end up being disappointed with a lot of the pictures I take. This is the first time I went without taking pictures at all when my friends and I met a couple of days ago. Instead, I took pictures of the salad I had made because I was so in love with its looks.

I even managed to take decent 'arty' pictures of half-empty plates, something I have always wanted to do. Whenever I've tried, those plates would look like gory battlefields and I would abandon them. Ah, how important it is to appear perfect if not actually be perfect!

I somehow end up not liking my own salads because my dressings never seem to achieve the right balance of tastes and I felt the same way with this too. However, this time I did things the right way and tossed the salad only when it was time to serve it, and my friends lapped it up. One of them, H, said that the taste of the capsicum had adhered to the apple and she found it interesting. That was because I had cut up the fruit and vegetables and chilled them in the serving dish before taking them over to V's place where we ate. I had mixed the dressing too ahead of serving time and let it sit for a while so that the flavours could meld.

The ultimate result was my dream salad: The others liked it, so did I, it looked beautiful, stayed crisp, was light and had clean, uncomplicated flavours. Incidentally, did you see this article in the kitchn? Until I read it and the comments it attracted, I had always thought 'clean' meant light, straightforward flavours that came through without the diners having to wonder what they were. Turns out it could mean different things to different people, and even gets their goats.

Here's the recipe for my clean, mean, fruit and vegetable salad.

Capsicum/bell pepper - 3, diced
Cucumber - 1, de-seeded and diced
Golden apple -2, sliced
Juice of 1 lime

Toss the apples in lime juice, mix with the capsicum and apple and chill. 

Dressing
Juice of 2 limes
An equal volume of olive oil
1/8 tsp of minced ginger
2 pinches each of cumin powder & red chilli flakes
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp sugar substitute
1 tsp iodized salt

 Put all the ingredients in a small dish, 'beat' well with a fork and then store the dressing till you need to use it. Pour over salad at serving time, toss salad. Enjoy!

 

When I asked for critical evaluation, after some consideration, H said that maybe I could use fewer capsicum because not everyone might like more of those in relation to the rest of the components. She herself liked it, she said.

  salad

How To Make A Mixed Gourd Salad

Mixed gourd salad

Someone always gets there first. Almost always. And I say this with a smile and a sigh rather than pique. I had been thinking of a gourd salad for a long time. However, I didn't search the Internet for it till I bought a variety of gourds a couple of days ago and was surprised to find several results for it. Most used one gourd, and those were mostly bitter gourd and snake gourd.I rather thought I'd be the inventor of the gourd salad but no, several people have beaten me to it, so let me call myself the inventor of this mixed gourd salad.

Most of the components of this dish are gourds, most of them are green and I'm quite pleased with myself at how I went about building and dressing the salad. The previous night, I had decided to bunk yoga class yesterday morning to spend more time in bed. I went to bed late, breaking my rather new rule of no-Internet-on-big-screens-at-night (my beginner-size, low-tech smartphone is the exception). I surfed and surfed - "yoga for weight loss", "yoga to prevent diabetes", Facebook (why had a schoolmate accepted the school rowdy as her friend, what had he made of himself - I couldn't find out) and several pages of results for gourd salads.

Despite all this, I couldn't sleep beyond my usual quota. (Why did I think yesterday would be any different from other days?) After spending a couple of wide-awake hours trying to solve the day's cryptic crossword, I found myself cutting and steaming vegetables for an hour. I whizzed a few ingredients to make a dressing and sprinkled it over the salad. Then I added - nay, squished into it - some bocconcini which was past its best-before date and immediately regretted it because I didn't think the flavours would go together and took out as much as I could. Live a little, Sra, my heart told me, so I added it back in. I did not add any salt because the cheese had some. Nor did I add any oil at this stage. I thought the fat in the cheese would coat it enough. (See notes below.)

For the salad
Snake gourd, peeled, chopped into strips: 1.5 cups
Ash gourd/white pumpkin/winter melon, peeled and diced
Tender ridge gourd: 1.5 cups
French beans: 6-8, chopped into 1/2-inch pieces
Onion, sliced: 1

For the 'dressing'
Shredded coconut, fresh: A handful
Roasted peanuts: A handful
Green chilli: 1, chopped
A pinch of salt

 Lime juice: From two limes
Bocconcini: 5-6 balls

Cook the snake gourd and French beans in the microwave with a little water for two minutes on High. (I did not treat the other vegetables the same way as they were very tender and juicy.)

To make the dressing, pulse the coconut, peanuts, salt and green chilli just once to make a coarse mix that can be sprinkled over the vegetables.

Put the vegetables in a dish, mix the bocconcini into them, pour the lime juice over and sprinkle the mixture on top of the salad. Chill.

Notes: At lunchtime, I served myself some of the salad and decided it needed more salt. However, I added the salt to my portion of the salad and not to the entire dish lest it got all watery. It also seemed a bit dry so I added a spoon of plain oil to the salad on my plate, mixed it in gently, and then it came together. However, the Spouse had none of these complaints and liked it as it was.

I am sending this off to No Croutons Required, hosted this month by Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes and Lisa of Lisa's Kitchen