The Importance of a Food Revolution

I am surprised to find myself so obsessed with the topic of learning how to cook Indian food let alone blogging about it. For most of my childhood, I wished food was a pill that I could take down with a glass of water and not be bothered with (and I think my 2 year-old feels the same given her eating habits). While I loved my mom’s Indian cooking, chewing and chewing to get it down was exhausting. Then I grew up and moved to NYC where food is something to be experienced, from the then hottest restaurant Nobu, to waiting in line for an hour for the best post clubbing treat of Kati Rolls, to the best street vendor in mid-town. While in NYC I got pregnant and became this strange glutton, eyeing everyone’s food around me as if there were no more left in the world (I’m a fairly petite Indian, 5’4″-ok 5’3″ and about 114lbs) and wishing I was carrying a bowl of my mom’s cooking in my purse. Shortly after, we moved back to the SF Bay Area where we could easily order the most amazing tasting locally grown organic fruits and vegetables courtesy of Farm Fresh to You by a click of an internet button (not to mention the farmers’ markets every weekend).

In a way, when you look around at what we work for, an old Indian movie title sums it up best, Roti, Kapda, aur Makaan or Food, Clothing, and Shelter. On a disheartening note, a UN report suggests that almost 1billion people go hungry each year. In the US, we have the opposite problem. In the US, obesity has become such a mainstream issue that chef Jamie Oliver has gotten a prime-time show (Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution) on the ABC network dedicated to changing American children’s eating habits. A fairly old Indo-American observation, “Vahan, log bina khai mar rahe hain aur yanhan, log kha kha ke mar rahe hain.” Translation-”There, people are dying without eating, and here, people are dying by eating and eating…”

But as I mentioned in my earlier post, it was the birth of my daughter that made me realize how important food is. Every little morsel in her mouth became the most important piece of food in the world to me. (I would also think how lucky she and I were to not be born one of the millions of hungry mothers and daughters in the world.)

At any rate, what I’m trying to say, in a rather long-winded way, is that by spending so much of my time thinking about food lately, I have really learned to appreciate the sheer luxury of food in my life. Here’s to hoping this blog will be more than a list of recipes and tips on cooking Indian food and way for each of us to find our own way to join in a food revolution.