HOW WE USED TO DRINK AND EAT ONCE UPON A TIME!

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HOW WE USED TO DRINK AND EAT ONCE UPON A TIME!

Aug 23- Aug 29, 2025, Eating is Fun / Eating is Yuck! - A variety food column, Life & Living August 22, 2025 , by Tara Narayan

By Tara Narayan

ONCE upon a time when someone dropped in it was so easy to stir-fry a quick savoury “poha” and serve it with tea with cardamom or ginger flavoring it! In Gujarati homes there were always three things available for “nashta” as in recreation tea-time evening breaks: thin flavorful “khakra,” “ghantia” and “sev mamra” and children used to love the last most of all! Only today we pine for pizza and burgers and all kinds of industrial snacks served up in internationally run corporate food outlets…industrial food is over glorified junk food offering you beauty but is empty of the soul of nutrition you need not to fall prey to bacterial or viral infection infections or something perennially degenerative.
I REMEMBER craving for Coco-Cola and sandwiches while a schoolgirl, but in the absence of hefty pocket money could never afford them. But once in a way I could afford the local hawker food which came down the street of the house in which we lived down Penang street in Penang. From morning till night the vendors came walking, on bicycle.
The bread man with local soft breads sliced and lathered with coconut jam “kaya,” utterly butterly delicious; then the Sri Lankan man came with his plain and egg appams and chutney-sambar; there was the Chinese lady with a stick on her shoulders bearing a canister of most flavorful “bee hoon” (savory rice noodles”)…the “mee goring” cart man came along, the “ice-kachang” man, the fruit cart man with his freshly cut pineapple, melon, pear, rambutan on stick, etc, laid out on temptingly white cloth covered ice blocks…the soybean man I loved the most with his canisters of the day’s freshly made soybean milk, soybean cream laced with dark palm jaggery syrup, hot or cold. And so on and so on.
WHEN I look back I consider these street vendors the salt of the earth and we ate far superior food than what our rich and poor children are eating today! Quite simply because the vendors of old got up early every day to prepare the local snacks meticulously. And oh yes I will vouch for their sanitation, snacks were served up in fresh green banana leaf or wrapped in wax paper or in proper glasses and bowls. No plastics, none.
The school can will have sandwiches and “curry puffs” (fat crescent dumplings stuffed with a savoury mixture of sweet potato and potato) and a range of other very agreeable fare. I don’t remember ever tearing open these deadly plastic packets with the equally deadly industrial foods of chips, wafers, popcorn, etc to litter the street or fill up the street gutters or bins. We have turned the stomach into waste-disposal bin.
HONESTLY, some things we need to go back in time, especially in the realm of what we put in our mouth – if only to reap better health and happiness parameters. In every home today there is the scourge of some cancer or another, ask yourself why today.
Which reminds me I’m done with my last Shravan thali meal deal of the year and as Chavath or Chovoth sets in there’ll be the veg meals too for there are folk who fast through all the three Chaturmaas or monsoon months…just go vegetarian for spiritual nameless benefits real and unreal. Hey, I’m still looking for a Sattvic food thali of 2,000 calories or less and designed specifically for seniors, most of whom may not be able to chew very well with their dentures well-fitting or ill-fitting!
Many seniors seek soft foods which don’t need too much chewing. Some never think they can soften a piece of chapatti or even the Goan poie in tea, coffee or soup to make it easier to digest. Such things as idli or sannam are fine for breakfast, kichadi or curd rice for lunch with chutney, soup or baked dish for dinner. Cakes or gulab jamuns and sweets of all kind are usually welcome. My mother who learned how to chew with her gums loved savoury “thepla” and every now again sweet “jalebi” was welcome.
Since I’m a Guju I find some things Guju are always welcome and the other day down Caranzalen street where I live in Panjim I discovered a Gujarati farsan and sweet shop called “Tasya” and was delighted for here nearing lunch time one may find such things as “khaman dhokla,” then “khadavi and above all I found my favourite “khakra” – the thin wafer-styled round crunchies, plain or jeera-flecked or masala ones with fenugreeks greens chopped in them. These are my desi crackers of preference, you may eat them with a bit of mango “chunda” (also available here) or scatter a bit of what is called delectable “jiralu” powder and enjoy with evening tea. No biscuits, only khakra. Like that. They have a whole lot of good quality dry fruit mithai too and popped lotus seeds (makhana) in any number of flavors. Makhana are the new health snack making the rounds and the price has shot up to the sky!
Yes, I would say for our country snacks some of which are not deep fried salty spicy affairs but quite very agreeable in small quantities, more agreeable than the industrial snacks in seductive packaging. Don’t get conned by appearances even when it comes to what you put in your mouth.

AT THE HOSPITALITY SHOW 2025

WHICH reminds I went out with a friend who wants to start a foodie business in Goa – as if there’s a shortage of eating out places upper crust and lower crust in Goa, everybody comes to Goa to eat nowadays! We were at this biggest Goa Hospitality Show 2025 at the Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Indoor Stadium at Bambolim from Aug 20-22, 20-25 where of course all the hospitality folk were visiting, to see what they need to stock themselves up for the tourist season ahead post-monsoon. Oh, it was an utterly packed show with all kinds of hospitality things from toweling and linen ware for hotels, to kitchenware, fancy garden furniture, cutlery and crystal ware (the expensive kind I liked to shop for once upon a time!…and so many coffee machines are being invented, I wonder if we’re abandoning tea for coffee. Mama mia what a lot of things to making baking easy and a galaxy of cakes cupcakes, pastries, macroons, etc, on show.
I discovered bitter chocolate and cocoa is a supper food now although I can’t find a cup of cocoa hot or cold in any of Panjim’s wellness cafeterias! The health-conscious are now doing “kombucha” beverages and dubious energy drinks…don’t, they’ll take a toll on your kidneys with the amount of acidic sugary chemicals in them.
Funny, how all the industrial foodwallah folk claim their food to be “authentic” — promising “tasty burger patty” and “Bombay Aloo Vada” – honey, I know for a fact that samosa made a month ago in an Indore factory, come frozen to Goa to be fried and served up in come-lately cafeteria…they taste like nothing on earth I want to put in my mouth lathered with a plethora of mind-blowing ketch-ups, sauces and fancy mayonnaise combos. God along knows what’s them, I don’t want to know.
Hell’s bells, even honest idli-meduwada-dosa have become industrial foods now as “the taste of India!” Sigh, and a very big sigh, I wish we could somehow return to our old-fashioned street vendors coming to our doorsteps to sell us the day’s freshly made snacks…I dream of someone delivering a host of millet flatbreads like jowari and nachne “bhakri” and “chappati” at my doorstep daily in the morning, like Goa’s local bakery or poder breads!
That’s enough food for thought here for now.