IT’S `NIMBU-SODA’ SEASON!

And time to boycott all carbohydrates and fryums…

SIGH. And it’s a big sigh. Why do we love fryums so much! We know fryums are on the top of the list of carcinogens in our eating habits, with the refined seed oils indicted majorly for heart disease (along with a few other things like too much cortisol racing through your veins).
It’s been proved by many studies that the refined oils we eat are the number one culprit in heart disease…yet who can resist a fryum like a deep fried batatvada or samosa or mirsang bhoji in a Goan restaurant? Over the years of living in Goa I’ve often said here that the Goan diet is has shifted from its original home diet of millet bhakri and local greens like tamdi bhaji or chidki midki to all kinds of fryums with the ubiquitous popular much loved and consumed local bakery breads (today’s serial killers all if you’re asking me, it’s high time Goan bakeries took to retailing old-fashioned but more trustworthy stuff like bhakri and chappaties of millets like jowar, nachni and several other millets little or big.
A state which cares about the health of its people would take an interest in not just promotion but do something for the easy availability of millet and a few other poustik fare (diseases like TB would be over in no time), for good food is at the heart of so many of our diseases rooted or abetted by low or poor nutrition from increasingly toxic soil. Honey, I can’t even find strong yellow ginger in the market anymore, I buy rhizomes of ginger watery and grey streaks and smudges in it… utterly characterless if not outright dangerous. The vendor won’t let me break of a piece to check within and so I keep buying ginger only to chuck it later when I need cut or crush it when I’m cooking.
ANYWAY, this is to say it’s summer time and I’ve notices how folk are seeking something to drink more than something to eat. A friend of mine says it’s “nimbu-soda season” and we looking for a good nimbu-soda down town Panjim, where there’s a nimbu-soda vendor parked near the Zantye’s caju shop down 18 June road (Rs30 a chilled nimbu-soda but you have to tell the guy to put more fresh lemon juice and not try to jazz up your nimbu-soda with one of the colored bottled sugary syrups interior decorating his cart, pay extra for a full lemon’s juice in your nimbu-soda if you want)…nimbu-soda is always thirst-quenching and so is natural caju “neero” and thin buttermilks spiked with a bit chaat masala. Remember sugary will make your more thirsty and not quench summer thirst and nor will sweet fruit juices.

Do ask for “namkeen” rather than “meetha” drinks, the fresh fruit kokum light waters are of course always welcome…as in kokum tival or sherbet or solkodi done without too much coconut milk in it. Solkodi on the rocks, anyone? Me! Flavor with crushed ajwain (thymol) seeds…the ultimate thirst-quencher is of course tender coconut water with each coconut going for Rs60 nowadays or more if you’re in a hi fi restaurant. Learn to make ginger ale at home, my friend Diedre who has a farm makes her own ginger ale and its yummiliciious although her sweetener is light sugar syrup (make it honey if you wish or date syrup, dilute as desired).
Need I caution about the industrial energy drinks and slew of aerated colored bottled drinks of the multinationals? Don’t waste your money, okay. Fresh is always better than industrial when it comes to drink and food with a very few exceptions…and in this respect I have a tremendous respect for the fresh beverages served by very cleanliness conscious vendors out in the streets of southeast Asia: here you will find carts with blocks of ice, covered with clean white linen, and cut fruit on display from pineapple quarters to melon slices to Chinese pear, rambutan on broomstick, papaya, etc, along with transparent containers filled with soybean milk, brahmi leaf drink, lychee drink, citron lemon sherbet, also tender coconut water and much more…the dark sarsaparilla sherbet I love so much. These are very nourishing, cooling, thirst-quenching utterly. If we had street carts going around retailing mango panha of course I would drink it, how about a mango panha-soda?
I FOUND myself asking why the addition of soda makes a drink so agreeably alkaline? Top seller nimbu-soda is so much loved and searched for because it is the top quencher on a summer’s day and at one time just about everyone could afford it compared to today’s Rs20-30-50 on the streets and vendors justify the pricing by adulterating it with fancy syrups. Stick to austere nimbu-soda only spiked with a pinch of black salt-cumin powder or chaat masala. Make your request clear. Or do it at home which is of course not half as much fun as drinking out on the streets…even if I don’t my tummy to our Indian vendors too much!
ANOTHER thing worth doing is making your own refreshing alkalinizing drinks at home –by just filling a jug of water and steeping it with lemon slices, mint leaves, cucumber slices, amla/aonla/belimbi/starfruit/star berries slices and in slush. Put jug on table and see how these naturally flavored water teas disappear. Actually, the theory is that while icy heats you up some more, hot teas cool you down more…ever realized it? So try just dropping half-a-teaspoon of cloves in boiling water, brew and sip the lightly dark fragrant clove tea…cheers! I’m not going to tell you the virtuous properties of spices like cloves, cinnamon, star spice or just fresh chopped lemon grass, mint leaves, etc. Find your very own hot herbal tea to cool down.
NOTE: You may have notice that some of the health-conscious restaurants nowadays do put jugs of appealing intelligently curated alkalizing thirst-quenchers on the table – see, alkalizing fruit and veggies are excellent for quenching thirst, they are high in water content, almost 90%, and offer both hydration and essential alkaline-forming minerals like potassium, magnesium and calcium plus valuable vitamin C…such waters are said to help body’s pH which constantly get disrupted by acidic eating stress or hyper activity! Anyway, this is just to tell you some top alkalizing thirst quenchers are in fact water melon (lycopene, flushes toxins), cucumber (rich in silica food for skin), celery (natural electrolyte, hydrates and aids calcium absorption), lemons and limes of course (best known and amongst most alkalizing foods once metabolized, excellent to detox liver perennially in trouble, so nimbu-soda makes sense), well, also coconut water, vitamin A rich cantaloupe, strawberries/raspberries (antioxidants, polyphenols, combat inflammation in body beautiful), leafy greens (vital greens), tomatoes (lycopene rich)…so go do these alkalizing drinks for the summer days. They create an alkaline ash which counteracts the effects of acidic foods like processed foods, sugary carbohydrate and meaty stuff. Drink up this summer!