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IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH… We look for food which is worth eating!
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IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH… We look for food which is worth eating!

Aug 15- Aug 21, 2026, Eating is Fun / Eating is Yuck! - A variety food column, Life & Living August 14, 2026 , by

FUNNY or not funny. Food is at heart of all life on earth and yet we fail here big time when it comes to eating right day in and day out! It was never like this once upon a time. At home a standard meal would see women making preparing food at home from scratch or a wealthy family would have, preferably, a Brahmin or traditional food cook. There were always healthy home-made snacks like savory “poha” or “thepla-chundo” or “khaman dhokra” or “handwo” or “pudla” savoury or sweet, and lots more. Food was wholesome and we didn’t eat gaguantan amounts like we do today, definitely 5,000 calorie plus, plus meals vegetarian and non-vegetarian.
We were not obese in the old days. In may home at lunch at the very least there would be the standard Guju kitchen menu: “rotli” (thin chappatie also called “phulka,” “varan” or “lachko dal” (austere tur or pigeon lentils cooked very simply with turmeric, bit salt, pinch asafetida) or buttermilk “kadi” (with ladies finger or cluster beans in it), some kind of dry veggie or “shaak” with a variety of potato preparations being top favorites, and plain rice (served with a teaspoon of pure ghee laced in)…asides of pickle, papad, kachumbar or raita.
Pretty decent lunch, all made by mother dear or aunt with grandmother or ma-in-law running some interference in the menu for lunch and dinner. In fact, in traditional old Gujarat we never had lunch, only early brunch after which everyone went off to their respective office jobs. Weekends were for experimenting with other Indian foods (that itself offering such a large repertoire), or non-Indian! At some point of time I remember “pau-bhaji” came into lives, and “pijja” and “mee goreng.”
Home dinners were usually simpler with “thepla-chundo” or “handwo” or “khata dhokra” or “dal-dhokri” or just a “bajra no rotlo” with a blob of home-made white butter (for milk cream was collected and precious ghee made out of it)…few had breakfast beyond a cup of “masala chai.” Those were the days when women were brought up to invariably stay at home minding hearth and children and everybody else as the children came along!
Today, if you want to be liberated officegoer woman, you better marry and come to some kind of a compromise with whoever “he” is with or without in-laws…needless to say the “nuclear family” rules with joint families of old falling apart effortlessly with changing times, relationships too miserable as we can see all around us.
TODAY, kitchens are mostly for small fixing of snacks and quick meals, none of your all sit down together and eat and talk over a couple of hours. Those days have become scarce. We may grow old alone maybe and look at me, these days I’m looking high and low for a meal which tastes of good old-fashioned love and can’t find it for love or for money! The other day I ordered courtesy Swiggy a “veg thali” from a restaurant I once frequented down town Panjim for its agreeable menu which amongst other things listed “pithla-jowari roti” …two large hot jowari chappaties would arrive along with a generous bowl savory gram flour delight called “pithla,” redolent of onion, garlic and garnished with a generous helping of chopped coriander leaves. Sliced onions and lemon wedge on the side. Costing about Rs150. The restaurant has shut down and has since metamorphosed into a cloud kitchen and last week over the phone, via Swiggy, I ordered their “veg thali”….it arrived in one of these plastic pocket trays which have become money-spinners I imagine!
In the tray pockets were two fat semi-cooked oily “paratha,” I couldn’t for the life of me eat them; a spiced up watery dal; a cabbage sabzi portion warmed up too many times; a broke papad; the usual commercial pickle pouch; a mound of indifferent quickly cooked rice. I ate the slightly under done rice with sabzi and let the rest go in the bin…and it was the first day of Shravan-ka-mahina when I want to live on lunch alone as often as I can and I do! Cost of the Bassera thali meal deal, terribly cold by the time the laughing Swiggy guy delivered it at home, just about Rs300 paid over phone.
I’m sorry. I will never order from this cloud kitchen of whatever denomination again and of course the hubby would have none of it apart from calling me a perennial sucker for such order home food adventures, why can’t I cook at home, etcetera. Yes, free home deliveries pretending to be free are never free, the Swiggy deliveries from vague cloud kitchens double up in cost by the time they are delivered.
There is no such thing as being cost-effective when ordering food home, unless one is flush with funds and can order from the more upmarket places and even then there’s this plethora of plasticware in which the food arrives, at least it puts me off. Plastic pocket trays, they should be banned, the alternative is 35 something individual plastic containers small and big; like I remember it happened once when I’d brought home a meal deal from the now gone with the wind Bhojan service at the Fidalgo enclave of restaurants. I was zapped and exhausted by the timer I’d gingerly opened up all the containers with various food item numbers in them! Never again, I vowed. The food was much superior back then when Bhojan Guju and Rajasthani food was alive and cooked by real cooks, not nakli Nepali and Kannadigga wannabees…the less said the better here.
I am a sucker. My search for simple honest by way of an economical thali meal deal continues with ups and downs galore! Of course, say I am hard to please and that too is true, say I am health conscious, that too is true, say I am eco-friendly….yes. I don’t like my food served in ghastly plastics of any designer quality. With a health problem these days I’m holed up at stuck at home, unable to go out and pick up food from where I usually like it.
Which reminds me Shravan-ka-mahina is here and I’m still unable to cook for myself or for anyone else beyond simple one-dish meals of either “dahi-bhat” or “kichadi” and buttermilk “kodi” or just a plain rice and tur or moong dal…buttermilk and dahi on the side, maybe a crunchy like “fafda” which are purchased from the near by Big Mishra Pedha.
SO it goes. These days I’m looking for a friendly seniors facility where I can sign up and then coping with life may hopefully become a thing of the past! Every other real estate project coming up far and near promises it’s for seniors seeking retirement in peace…but very few are actually intelligently and lovingly designed to make life easier for seniors’ needs; some of them can stress you out once you’ve laid eyes on them.
Still, there are the better places if a little more pricier and of course few offer happy rentals, all want you to buy, buy, buy and deal with the con stories later on at leisure. With a big sigh that’s all for now!

SHRAVAN IS EXCITING IN GOA!


COME Shravan-ka-mahina and Goa becomes exciting with everyone wanting to get into the act of offering the Shravan vegetarian thali meal deal for anything from Rs250 to Rs800 plus, plus. Prices of course climb up with every Shravan but my usual places to be happy are usually Kokum Curry, Copperleaf, Ritz Classic, Surboos, and one or two more.
This year perhaps the most adventurous Shravan experience may be found out at Dr Malik’s Farm where they’re doing a Pangat Shravan picnic … says a charming Sawani Shetye, they’re concentrating on edible wild leaves in a veg spread like no other – say a “raan patta” or wild green leaves feast, and this year they’re sharing recipes. You may learn along with the relishing of such things as steamed “muthlyo,” “modak,” “pattoleo” and other preparations which require the use of many kinds of leaves. A leaves special, wow! Everybody thinks it’s easy to make traditional preparations but actually they require patience and skill, says Sawani…don’t know about you but it sounds fascinating. Only for Saturdays and Sundays starting August 15 and for the rest of the Shravan month. Don’t know what the damages are but they sound worthwhile, I’m sure the experience would be more than eating to heart’s delight! This is an all day picnic beginning with breakfast, lunch, tea…there’s a stream to go wading in, a swimming pool, fun for all. Quite, quite different from going to a hotel and feasting on a Shravan thali austerely good, sumptuously brilliant, reasonably agreeable…or real dismal affair. Check out Dr Malik’s Farm!


ALONG with Shravan-ka-mahina meal deals you may equally want to chase an Onasadya or Onam Sadya of the people of Mallu land that is Kerala, there are several do’s organized by community temple groups come August, and one may even order home the entire meal.
Then out at my favorite incomparable Kokum Curry in Candolim and Panjim, I learn that Sapna Sardessai has added to her grand repertoire of Gaud Saraswat Brahmin soulful veggie temptations…a “Maulingechi sol kadi” – “digestive extract of rind of citron fruit combined with coconut milk, kokum shells and salt, bitter sour taste adds punch to drink.” This citron lemon is rare to find and expensive I’m told, a real find. It’s very definitely a forgotten GSB recipe, Sapna responded when I quizzed her about it in online messaging.
Which reminds me to add here that my friend Revati Sanzagiri is also doing Shravani Shivak Mangalwar thali meals with separate offerings of much loved “sabudana kichadi” and “moonga gathi.” She says her Aitar and Tuesday thali meals are good for two but priced at Rs420. The smaller meal deals are Rs250. You may want to check her out at the Edcon Pinto Rio Grande at Campal where she stays, she’s got an a la carte menu done at home but do all her first. Enjoy your Shravan-ka-mahina and hum along with the last of the monsoon rain pitter patter.

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