Unlocking Food
Tarannum Hasib, Chief Distribution Officer & Director - Marketing at Canara HSBC OBC Life Insurance, narrates:
We have all heard the saying that ‘you are what you eat’. However, during the lockdown, we have discovered a new extension - ‘you are also in the process of preparing the food that you eat’.
Dependence on cooks had been the in-thing and done-thing for years at home but covid and the lockdown have just changed all that. We have been forced to re-evaluate our very existence, including our relationship with food.
In these times of ‘no domestic help’, we have chosen to help each other. My husband has learnt to prepare idlis for breakfast, and my daughter (who shied away from stepping into the kitchen for years) is now preparing delicious butter chicken for the family. In my case, because of the hectic schedule and shuttling between work and home, I had forgotten the joy of cooking and the moments of pleasure and validations that come from it. So, when I made Murg Musallam, after years, a part of me was concerned about how it would turn out. The compliments received and the frequent refills that everyone had put paid to rest all those concerns and was worth every bit of the effort.
The taste of the food was just a part of it. The bond created by being in the kitchen together, with someone chopping onions and someone picking out the ingredients while I manned the stove, is a connection that we had not had the opportunity to explore before. Added to this is the blessing of having the food together - all the 3 meals and the shared teatime.
Another astounding t hi ng we discovered about food is the sheer variety that exists, not only in theme restaurants but even inside the 4 walls of our house. The lockdown of a few months allowed us to explore more cuisines and recipes than we had in years. In fact, we even managed to innovate and create some new recipes of our own. It was a childlike excitement to cook new things and decide a daily recipe. YouTube greatly assisted in this path of discovery.
The reality of covid has also reminded us to make certain, previously on and off healthy practices, into daily, and hopefully permanent habits. Turmeric milk every morning and the dry fruit mix each evening are just some small changes we have made that are contributing to all of us becoming healthier and stronger individuals. While we all speak of balanced diet, we hardly practice it. This time we took effort of figuring out the foods which enhance immunity and surprisingly discovered that our wholesome Indian meals provide all in abundance. We need to follow it. Forgotten grandma’s recipes have now come to the forefront. This is a big change, the realization that each one of us, despite our age or busyness, needs to find time to take care of ourselves, with nutritious and balanced foods.
It’s important that when we step into the new normal and covid is a thing of the past, the healthy foods, the clean eating, the innovation with food and the bonding we found through cooking, becomes a life.