Conservative in the morning. Liberal the rest of the day.

When we were kids, the typical breakfast at home was idli or dosai.  Freshly made.  By mother, of course.

One day, my brother, who was perhaps seven or eight at that time, stuck a hand-written note on the kitchen wall to voice his protest.  The note read: "இட்லி தோசை ஒழிக" (No more idli, dosai.)

Every time we get together, the family has a good laugh recalling that.  He vehemently argues that it was my father who put the thought in his head and that as a good kid he carried it out.  We laugh about that too.  Interestingly enough, he is now a dosai expert, and his kids love, love, love his dosais!

Idli and dosai were all what most of the kids in that part of the old country ate back then.  Or, uppuma.  That was the culture.

Bland, salty, savory is the tradition, not only in the old country culture but in old cultures practically anywhere on the planet:

“The idea that children should have bland, sweet food is a very industrial presumption,” says Krishnendu Ray, a professor of food studies at New York University who grew up in India. “In many parts of the world, breakfast is tepid, sour, fermented and savory.”

Years ago, I told my grandmother that in her cultural context, idli every morning with yogurt is the healthiest way to start the day, and no wonder the old cultural belief is that idli plus yogurt is the best food even for the sickest patient.

Children begin to acquire a taste for pickled egg or fermented lentils early — in the womb, even. Compounds from the foods a pregnant woman eats travel through the amniotic fluid to her baby. After birth, babies prefer the foods they were exposed to in utero, a phenomenon scientists call “prenatal flavor learning.”

What an easy excuse then for chocaholics: "hey, it was my mother's fault that she ate all that chocolate when she was pregnant with me!" ;)

Actually, chocaholics don't need to blame their mothers at all:

Sugar is the notable exception to “food neophobia,” as researchers call that early innate fear. In utero, a 13-week-old fetus will gulp amniotic fluid more quickly when it contains sugar. Our native sweet tooth helps explain the global popularity of sugary cereals and chocolate spreads like Nutella: Getting children to eat sugar is easy. Teaching them to eat slimy fermented soybeans, by contrast, requires a more robust and conservative culinary culture, one that resists the candy-coated breakfast buffet.

What we eat, especially when we are kids, is so much culturally determined.  Almost always, that also sets us up for the rest of our lives, unless we consciously make choices about what we eat.  Cultures are conservative when it comes to breakfast.  Whatever one gets used to becomes the daily breakfast routine.  Why?

People are at their most vulnerable first thing; the day has not yet properly begun and breakfast needs to be safe and reassuring. It is the most conservative meal of the day in all cultures, says Kaori O’Connor, an anthropologist who has written a book about the English breakfast. “We have fusion global food. But in all cultures there remains breakfast. It’s a sacrament with which you begin the day. You can go wacko later,” she continues, “but you want to start ‘right’ whatever that may be. You want to gird your loins; you’re emerging from sleep…You want to know that you’re getting a good start.”

We like that re-assuring rote in the morning.

When I am in the old country, I enjoy my favorite breakfast items there: Poori with potatoes, and idli with vadai.  Whoever invented these combinations deserves a bright star named after them!

Daily life in the adopted home is a routine that fits my dull and boring personality.  No idlis or dosais. No packaged cereals, no donuts, no nothing.  It is bland breakfast day in and day out, and I am happy with it.

I don't post any protest signs in my kitchen! ;)

A Challenge to Mad Men: sell idlis to Scandinavians

History suggests consumers will adapt fast. In 20 years, miracle cures for the old will come from Japan, the best web apps from India and couture from China. And cornflakes, once a cutting-edge food, will be rivalled by congee and dosas, sold in boxes by a global brand. Asian capitalism will change the world—even, maybe, what it has for breakfast.

That is how the leader in the latest issue of The Economist ends.  (And, without any glaring grammar issues, might I add!)

That leader is then followed-up with a special report on Asian businesses.  As is always the case with the special reports, this one, too, is an informative one.

But, even as I was reading those concluding sentences that referred to congee and dosas, I got distracted with the thought of food.

So, of course, I had to go to the kitchen, open up the freezer:

No dosas.  But, I did have frozen idli and vada.  (Any guesses on what I might have for lunch?)

The first step has been accomplished--there is now a flourishing, and rapidly growing frozen food market for the Indian tongue.  A contrast to when I was fresh-of-the-boat many years ago.  Ironically, it was in those initial years that I craved for "real" Indian food, because I was not that far removed from the foods of the old country.

In the town where I now live, even the regular grocery store carries pretty much all of the raw materials I would ever need for the "Indian" cooking that I do.  And, the Indian grocery store at the nearby town has the frozen idli, vadai, dosai, masaala dosai, pakoda, ...

The next step for these frozen-food businesses is to diffuse into the larger market.  If cornflakes and pizzas can be regular foods in India and elsewhere, then why not the idli-vada combination for a hot breakfast even in the Carlson household in Stockholm, right?

Add yogurt and it becomes one heck of a nutritious breakfast.  Idli is made by steaming a dough of lentils and rice that is allowed to ferment overnight.  A wonderful combination of carbohydrates and protein with healthy bacteria that make digestion easy.  Because it is steamed, no worries about the unhealthy fat either.  If you eat idlis with yogurt, then the probiotic bacteria of the yogurt become an additional healthy dose to start the day.

No wonder then that the two centenarians in the extended family, who lived until 101 and 102, ate idli with yogurt for breakfast every single day for decades.  With coffee, of course!

Thankfully, the 100th birthday was not celebrated with idlis for everybody ;)

Father's uncle ...He added one more and then called it quits

How washing machines liberated women

A few years ago, I was pleasantly shocked to find washing machines in homes in India.  Shocking because it is after still a country with unreliable power supplies, and inadequate water supplies.  But, pleasant because it was a reflection of how much women were liberating themselves from the traditionally defined rigid roles.  And it is this liberation from the time-consuming and low-productive chores that is essentially the story of women, and the story of economic progress itself.  I often remark in my classes, which begin tomorrow, that the story of economic progress is also a story of the changing roles for women.  And when we discuss demographics, I tell them we might as well forget men.

Hans Rosling makes a wonderful case for this:



My favorite example from India is not even the washing machine as much as the elimination of the "aattukkal."  It is, as the writer here describes in a fantastic essay, "the traditional stone-grinder, to grind the dough for idli and dosai."  The traditional cooking involved a whole lot of grinding, and the "aattukkal" was the big grinder for huge volumes, and which also required water.  The "ammi" was the small grinder, primarily for dry grinding.

The grinding work--yes, literally a grinding work--took up at least two hours every day.  And, yes, this was a task for the women.  About forty years ago, my mother was liberated from these chores thanks to machines.  A small mixer, which could do both dry and wet grinding, the "Sumeet," was one heck of an addition to the kitchen.  My mother, always a careful and diligent worker, put that to excellent use and maintained it well enough to get more than twenty years of service from that machine.  I bet she alone knew how valuable it was in her life.

But, the attukkal was still in use--after all, the mixer couldn't handle large loads of wet grinding. 

And that too changed when another machine entered the kitchen, and it completely eliminated the need for an attukkal.  With the machine, mother could simply dump the soaked rice into it, press start, and go about her other household chores.  Or, simply sit down and read a magazine.  Even after all these 35 years, she uses that same machine.  Mother knows how to treat machines well, and they respond equally well to her tender loving care, it seems. 

What a liberation is has been for women even within my life time!  There is still a long way to go for many of the women on this planet.  But, we ought to pause for a moment and celebrate what we have achieved thus far.