A HEALTHIER KERALA LUNCH
A typical Kerala lunch is healthy. With the highest per capita consumption of fish, predominant use of meat, variety of vegetable dishes and par boiled rice; it’s already a healthy lunch.
Here it is made even healthier with replacement of the rice with quinoa.
Accompanying are fish curry, beef fry with coconut slices, cabbage thoran, Avial, vazhakka Mezhukkuvaratty with coconut slices and home made curd.
As a Malayali, I have been a predominant rice eater. A typical Kerala lunch has par boiled brown rice eaten with an array of healthy curries.
Rice, even brown, is high carb and a candidate to be off the menu.
That’s when I started my affair with quinoa. It has a lot of health benefits and is a seed, not even a grain.
The taste of lunch is on the accompanying curries. The taste is retained just by substituting rice with quinoa.
Here the coconut based dal (paripp), kadala (chickpeas), raw banana mezhukkupuratty and minute steak gave the same satisfying lunch feel.
End of Rice!!
Most people, world over, eat grains as the main meal. Wheat and rice are staple diet from the beginning.
Modern grains, however are not so good according to experts. In fact the modified wheat, available now is a health hazard. And even the rice is made bad by processing for attractiveness and packaging.
Diet related epidemics (obesity, diabetes etc) and virus related pandemic are serious threats to the well-being and even existence of mankind.
The biggest challenge for someone to adopt a healthy diet is to replace the not so good wheat, rice etc with some beneficial substitutes.
Here I am presenting one of the good grains, quinoa (pronounced kin-wah). Try this tasty dish.
Boil some cleaned and soaked quinoa in double the quantity of water with a pinch of salt, till it’s done. Use more water if the desired consistency is not achieved.
Prepare some sautéed vegetables in butter (onion, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots etc with a sprinkle of pepper powder and added leafy herbs). Break one or two eggs and mix well till done.
Add the cooked quinoa and top it with cooked meat mince or shredded chicken.
Vegetarians, just drop adding eggs and meat.
Enjoy the delicious dish as substitute for rice or chapatti meal. It’s keto friendly too.
With a lot of focus on health and wellness this season, I have been adjusting my diet in a fairly big way.
Grains have been the Waterloo, with modern wheat touted as very bad and staple food rice full of carbs etc.
And the highly recommended Kumut, Teff and Sour Gel, well no one seems to have heard about them in my locality.
That leaves Quinoa (pronounced Kin-Wah) and barley as the ones familiar. Well, we could get some Rye, but I am not yet a good bread maker!
Namdaris, with two fancy stores, just walking distance of us have been good source of organic stuff. But to my dismay Quinoa was not on shelf.
That’s when I looked in Amazon and got this 1.4 Kg jar and now I have good alternatives to my salad, and other preparations to complement my Intermittent Fasting.
Kurian 