Journalism of Courage
Manisha Karnik on Friday learnt how to cook halwa without sugar,milk,ghee or oil. Instead,the halwa was made of moong dal,jaggery and coconut. She also learnt that bread could be prepared without maida and that vegetable could be cooked without oil,but with oilseeds as the cooking medium.
A four-member group called Organic Collective taught Manisha and her two friends Savita and Vaishali ways to cook food without those ingredients which many take for granted,like oil,ghee,sugar and even milk. While coconut is used instead of milk,jaggery replaces sugar.
We have always been interested in organic food. In this case,even my children loved the food we prepared, Manisha said.
Manisha met the members of organic collective at state agriculture departments Maha-organic seminar last month. At that time over 150 people had signed up with us to learn the methods of healthy cooking, said Vanaja Vaidyanathan,an IT consultant and co-founder of Organic Collective,who works with her husband Shirish Kher,friends Shammi Nanda and Gurvinder Singh.
The bread was the main attraction. When people saw the loaves all of them wanted to know if they could buy it, said Shirish,who is also a visiting faculty at Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies. People could not buy the loaves but they could learn how to make them.
Their friend Singh,an independent filmmaker,is the groups breadmaker and makes whole wheat bread without maida,oil,preservatives,emulsifiers or stabilisers. He also teaches people to make multigrain bread with jowar,soya,bajra,ragi,channa dal and other ingredients in the same manner,without any added chemicals. Had we used wood fire (instead of oven) we could call these artisans bread as they are completely hand made, he said.
Shammi,who is a staunch vegan avoids milk or milk products. So instead of animal milk,Nanda is more in favour of milk and curd made out of peanuts,almonds and coconut. On Friday,in the first session of such workshops,the collective also put on the menu two different types of salads,Bihari dish litti and herbal tea made of lemon grass,cloves,pepper,dry ginger,pudina and jaggery.
The group also believes in pay as you wish concept for remuneration in exchange of conducting the workshops. Each person is asked to pay as much as they wish to or can afford. This is because they want the process to be beyond just a business transaction but also provoke questions like is this food good for us? Shirish said.
