Four incredible lessons from my mom's kitchen

All moms are awesome! Mine is not just awesome, she is somehow supremely attuned to all things healthy too. One of her recent concoctions is grated beetroot and carrot atta (dough), seasoned with some salt and ajwain (carom seeds)… Imagine beetroot parantha! Unusual, agreed, but what a fantastic, even if somewhat twisted, way to sneak in health! Apparently it tastes great too (dad said so). But then that's nothing new; I learnt all my basic nutrition lessons from her, growing up, eating her cooking, way before I decided to study the science myself.

For Mother's Day I am sharing four of those lessons that, that incredibly research too has proven correct since.

Taste Wins: With mom, good taste is, and has always been, non-negotiable, and health is indispensable, so she strives to pair them smartly. Basically, her modus operandi is that she picks up a healthy ingredient and experiments endlessly to make it delectable. "Food has to be tasty," I grew up hearing. I remember I fell in love with sprouts the day she gave them to me dunked in creamy yoghurt, splashed with a spicy tamarind chutney. And I still eat banana the way she taught me to - spiced up (take a banana and make a slit in the skin to open it up. Drizzle in a mixture of 1 teaspoon lime juice, 1 teaspoon honey and ¼ teaspoon black salt. Eat straight off the peel). This was after I had rejected umpteen other versions that she had tried: smoothie, fruit chaat, cinnamon-honey flavoured… Today, when I read endless research stating that only an appetizing, happy diet is sustainable, I am glad that she figured this out on her own, and schooled us (me and my sister) too. Another big payback of eating like this was that, by default, I learnt to equate taste with health, and not with unhealthy junk. For example, for me a pizza somehow tastes good only if it is over loaded with vegetables. And if I don't really see "health" staring at me from the plate, my mouth refuses to water.

Eat it all: She is a great believer of not wasting any part of the produce. So potatoes were not peeled, just scraped and cleaned properly before being baked to yummy goodness, and alongside a nice regular bottle gourd subzi (say ghiya wadi), a dry subzi with its peels, was also served. Growing up, ours was the only household I knew where ghiya peels were cooked paired with sprouts. Try it, it's fabulous! I have converted quite a few friends to this humble dish since I started cooking it myself. Similarly, along with stuffed bitter gourd, we'd also eat its scraped peels, magically turned into a spicy, spiffy bhujia combined with chopped potatoes.

And eating an apple without its peel was simply not done in our house. Don't ask me how my mom knew peels are where the nutrients are actually concentrated… but she did somehow! (Benefits of peels coming up in next week's post)

Eat variety: She was not someone to force food, any food, down anyone's throat, but she smartly made sure that we tried, tested and ate a huge variety. She'd serve a lot many kinds of vegetables, and every single kind of dal (legume) was made in our home. Unusual, often unfamiliar combinations were placed on the dinner table to ensure the stuff that didn't stand a chance alone (like, say, some leafy vegetables) were also eaten by rotation somehow. For example, unlike kitchens where I knew peas were made in two, maximum three ways (peas pulao, matar paneer, aloo paneer), I can count at least 15 combinations mom would whip up. Now you can't dislike them all, can you, so eventually you begin eating the vegetable.

Mission successful! My sister wasn't much of a chicken eater, in fact, she was picky with most proteins, so mom persisted till they both discovered that a nice simple chicken corn soup worked fabulously. Till today it is her comfort dish. Basically, this way (by ensuring that we ate a wide range), by default, our mom covered our requirements for all essential food groups and a large range of vitamins and minerals. That said, there was no taboo in our house - everything, even blatantly unhealthy stuff was made. But since such a huge variety was cooked, their turn came only once in a while. Smart move, mom!

You don't have to clean the plate: She never forced us to finish the food down to the last morsel. Actually let me rephrase that: she encouraged us to only plate the amount we felt we could finish. This one I am so-so grateful for, as it was an informal lesson in portion control. And today, as I struggle with people, trying to correct their perception about right portions of food, this one lesson I feel all of us should learn as early in life as possible. Then maybe weight issues won't pester so many of us, so badly. Research has, anyway, proven categorically how force-feeding children (and even adults) can lead to obesity, and how one big skill to master for weight loss is portion control.