Dear fellow-Malayalis
Regrettably (and amusingly), Jayasree R @ Jaysree1, like most European-brainwashed folk, is totally unaware of food habits of present-day Malayalees, especially graama-vaasis.
She lectures on what "grandma never taught you". She claims we consume 70 lbs of potatoes per year, one-quarter lb of brussels sprouts, and so on. She loftily proceeds to recommend drinking green tea, eating stuffed squash and pumpkins, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, cranberries.
What someone should tell this aspiring food guru is that my family, and many, many others in Kerala have NEVER grown, bought, or consumed potatoes or brussels sprouts. No, we grow, donate, exchange, cook and consume giant yam (ചേന), little yams (ചേപ്പന് കിഴങ്ങ്), turmeric, ginger, koorkkan-kizhangu, and a wide variety of other abundant and nourishing root vegetables.
And oh, yes! We drink gallons and gallons not only of green tea (which grows in abundance in our fertile land) but also various potent and health-stimulating kashaayams and layhyams. European-brainwashed folk are unlikely to have even heard of these, much less appreciated their effectiveness, their medicinal and health values and sophisticated methods of preparation, tailored to the needs of each consumer.
And no, we do not import from "amayrikka" or "cheemai" or "airopya" squash and pumpkins, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, or cranberries. We grow dozens of varieties of bananas, whose fruits and stems provide excellent nourishment when properly prepared and served. Same with mangoes, koyyakkas, seetha-pazhayam, raama-pazhayam, nellikka, maathalangka, naarangya, draaksha, kaashmeera-phalam, karumbu, vaythilingya, beans, maize, food-grains, greens like spinach, murunga-ila, vettila. Yes we also grow castor plants for castor-oil, sesame plants for sesame oil, oil-palms and coconut palms for their oils, and other medicinal plants, grasses, vines, palms, trees, for roots, fruit, flowers, buds, bark, stem, and leaves.
Not only our grandmas but even our great-grandmas were excellent exponents of ayurvedic science and practices. So much so that folk who could not cured by "western" drugs and treatments came to us for diagnosis, advice, and for effective long-term cures. And for counselling on leading a healthful active life and dying contentedly in peace.
So let us not look down upon our own rich and ancient cultural, scientific, and medical/surgical heritage, dating back to millenia before invader Julius Caesar the Roman discovered that the primitive Britons wore blueberry paint called "woad" on their bodies instead of clothes, lived in holes in the ground covered with dry twigs and bushes and fed on little wild black boars that roamed Britannia which he called part of Gaul. (See Julius Caesar "De Bello Gallica".)
S Narayanaswamy
On Wednesday, March 2, 2016 8:10 AM, "Jayasree R jaysree1@yahoo.com [worldmalayaliclub]" <worldmalayaliclub@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
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Posted by: Narayanaswamy Subramanian <s_narayanaswamy@yahoo.com>
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