The Dinner Tonight
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| A TV Dinner |
It is a mind free of the stress of greed, fear, anger and
other such encumbrances that is the first step to good health and happiness. Next
are sunshine, pure air to breathe and natural healthy food followed by a life
style that includes physical exercise that is built in to the life style and
not contrived. Most Ikarians work on their farms, gardens, orchards etc. and
live in a hilly terrain that incorporates walking up and down hills just to get
on with their daily routine and abundant socializing. Just like the residents
of Neeltal in my novel – Nude besides the lake (the title has ‘besides’ not
‘beside’ in case you search for it online) – the Ikarians have an afternoon nap
and drop into visit each other for the late afternoon or early evening tea
followed by a glass of wine over greetings and laughter.
As regards food, the Ikarian food includes the healthiest of
ingredients and natural health supplements. The diet is usually vegetarian and includes honey, herbal teas, home grown food
and young home brewed local wines. The oil used in cooking is the healthiest of
all cooking oils available on the planet – Olive Oil.
Inspired by the Ikarians, I have been trying to make changes
in my own diet here in far away India.
Yesterday, I procured a bottle of imported Spanish olive oil. Until last year
this oil was prohibitively expensive in India
but this year due to large imports from Spain the prices have crashed and
it has become affordable. The olive tree was somehow not grown in India but now
young plantations of olive have also sprung up in India recently with the help
of global knowledge (in this case primarily from Israel) and more of this good
oil is likely to become available locally in future. It includes the benefits
of a heart tonic along with those of a tree food as opposed to a ground crop.
Therefore, the dinner last night was Macaroni stir fried
with mushrooms, grated carrots and sweet green chilies as shown in the photo snapped before dinner to share with friends. The Macaroni dish was spiced with garlic. tomatoes, a tea spoon of vinegar, grated cheese, a beaten egg and a pinch of MSG with salt to taste. I usually have my dinner in the living room while watching the local and
BBC News with great economic bytes from good friend Aaron Heslehurst (His link is http://www.aarontv.com/), whenever
we are not entertaining guests or the children are not on a visit and that is
most of the time nowadays. The photo shows the bottle of olive oil that had a
best before date in 2014. A little of it was used to fry the macaroni and a
little was sprinkled on before eating. The plate on the side includes young
freshly plucked and uncooked spinach leaves from the back garden with a sour
cream dressing and a sliced hard boiled egg procured from free range birds. A
hard boiled egg is one of the nicer foods on the planet especially when sliced
with an egg wire cutter. Do get the contraption unless you already have one to
decorate the simplest of salads and dinners and spinach for a salad is so
simple to grow that it can even be grown by apartment dwellers in a box by the
window. It is not safe to eat raw spinach from the market.. There is glass of a two week old white wine that is still milky
indicating that the yeast is still alive and active. A wine clears up when the
sugar in the wine is exhausted and that would take another couple of weeks.
Live yeast drinks are a great health tonic to build up the intestinal flora.
The dinner also includes a slice of an iced chocolate cake from the
neighborhood bakery. Hope this post inspires you to rake up dinners that are
delicious, simple, nutritious, healthy and inexpensive.
The photo also shows bits of newspaper that we use as paper napkins with meals and in the kitchen. It is one of the many uses we put our daily newspaper to so as to save at least a few trees on the planet. if everyone did that then the production of paper napkins would come down and with that the cutting of trees required for their production. Eventually, the world may switch completely to electronic newspapers but the time has not come yet. Perhaps within a few decades we shall see a nano folding screen that updates the newspaper daily and changes the page to next when you touch a dot at the bottom of the screen. In our home nice looking paper and cloth napkins are pulled out only when guests arrive, lest they feel slighted.
The photo also shows bits of newspaper that we use as paper napkins with meals and in the kitchen. It is one of the many uses we put our daily newspaper to so as to save at least a few trees on the planet. if everyone did that then the production of paper napkins would come down and with that the cutting of trees required for their production. Eventually, the world may switch completely to electronic newspapers but the time has not come yet. Perhaps within a few decades we shall see a nano folding screen that updates the newspaper daily and changes the page to next when you touch a dot at the bottom of the screen. In our home nice looking paper and cloth napkins are pulled out only when guests arrive, lest they feel slighted.
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