Life without Maggi

Maggi is an inherent part of our diet right now! The Nestle made noodles are a favorite evening snack for kids at least once a week and also a dinner option for daddy and the kids at least once a week! 

Daddy is the Maggi expert and can make it in many different ways with any combination of vegetables, as a soup, just with enough water or cook it so that the "noodles don't stick to each other", depending on what the kids feel like on any given day.

When we come home after any all day outings, dinner is always Maggi, as it can be done by the time kids go take a shower. 

So it is a rude shock to see headline news that Maggi has lead and a lot more MSG in it than it is supposed to. Given Nestle is an international brand, the expectation was always that there will be "some" quality control. 

One good thing I do is to not use the Masala packet that comes with the noodles. Instead I use a combination of :

Salt + Sambar powder (made in India with my Grandma or mom's recipe) + turmeric powder + a small pinch of asafoedita (kids like it, I skip it)

and we save the masala packets. Think I have posted on this earlier as well. 

Given all the Maggi consumption, we have a drawer in the kitchen just dedicated to noodles and masala. Today I decided to go clean out the Maggi drawer and this is what I saw..

poured it on the ground and counted the packets to clear it out..

That was 670 packets of Maggi Tastemaker masala! This is just from Jan of this year. 

Going by some crude math, we would have possibly injested enough lead to make us brain dead for the next seven generations if the reports are true!

Then again, we do not know how much of the stuff is in the noodles. Will watch the reports. Maybe the New Jersey Nestle that imports it from India will do some spot checks?

It is also true that noodles (be it Maggi or Ramen) have a lot of wax in it.. so I do boil the noodles to remove the wax on occasion or dry roast it to get rid of the wax before using the noodles. 

Given the data, we are not an occasional noodle family! So we should take this seriously. In the meantime, we are going back to adai, dosai, kunukku for "tiffin" where possible.

Snacking away ay, snacking awayyy ay..

Yeah yeah.. For some reason Ian Anderson is doing the rounds in my head, but that is another story.

This weekend, the boss finally allowed me to go freak out at the local costco to buy healthy snacks. You see, a month without potatoes has left me with a big void to fill!

What can I eat as snack food if Pringles, baked lays, chips (bbq, sour cream and onion flavors), kettle chips, veggie chips (which are really potatoes with different veggie flavors), samosas, aloo parathas, puffs, etc. are all off the table?

Trying to give up potatoes and living in the USA is like living in a small island and giving up sea food!

The wife and MIL are begging me to break the self imposed "vrath" because of various reasons. The obvious one is that it seriously limits the stuff they can dish out. The not so obvious, devious reason is that a potato free man tends to take the remaining foods more seriously. His tastebuds have somehow become more sensitive..

What can I compare this to? Have you ever gone to an ENT doctor in your high school, early college years to get your ears cleaned with a syringe?! You walk out of that clinic and all of a sudden you feel like the world of sound is open to you. You come back home, switch the cassette player on and start hearing those odd chimes that Ilayaraja so strategically placed in the background, stuff you completely missed just before the cleaning session? Something like that.

Suddenly, I can detect the ratio of salt/chili/tamarind to the second decimals. Now that is really getting on the wife and MIL's nerves. They would rather have me stuff myself with bland potato filler than be more critical! Looks like it is harder on them than for me.

Well, the 34 size pants still fit and that means the aloovrath goes into its second straight month!

Only one problem. The brain still sends the hand to an imaginary cup on the couch when watching TV or working on the laptop at odd hours, well at any hour for that matter and when one goes to the kitchen and surveys all those potato thingys on the shelf one tends to get depressed and grabs chocolate instead. That problem has been corrected and the women of the house decided to give away all the candy stash or hide it from me. So the hunt for new healthy snacks began this week.

We have now purchased

1. Dry roasted Edamame (soy beans) - truly amazing (Sea point forms brand I believe). Low fat, high protein, as good as peanuts (which as you all know is a no no in this house).. loving it

2. Mrs. Mays almonds (they are back in costco) - delicious!

3. Pretzels (yes, they are high carbs, and we have to chip off the salt crystals before eating them).. but they are a better alternative to other junk foods

4. Mixed nuts (cashews, almonds, walnuts, pecans) - no peanuts, no peanut oil. What more can we ask?

5. Pistachio Crisps (by True North) - very yummy and supposedly healthy!

Add to this the usual Honey nut cheerios and we could make a new type of mixture (granted it wont be as good as grand sweets), but it will be a mixture that is high protein, medium carb and is potato/peanut/sesame seed free!

All these have been purchased on one condition. None of this shall go to waste!

Based on what is being crunched and munched right now as this post is being typed, we can be assured that it wont!

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Bombay eats..

As is customary with every Bombay (Mumbai) stay, we visited Mahalakshmi. This is one beautiful and simple temple on the ocean front with the idols of Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati juxtaposed.

After we visit the deity, we go behind the temple to see the little Hanuman and Ganesh idols (they look like two mini temples on the backside). Right at that corner is one of my favorite eats. The samosa and tea stall, with benches that have an ocean view.

The menu is shown for your drooling pleasure !!

Mouth watering stuff. I have got to stop this habit of posting about good eats just before going to bed! All those stomach acids, can't be good.

Like Homer Simpson says "Hmmmmmmmmm... yummmmmmmmmmmy"!