Brinjal Festival

Brinjal, badanekayi, is the king of vegetables which comes with its own crown! This is an event that will celebrate the diversity of Brinjals and contemplate our role in protecting it.

Don’t Miss the first-ever Brinjal Festival in Bangalore

Venue: MHS Hall, Lalbagh (Double road gate)
Date/Time: April 5th Sunday, 11am – 7pm

Good Food, Healthy Food, Safe Food… should be a primary concern of all of us. The Brinjal festival is an attempt to bring a better consciousness and respect for our rich diverse food. Genetically Modified (GM) food crops pose a grave threat to the diversity and to our health as consumers. Let us all make informed choices about food, one of most fundamental necessities.

What’s in store?

* Food Stalls with brinjal specials for you to savour
* Cooking competition for innovative Brinjal dishes
* Drawing competition and more fun events for kids
* Brinjal Diversity Exhibition showcasing more than 30 varieties of brinjal
* Screening of Mahesh Bhatt’s film Poison on the Platter
* Awareness campaign about GM foods and the risk to our health and environment.
* Meet scientists, farmers, doctors and Ayurveda practitioners and some well known celebrities.

To register for competitions, visit http://bangalore.aidindia.org/cms/?q=brinjalMela.

For any queries:

E-mail: brinjalfest@gmail.com

Contact:

Sejal – 9901201279 (sejalrparikh@gmail.com)
Siddesh – 9880600840 (tosiddesh@yahoo.com)
Pulkit – 9916173750 (pulkitparikh@gmail.com)
Guru – 9845294184 (mguru.aid@gmail.com)

Organized by

Association for India’s Development (AID)- Bangalore
Sahaja Samrudha
Samvada
Jaivika Krishi Society (JKS)
Mysore Hoticulture Society (MHS)

On the 27th and 28th of March,2009, Wishdom Productions is staging a play, “Twelve Thousand Little Pies And Other Delicacies ” at Ranga Shankara, at 7.30pm, both days. It is a combination of theatre and a culinary experience.

Tickets are priced at Rs.350, and are available at Ranga Shankara,

www.rangashankara.org

2659 2777 and 26493982

and at

www.indianstage.in

Click

here

for more details

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Whip up your own cafe!

A unique workshop, tailored exclusively for those who have always wanted to run a cafe, an eatery or a specialty restaurant. Moderated by Madhu Menon of Shiok, the workshop will cover all aspects of what it takes to be a budding gourmet entrepreneur. A never before opprtunity to minimize all your risks before you actually start out. The course covers everything from cost analysis to crafting profitable menus.

Dates: 21st and 22nd Feb
Time: 11 AM to 6 PM
Course Fee: Rs.4500
Venue: Shiok
Website: www.ireboot.in
To register, call 9663857828
Venue: Shiok Restaurant, Indiranagar/Koramangala

Contact Mukta Darera on 98862 95353

or email your details to

mukta.darera@ireboot.in

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We were driving down Cubbon Road the other day, way past midnight.
We were starving, hungry and ravenous – and almost as if on autopilot,
we turned into Central Street. The Empire glow sign from across the
road, was a sight for hungerbuds on overdrive.

Nothing to beat Empire, when half of Bangalore is tucked into bed.

City is busy celebrating Ganesha festival, even the busy streets like this SP road which is an electronics & engineering market does celebrate festivities by way of offering free lunches to the community.
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The family dropped by at Coffee Day the other day for a steaming night cap, after dinner. When the coffees came, my son pointed out to the smiley poster on the wall. The message there was interesting : If you don’t see a smiley in your cup, the coffee is on the house.

As you can see, my cup had something that looked like a coffee bean – not even remotely close to a smile. I alerted our friendly waiter about the smiley and sure enough, they didn’t charge me for my coffee.

Net takeaway : If there’s no smiley in your coffee cup, there’s bound to be one on your face … when you see the bill. Nice gesture.

(Not sure how long this offer is open, so do check this out the next time you’re at Coffee Day.)

There’s a link to “latte art” here, if you’re interested.

– Are we eating veggies that are cultivated in wastewater?

a new 53-city survey, including Bangalore and Chennai, conducted by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) indicates that most of those studied are using untreated or partially treated wastewater for agriculture. In over 70 per cent of the cities studied, more than half of urban agricultural land is irrigated with wastewater that is either raw or diluted in streams with wide ranging implications. Less said the better for the health hazards due to heavy metals, a wide spectrum of pathogens and organic compounds that are hazardous to the environment and human health.

“In areas where infectious diseases due to enteric pathogens are common, these pathogens are found in very high concentrations in the sewage water. When this water is used for irrigation without any treatment the pathogens are applied to the agricultural land. This is a potential health risk to people exposed to it, such as field workers and their families, consumers and handlers of wastewater-irrigated crops and people living in the neighborhood, passing the fields frequently” says this report.

As a proud resident of Malleshwaram a few years back, the only the other place I ever wished to live in was – you guessed it – Jayanagar 4th block. For vegetarian middle-class souls, these two areas in Bangalore are worth Paris, London, and New York rolled into one. And not without reason. There are few such places in this universe where one can go around with a list of tasks and get them all done in a single walk. From getting clothes altered, to sipping a cup of coffee and tucking in an idli or two, to saying a hello to a desired God there is a little bit of everything for the mind, body, and soul.  Because of the restrictions of space and patience of my readers, I am going with my  gut feeling and writing about that one thing that you, my readers can never have enough of – great food that is light on the wallet. (more…)

If you get into ‘Blue Bell Sweets’ located at Unity building JC Road, don’t miss trying ‘Turkish Halwa’..
The name may sound a little weird but the taste is awesome.

This is how it looks but hey don’t go by the color of it.

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It’s always nice to be able to go and attend when a writer whose work you respect has his centenary celebrations!

Perch, a theatre group based in Chennai, came to Ranga Shankara to celebrate a hundred years since the Malayalam writer, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, was born. Perch has members from various backgrounds, and they are doing a great job of exploring the boundaries of theatre.

There were three parts to the celebrations at Ranga Shankara: the adaption of seven of Basheer’s stories into a play, “Sangathi Arinhya!” by Perch; the Moplah food festival at the Ranga Shankara cafe by Anju Sudarshan; and the collection of photographs (“Images from Kozhikode”) and sketches (by Vasudevan Namboodiri) of Basheer and his world.

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