5 ways to use yoghurt for better health and taste

Travelling to Greece has been a revelation for my taste buds. I am still counting the awesome things I learnt cooking and eating in the phenomenal country! but most exciting learning has been on account of something so omnipresent and basic that  it is invisible! No, I am not talking about God - I am talking about Yoghurt!

I have been brought up with yoghurt, curd or dahi as it is called, in India. It is eaten in different forms – as raita with meals, with sugar for good luck and as an accompaniment with aalloo parantha which may be described as stuffed bread. 

But in Greece, I found yoghurt is used on whole different level. Although, being force fed yoghurt by my parents, it was only after my visit to Greece that I realised that yoghurt can taste good and be enjoyable. I saw how it can be put together with different flavours - sugary, salty, with herbs, olives, vegetables - to add richness, nutrition to your diet. 

Here are a few things you can do with yoghurt yourself:

1. Alternative to Mayo and Sour Cream: I love Mayo and I love sour cream but strained yoghurt with a little salt is a perfect alternative for to these high calorie options. It add volumes of tastes to whatever it is you are eating - over the chips to replace sour cream, in a tortilla wrap as a filling. Just replace yoghurt with your high calorie sauces!
2. v  Dips - Yoghurt with herbs like coriander, parsley, mint, little salt and garlic powder is a perfect dip to be had with flat breads, chips, cream crackers. You can create different ones by adding nuts, olives, chopped onions, tomatoes etc. Get innovative and create your own dips to be had with a piece of bread or as a spread on toasts! The list is really endless, but you get the point
3. Salads - I am not a salad person. Trust me - I would rather fast than eat a bowl of vegetables or salad leaves but yoghurt can add the moisture, richness, texture and taste to make every salad bowl memorable. Try boiled potato salad with yoghurt mixed in garlic powder or the Beetroot salad 
4. As a desert with honey - What a palette cleanser and treat for senses is the simple desert - yoghurt and honey can be. A spoonful of yoghurt and a teaspoon of honey is all you need to finish a great meal! Trust me it keeps it healthy and tasty. This when coupled with joy without lack of guilt of having gulped in unhealthy calories is priceless.

So strain that yoghurt or buy simply some Greek style and keep innovating to enjoy different tastes of yoghurt!

Scotland 1 - TF# 1 Falling in Love with Street Artist in Edinburgh

St Paul's Cathedral - Views from the night walk by the River Side

Healthy, Pink, The most gorgeous looking salad - beetroot and yoghurt

Boil beetroot, peel and dice

Take about 100 gms yoghurt add two spoons of olive oil, two spoons mayonnaise, salt, pepper, parsley

Mix it well with diced beetroot

 Plate it

 Enjoy it

One morning in Heraklion

God's random sketches on the sky 

 View from my hotel balcony as I woke up to a clear sky and bright sun light. The charge for night stay Euro 47 at Iraklion Hotel.

Local Delicatessen in the neighbourhood

 The cathedral, the square and the lovely pigeons

Abandoned Alleyway

No breakfast at 9 in the morning. So, refreshing to be back in the place where people love their sleep.

Greek breakfast: Spinach pie - Euro 2/- with a cup of Cappuccino Euro 1.5/-

Over exposed: Hard to handle the bright sun light

The old harbour

 looking onto the sea - Heraklion is blessed with some of the best beaches. Unfortunately we could not visit any because we had our heart set on Santorini

A quick shot of the ducks sun bathing as we make our way to the ferry

There is never a bad time for 2-4-1 dessert @ the slug and lettuce

Vikram's half eaten Chocolate brownie pudding with hot custard

 My Sticky Toffee Pudding with vanilla ice cream

On London Bridge - A quite evening in the lights and glitters of London

View of Tower Bridge from London Bridge

View of Tower Bridge from the other side

Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge fixation - Olympic rings

View of London Bridge

St. Paul's cathedral from London Bridge

View from our favorite spot which lies between London Bridge & Tower Bridge 

Best place to have chai in Delhi – My Favorite chai spots

In the city where coffee shops are mushrooming all around, where do you go for a cup of tea that is not flooded with water and tastes likes the tea that our Indian taste buds are more akin to. Well for a flavorful cup of chai that is sweet, spicey and milky try out the Passion cup of tea in Vasant Vihar. My personal favorite is ginger, saffron tea served in glasses that look like kullarhs burning hot. It could easily be the best tea I have ever had.

If you are into the cooler version of the drink then one of the places not to be missed is the Tea Shop in Noida. It’s a small shop which is a famous hangout for the college students at nearby private university. Deceptively, it looks like any other kiraana shop in a regular mohalla but what is unique is the khadi yet high quality feel of the place. The shop is owned by retired Captain Mehra who runs the place with his wife. The day to day management is taken care of by Narayan ji who is extremely friendly and courteous. He has worked with tea shop for over 10 years and so have the other employees. The menu is really simple with wide offerings in teas iced or hot, priced just right for a student’s pocket. The food menu is nothing extensive a few sandwiches, muffins and momos. My personal favourite is their unique drink which is by the way not tea, it is coffee. They call it Carribean coffee and it is coffee unlike I have ever had. Muffin and chicken salami is my favorite on their snacks menu. The tastes are nothing from the “must have” lists but the food is fresh and therefore always a good value for money. There is no seating except for the murraahs and stools outside the shop you can grab to sit and enjoy your tea with snacks over a conversation with your friends. Trust me this just goes on to add to Tea shop’s charm. Given the young intellectual college crowd, honest preparations, and connoisseur teas sold, Tea shop is one of my favorite places in NCR. 

The name is Majibul Rahman

Name: Majibul Rahman

Age: Does not  remember correctly should be between 32-35 years

Marital Status: Married with two kids for 4 years. Meets his wife twice in one years

Occupation: Rickshaw puller in New Delhi for 15 years now

Earnings: Rs. 200-250 ($4-5) per day on days he works

Residence: A small room in an “unauthorized” basti that now spans from Noida toll road to sector

Originally from:  some village I don’t even remember the name of now

Education: None

No, I don’t remember the village he comes from but I do remember being shocked when he told me that there is no electricity in his village. The nearest city to have electricity around his home is 15 kilometers away.

This is the bio data of a Rickshaw puller in Delhi. There are over a million more like him in Delhi who come from small villages we have never heard of and find “well paying” job as a rickshaw puller. There are millions of such Indians, who work as street vendors, maids, drivers, rag pickers and some who don’t find jobs work as beggars. I was walking around in Chandani Chowk with my friend the other day and I was stunned to discover the different ways in which an ordinary Indian makes money, feed herself and run her home. To clarify what an ordinary means is the one who doesn’t own a vehicle and work in an air conditioned office. Simply put someone who never files tax because s/he doesn’t make enough income.  Because there are still millions of people out there who have never logged on to the internet, who do not use facebook and who do not tweet!

I know I am not making any kind of a revelation. No! I am not saying we are a poor country with lots poor people around. I would let the foreign Goras coming in to make movies about that to let us know what we really are. What I felt after returning from United States is that India lives in layers and stratas. Its upper class never interacts with middle class. Its middle class very rarely maintain contacts with the lower middle class and brings up its children telling that the poor kids are not to be spoken to. We grow up mistrusting and mistreating the section of the society that does the most amount of physical labor and makes least money simply because they make less money.

How little I know an average Indian, (not an ordinary Indian), is something I realized when I spoke to one of the Rickshaw driver for the shoot of my documentary. He was kind enough to take us to his jhuggi. We sat there for an hour and he opened up his life to us in one conversation. It was a small room where he said up to 5 people could live at a time. There was a small fan on the ceiling, a lamp, an old suitcase, mat on the floor. A few papers, carry bags and clothes were piled on each other on a corner and he sat in the center. There was a tap right outside his room and one his neighbor was washing clothes outside his room. He said a room of his own in the basti could cost uptp Rs 30000.

He makes around Rs 4,000-5,000 a month after pulling his rickshaw everyday for 9-10 hours, pays around Rs 700 as his rent, Rs 300 as phone bill and sends Rs. 2,000-3,000 every month. Back home in his village in West Bengal he has his parents, his wife, and two kids. He has a small piece of land on which his family does farming. Sometimes they hire labourers at a daily wage rate of Rs. 100 per day.

While most rickshay walley in Delhi rent their Rickshaws from contractors who are referred to as “Rickshaw Mafias”, Majibul owns his rickshaw. When I asked Majibul about his problems a rickshaw wala, he had no complaints. What struck me the most in this conversation was that though from my perspective I could see his problems but from where he stood, he had a satisfactory life.  He had did not want anything more from his life. He did not have goals set in his mind or “stress” that gave high blood pressure at young age. In a small room he lived with a big heart. Even though we were strangers to him, he had the heart to let us into his home, offer us bottled water and Coke because he was so sure we wouldn’t drink water from the bottle he carried around for himself.

How many Indians and how much of India I really know I wonder now. A proud Dilliwali, I am, But how often have I tried understand how people live in the small jhuggis that we complain the landscape of Delhi. Who are these people who come small villages into big cities and do all sorts of jobs. Who are these who clean your table after you walk off from the Dhaba after a meal, who is the lady who cleans up my room, who is man who pulls me from home to Metro station on his rickshaw, who is the guy who sells me onions, who is the guy who cleans up my car each morning for Rs 250 a month and yet leaves my Rs. 500 back into dash board when I drop it in my car. Who are these people. Indians. My fellow Indians.  

Agent Vinod

The only reason why I attempted to watch this movie was to appreciate Kareena's chiseled looks. Her attempt to beat Katrina as a hot looking bimbo has been reaping good results so far. So, I was quite helpful this she will best her past attempts because it is for Saifu. But the movie is miserable, helpless and and the leads can't deliver the dialogues to save the day. They make even  powerful lines such as "mujhe meri zindagi wapis chahiye...jahaan Rubbaiyat ek khoobsurat poetry ki kitaab ho, nuclear detonator nahin" sound like a soggy bread! Soggy, tasteless, stale, dripping  bread!