People Food Music: The Genesis and Gratitude!
It seems like no better a way to approach life than through this – connecting people, food and music.
At Solitude farm, Permaculture is a reason for us to connect with people from various communities and help them understand that growing the food one eats is the most sustainable. People Food Music as an initiative stemmed out of this thought. This led us to looking around, not to very far, but at the villages around Auroville, in Tamil Nadu. We realized that sadly, even at this basic community structure, where food is grown, people are disconnected. They seem to have forgotten the methods of growing food organically and are influenced by the commercialization web of growing industrial crops.
How about if we could reach out the villages around us and help them reconnect with their methods, their food, and their music? Through the People Food Music Project, we intend to do this. Work with groups of people, various communities, reintroduce them to farming through Permaculture, farm with them, learn their traditional methods of cooking, introduce them to the methods we know, cook with them, eat with them and celebrate through music and art.
As we began interacting with groups of people from the villages around, we also thought we’d reach out to the larger community of people who can support us with this. That was by way of a fund raising campaign on Indiegogo. We were aspiring to raise $12K and we raised $9684 through a campaign that ended on January 1, 2016. We’d like to thank all of you who contributed to this campaign by supporting us with your money, by spreading the word or even making references.
We are now geared to taking the People Food Music Project to the villages around in Tamil Nadu and perhaps start making an impact to change amongst the communities there. The first will be the Third Circle Garden at Chinna Muddler Chavadi, a quaint tiny village near Auroville. More updates on that will follow, until then – Grow your own food, Cook local recipes and Celebrate life through the Kuthu Song…
Vazhapoo (Banana Flower)
Ingredients:
- Banana flower (1 flower serves 1 person – a very hungry person)
- Chickpeas – 50 gms
- Black Gram – 50 gms
- Onions
- Red chillies
- Curry leaves
- Coconut
- Coriander
What is casually called the banana flower is actually just a collection of about a hundred little flowers, or florets, and is technically an inflorescence.
The red layers that cover the florets are bracts, and are not edible.
For each bract that you peel off, there will be a bunch of white florets that you need to pull out and collect. These are the edible parts of the flower.
Each floret has a stigma, an ovary covered by a thin, white part and several stamens. The stigma and the white covering of the ovary are both bitter in taste, and are generally removed before cooking.
- Wash, chop, and then boil in salt water. Filter it out and keep ready.
- Start to fry chickpeas and black gram in a separate pan.
- After a couple of minutes, add Red Chillies, Curry leaves, and Onions in preferred quantities.
- Stir for a few minutes before adding the flower parts and mixing.
- Serve with grated coconut and coriander added at the end, along with salt, if necessary.
Solitude Farm CSA and Friends Newsletter No. 1
