Children are always hungry as they return from school. But the working class families these days find it extremely difficult to provide them home-cooked food. As a result, the children drift away from traditional food habits and become addicted to the fast food culture.
‘Samrudhi’ is all set to change the scenario by supplying home cooked traditional snacks to children at school as they leave for home in the evening.
“Our products will not include the oily or fried food items. They will be mostly steamed and will be well packed so that the children could either have it instantly or take it home,” said Sobin Sebastain, coordinator of Samrudhi, which is organising the ‘Nadan Bhakshyotsav’ in Kozhikode since Friday.
Samrudhi is a recent initiative of the Malabar Coastal Institute for Training, Research and Action (MCiTRA), a non-governmental organisation working for the emancipation of the fishing community for the last 20 years. It was launched in April 2015 with an aim to promote traditional food habits and thus check lifestyle diseases. The ‘Nadan Bhakshyotsav’ is the first food festival being organised under the Samrudhi banner.
Apart from catering to school children, Samrudhi also plans to take its products to the retail market. The products include all kinds of pickles, jams, traditional snacks and traditional food ingredients like the jackfruit seed, arrowroot powder, palm powder, bamboo rice and so on.
The food festival features a large variety of traditional delicacies that are classified into categories such as jackfruit products, tuber products, cereal products, fish products and finally the sweets and desserts. The festival is evidently the result of an extensive research on the traditional delicacies by the organisers. Some of the delicacies on the menu here, like the Chakka unniyappam, chakkakkuru payasam, Kappa-kadala puzhukku, kallappam, ottada and others have already disappeared from the Malayali dining tables.
Samrudhi also plans to make some of these delicacies available through bakeries. A centralised fully equipped kitchen has been set up at Paroppady in Kozhikode for the purpose.
“Kerala recently underwent a revolution with regard to vegetable cultivation. Unfortunately, that change has not happened in our food habits. Samrudhi plans to create awareness on the need for healthy food habits,” Mr.Sobin said.
The food festival concludes on Sunday.