Promoting food that is organic, nutritious and home-cooked, here are a few city-based women entrepreneurs who are spearheading a healthier change.
Tapping into the immense potential of the food industry and promoting ancestral eating habits, these home-chefs, bakers and food entrepreneurs are changing the dietary habits of the city. They recently participated in the Food Rendezvous event conducted on the occasion of International Women’s Day by Starlite Nutrition and Wellness Centre at Lawson’s Bay.
Snacking healthy
When Chaitanya Rani was looking for healthier substitutes for cookies in the market, she hit a dead end. She soon realised that with a bit of tweaking, she could bake healthy cookies at home without compromising on the taste and also keeping the nutrition element high. Thus started her journey as a home baker. Today she takes orders for millet cookies which she bakes at home.
Her speciality includes millet flour cookies which include jowar, bajra as well as proso, kodo and brown top millets.
“I have also replaced the regular sugar with palm sugar and jaggery in the cookies. The feedback has been very encouraging from my clients. Today, a lot of parents are looking at healthier options of snack for their children and there is a growing demand for millet-based food products,” says the 33-year-old home baker. She also conducts chocolate making classes.
Chaitanya Rani can be contacted at 7013416829 or chaitusbakeology@gmail.com
A stall at the Food Rendezvous, an event for women food entrepreneurs at Starlite Nutrition and Wellness Centre in Visakhapatnam 
Get your oils right
Traditional cold-pressed oils extracted from coconut, groundnut and sesame have been used for generations and valued for their nutritional benefits. However, over the years refined oils, produced on a large scale and supported by vigorous media campaigns, had almost swept over the Indian kitchens, replacing traditionally extracted oils. It is in the recent years that a slow change is taking shape with people increasingly going for things organic and natural. Usha Barani’s new enterprise called Back 2 Roots is an offshoot of this change. She sells cold-pressed oils like coconut, groundnut and sesame, extracted from a traditional wooden crust machine. After doing a thorough research in the city of oil mills that use the traditional method of oil extraction and also a market study, Usha decided to launch her enterprise that she currently operates out of home. “I found just one oil mill in Visakhapatnam located at Jagadamba that follows this method using a wooden crust machine. The low yield is because the oil seeds are not heated to increase the yield, and the oil that is expelled is cold and pure,” she says. Cold-pressed sesame oil is a variety of mono-unsaturated oils, and has many health benefits. Usha selected the three varieties of cold-pressed oil because, she says, groundnut oil with its high heating point is suitable for frying, coconut oil is good for dressing and sesame oil suits well for curries.
For more details 9907277686 or write at ushabarani4@gmail.com
Energy balls made of oats, dry fruits and flax seeds at the Food Rendezvous, an event for women food entrepreneurs at Starlite Nutrition and Wellness Centre in Visakhapatnam on Thursday. --Photo:C.V.Subrahmanyam/The Hindu
Healthy and delicious
Home bakers Alefiyah Patrawala and Arwa Pardiwala specialise in brownies, cakes, cupcakes and energy bars that are made with millets, flax seeds, dates syrup and all things healthy. Their venture called Sweet Vibe may be new, but it has already stirred up quite a following on its Instagram page within a short time. “We also introduced traditional desserts like dry dates halwa which is made out of date syrup, milk and dry fruits,” says Alefiyah.
They can be reached at 9908312024 or 9912992560.
Among other participants, there were Samina Subuwala who conducts cooking classes as well as takes orders for catering, Navya Immidisetty, an artisan chocolatier who makes chocolates with oats, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds and 55 to 70 % dark chocolate and home chef Mushthri Altaf of Food Wagon who specialises in Kerala cuisine.
