Humans have five senses (most of us do anyway). Sense of touch, smell, sight, hearing and TASTE. Never mind that Common Sense is not listed as most do not come born with it. But that is a subject of a different blog.
My focus is to talk Taste. As in the one made possible by the millions of papillae of the muscular hydrostat on the floors of the mouths of most vertebrates which manipulates food for mastication. Simply said TONGUE.
What got me thinking about Taste and how varied it is all over the world is my recent traveling and more importantly a visit to my doctor. Not the holiday blues but just a routine maintenance check on the functional organs with my doc revealed that I needed to tweak my diet or else the Ticker (Heart) was going to be in trouble. Troubling if you are a hypochondriac but otherwise mildly entertaining as it opened a whole new line of research that I was ignorant about. As in Diets and therefore Taste as a matter of personal preference.
Being born in West Central region of India and having consumed a diet local to the region (there were no food courts when I grew up to sample foreign foods - later in life I would discover the joys of Tom yum and Wasabi and Chipotle) for around 20 or so years my culinary instinct was to feast on rich fatty sweets and fried concoctions like Vadas etc. A lot of chilli along with native Indian spices like turmeric (apparently an anti cancer drug), cumin, ginger, garlic etc. was staple in most dishes.
Visit to the doc for annual checkup was non existant. I mean who had time or money to go visit a doctor when nothing apparently was wrong? Fast forward 20 more years and after tripping the 40 threshold and having settled into a coddled American lifestyle with time and money there are checkups.
Most recent was revealing - at least according to the Physician it was Alarm Bells are ringing time! Cholestrol was the major culprit. Being Asian (PC way of saying Desi) also made me pre disposed to higher cholestrol levels (all that Gulla and Samosa was catching up I thought) it appeared meaning that the ticker was under serious attack and unless it was curtailed could lead to a phenomenon called Keeling Over. I believe nautical term in origin now refers to a human simply dropping DEAD!
History is no guarantee of future results but I told the doc that the genetic tree was strong and the state of the union (as in my internals) should also be. He cautioned me on my irrational exuberance and asked that I get in to a DIET and EXERCISE plan. Dreaded words to this Desi whose idea of exercise is a stroll in the evenings. Diet to me is sampling the Diet Coke once in a while.
What - can this be happening? So I set out to explore Tastes - as in the varieties all over the globe and how people adapt their toungues to enjoy what they can. As an example a recent Readers Digest article stated that QUINOA has become popular state side for its high protein with out the animal fat and can be used to start your day. It has no taste it stated but chefs are learning ways to blend it in oatmeal for example. Huh? Oatmeal too has no taste. Have you tried it? I mean I went on that Oatmeal for breakfast routine for a week - this had sugar and raisins and yet I gave up. Maaja nahin hai!
Them taste buds need to do the dance or else this swallowing has no purpose I say to myself. You need to get in to the ZEN state to truly be ablet to ingest things that could potentially be Tasteless to outright Gross but may save the day.
Well I need to start with practicing some ASANAS!
My focus is to talk Taste. As in the one made possible by the millions of papillae of the muscular hydrostat on the floors of the mouths of most vertebrates which manipulates food for mastication. Simply said TONGUE.
What got me thinking about Taste and how varied it is all over the world is my recent traveling and more importantly a visit to my doctor. Not the holiday blues but just a routine maintenance check on the functional organs with my doc revealed that I needed to tweak my diet or else the Ticker (Heart) was going to be in trouble. Troubling if you are a hypochondriac but otherwise mildly entertaining as it opened a whole new line of research that I was ignorant about. As in Diets and therefore Taste as a matter of personal preference.
Being born in West Central region of India and having consumed a diet local to the region (there were no food courts when I grew up to sample foreign foods - later in life I would discover the joys of Tom yum and Wasabi and Chipotle) for around 20 or so years my culinary instinct was to feast on rich fatty sweets and fried concoctions like Vadas etc. A lot of chilli along with native Indian spices like turmeric (apparently an anti cancer drug), cumin, ginger, garlic etc. was staple in most dishes.
Visit to the doc for annual checkup was non existant. I mean who had time or money to go visit a doctor when nothing apparently was wrong? Fast forward 20 more years and after tripping the 40 threshold and having settled into a coddled American lifestyle with time and money there are checkups.
Most recent was revealing - at least according to the Physician it was Alarm Bells are ringing time! Cholestrol was the major culprit. Being Asian (PC way of saying Desi) also made me pre disposed to higher cholestrol levels (all that Gulla and Samosa was catching up I thought) it appeared meaning that the ticker was under serious attack and unless it was curtailed could lead to a phenomenon called Keeling Over. I believe nautical term in origin now refers to a human simply dropping DEAD!
History is no guarantee of future results but I told the doc that the genetic tree was strong and the state of the union (as in my internals) should also be. He cautioned me on my irrational exuberance and asked that I get in to a DIET and EXERCISE plan. Dreaded words to this Desi whose idea of exercise is a stroll in the evenings. Diet to me is sampling the Diet Coke once in a while.
What - can this be happening? So I set out to explore Tastes - as in the varieties all over the globe and how people adapt their toungues to enjoy what they can. As an example a recent Readers Digest article stated that QUINOA has become popular state side for its high protein with out the animal fat and can be used to start your day. It has no taste it stated but chefs are learning ways to blend it in oatmeal for example. Huh? Oatmeal too has no taste. Have you tried it? I mean I went on that Oatmeal for breakfast routine for a week - this had sugar and raisins and yet I gave up. Maaja nahin hai!
Them taste buds need to do the dance or else this swallowing has no purpose I say to myself. You need to get in to the ZEN state to truly be ablet to ingest things that could potentially be Tasteless to outright Gross but may save the day.
Well I need to start with practicing some ASANAS!
Well, it's a tradeoff...watch "Anand" (again?)for inspiration. Or play Golf because it gives you a lot of chances to meditate..and get away from almost all problems- except your poor shots!
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