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The Hindu :

SERENITY AND SPACE At the Ramada Resort

RAMADA RESORT

KUMBALAM

USP: So close to citylights, yet so rural in ambience

A t Ramada Resort, just half-an-hour from the hustle and bustle of Kochi, it’s serenity, food, and a good swim any time you please. Bordering the Kumbalam Lake, this eight-acre resort has a long pool which is accessible to every waterfront cottage. There are 24 cottages that face the Kumbalam backwaters. In fact, the idea is that every room has its own space in the pool, while across the pool, the lake meanders along, the various islets dotting the lake lending their own charm to the scenic splendour.

Standing on stilts, these cottages have one large air-conditioned bedroom, washroom and a balcony. It’s an ideal place to sit and read a book, with the rustling wind in your hair. The décor of the rooms is neat and uncluttered while the curios and wall decorations, some from Thailand, are beautiful, especially the ones with elephant murals in wood. The rooms, restaurants, spa, library and other facilities are linked by walkways which are punctuated by smart wooden flooring. The well-maintained garden and greenery are soothing while the décor is pleasing, mint-fresh earthy colours and offbeat furniture.

Walk into Fennel, the multi-cuisine restaurant, where the chefs will rustle up any kind of food, whether Continental, Indian or Mexican. The other eating place here is the Hotcoals grillroom where you can order grilled delights.

Across the main building is the beautifully designed Royale Club, which can seat 450. There are two small conference rooms that can seat 80 people each, and a smaller one that can hold 40.

The health club is a big one, should everyone in the resort decide to use it, says the management.

The stylish spa is a big draw. There are many rooms for Ayurvedic treatment, aromatherapy, mud therapy and detox programmes.

PREMA MANMADHAN

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The Hindu :

Lovers of spicy Andhra food rejoice. Nagarjuna celebrates its 25th anniversary with a food festival

Full Meals The hallmark Andhra spread

Twenty five years ago, when Bangalore was still a pensioners paradise, the Reddy family arrived in the city from a small village in Nellore district, armed only with their culinary skills.

They started a small restaurant on a corner of Residency Road, serving authentic Andhra dishes. As time passed by and Bangalore transformed into a sprawling metropolis, Nagarjuna also became a two-storied restaurant, serving a range of Andhra delights and boasting a seating capacity of more than 200 people.

The restaurant has also set up branches in Jayanagar and Indiranagar.

Mohan Reddy, the managing director of the group says, “I can proudly say that we did not have to advertise our restaurant at all. Most of our customers became regulars soon and spread the word. Word of mouth publicity has helped us garner many loyal customers.

“Even now, it delights me to meet customers, who come from outlaying areas of the city, braving the terrible traffic just to have food at the restaurant.”

“I feel that maintaining the taste and quality on a regular basis is the cornerstone of any good restaurant.

“A lot of factors come into play, as the spices and vegetables have to be fresh, the mixture must be added in the right quantity. Even a single mistake can result in a badly cooked preparation.”

As part of the silver jubilee celebrations, the restaurant is organising a food festival, where a number of signature dishes will be served to customers.

“Almost all these dishes are prepared after extensive research and experimentation by my family. At home, we eat food prepared at the restaurant twice a day.”

Moving on to the all important food, we start by sampling some nattukodi vepudu, Andhra chicken fry and royyala vepudu, Andhra prawn fry. The preparations were fairly spicy. The chicken absorbs…More

The Hindu : y>Having enjoyed painting signboards and hoardings, Manjunath now has a Robert Bosch grant. NIKHIL VARMA finds the youngster involved in a whole lot of creative efforts

F rom painting signboards (being clueless about a career to choose) to bagging the prestigious Robert Bosch Art Grant, 25-year-old Manjunath has made a historical journey. Today, Manjunath is also involved in the BBMP’s mega project of painting murals on walls to beautify the city.

Sketchy life

After completing his PUC, Manjunath began helping his brother at work, painting signboards. “There was no pressing financial constraint that forced us to take up the job. I used to enjoy painting hoardings. In the course of these assignments, I decided that studying art would help me in showcasing the tribulations that people face in their everyday life. I decided to enrol for fine arts in college.”

That decision shocked his parents and they tried their best to dissuade him. “My parents wanted me to stick to a conventional career as they were not very sure that fine arts would provide a steady income. I managed to convince them and enrolled at the Chetan College of Fine Arts in the city.”

“In the course of my assignments, I had to present a series of live sketches. I decided to complete these sketches at the City Railway Station at Majestic.”

“Over a period of time, I got hooked to making live sketches of commuters using the trains, the scenes that unfold at the station when a train arrives, the waiting passengers etc. Many people were impressed and asked me to create their portraits. I used to spend most of my evenings at Majestic drawing these sketches.”

The long hours he spent at the station has also landed him in some tight spots. “Once, at two in the night, some policeman grew suspicious and took me to the police station. Once I explained my hobby, one of…More

The Hindu :

Try this elegant poached pears dessert

WINE SOAKED Peaches in Beaujolais

Holiday dinners are a runner’s delight — meals packed with carbs, followed by more carbs, with loaded pies for desserts.

Instead, this year, try some cooked fruit desserts for a change. They’re seasonal, comforting, and sweet, but there’s no flour, butter or cream involved.

The French just can’t abide by pumpkin pie — to them pumpkin is a savoury food, not meant for a sweet pie — so here’s one recipe without it. This is an elegant poached pears dessert.

For children, you may have to provide the pies as well. For the rest of us, truly full long before dessert, these alternatives will be welcome.

Pears poached in Beaujolais

This is a beautiful dessert. The pears are very gently poached for just 10 minutes in red wine that is infused with peppercorns and cinnamon.

Then they cool in the wine.

The colour is particularly striking, as the pears remain translucent and white on the inside but are infused with red wine on the surface.

This recipe serves six.

Ingredients

Firm but ripe pears: 6

Lemon juice: of half lemon

Beaujolais (or other fruity red wine): 1 bottle

Mild flavoured honey, such as clover: half cup

Peppercorns: 2 tbsp

Cinnamon stick: 1

Method

Fill a bowl with water, and add the lemon juice. Peel the pears, taking care to leave the stem intact, and place in the bowl of water.

Tie the peppercorns and cinnamon stick into a cheesecloth pouch, and place in a large saucepan. Add the wine and honey, and bring to a gentle simmer. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Drain the pears and carefully add to the wine. Simmer very gently for 10 minutes, then remove from the heat and allow the pears to cool in the liquid.

Discard the cheesecloth bag.

Place the pears in serving dishes. Return the wine to the saucepan, and bring to a boil.

Reduce by half of its volume. Spoon over the pears. Serve warm,…More

The Hindu : MUKUND PADMANABHAN

Wines were judged in relation to price — a low-priced wine could earn a gold or a silver while a highly-priced wine might fetch only a bronze

At the end of last month, I spent a day tasting some 75-odd international and Indian wines — that arrived in a seemingly interminable series of flights — at the Sommelier India Wine Challenge in Mumbai.

It may sound like an easy day’s work, but by 9 p.m., when we were finally done, I was so exhausted and so done with fermented grape that I would have accepted a can of Coke in lieu of a glass of 1947 Cheval Blanc.

Over 400 wines were entered into the competitions and 18 judges, divided into groups of three, were served the wines, under the watchful eye of the famous wine expert Steven Spurrier who, as head of the panel, was called on to intervene when there were differences among the judges or clarify a matter of procedure. At my table were the feisty wine educator Sonal Holland and the CEO of the Wine Society of India, who played chair and was extremely patient with differing points of view.

Organised by Reva Singh, the Editor of Sommelier India magazine and the Wine Society of India, the Wine Challenge was held under semi-blind tasting conditions. Varietal, country of origin, and price band were revealed and like wines were tasted with like — so the flights were made up of say international bubblies, Indian Cabernet Sauvignons, Napa Valley Chardonnays and so on.

The procedure followed was not unlike many other wine competitions held abroad, but I do have reservations about the price band being revealed to the judges. The logic for doing so of course is entirely reasonable. We were being asked to judge the wines in relation to price — which means that a decent low-priced wine could earn a…More

The Hindu :

Happy Days exposes the eternal and sometimes hopeless optimism that most of us learn to summon in our most vexing moments

T heatre lovers in the city were in for a dramatic treat as Irish playwright, poet and Noble Peace prize laureate Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days” was performed at Ranga Shankara recently.

Presented by The Rogue Theatre production and Bangalore-based theatre group Ligra, “Happy Days” is one of Beckett’s most inspirational and yet oddly absurd plays ever written.

The play in two acts revolves around Winnie, a middle-aged woman who is buried in a mound of earth. Despite the desperation of her predicament, she seeks to fill the hours with reminisces, comments, laughs, grumbles, along with incessant chatter to Willie, her husband, who is unseen till the last part of the second Act.

Dressed to kill, Willie reaches up as if in a bid to help her but picks up a gun lying nearby and the play ends there leaving the audience to draw their own conclusions.

Surreal as it gets

Patty Gallagher, who plays the protagonist, Winnie, says: “Beckett is known for putting his characters in extreme conditions and making them speak normally. Now we don’t know why Winnie is stuck in the mud but what is more surprising is that she is prattling away as if it’s just another day,” she marvelled.

“The whole setup is so surreal and has a structurally visual aspect to it. All Winnie has is a large black bag with all her worldly possessions. What stands out most is her acceptance of her quagmire and the optimism with which she claims that this is still one of her happy days.”

Patty feels the longer she does the role, the easier and more difficult it gets. “Beckett writes the play like music and I am fascinated by the cadence of his beats as well as incredibly inspired by Winnie. I love the…More

The Hindu :

Your dog may be your best bet

I s it better to walk a human or to walk a dog? New research has found that people who walk dogs are more consistent about regular exercise and show more improvement in fitness than people who walk with a human companion. In a 12-week study 35 adults were assigned to a walking programme for five days a week. Twenty-three selected a friend or spouse to serve as a regular walking partnerwhile 12 were assigned a dog to walk.

To the surprise of the researchers, the dog walkers showed a big improvement in fitness, while the human walkers began making excuses to skip the workout. Walking speed among the dog walkers increased by 28 per cent, compared with just a 4 per cent increase among the human walkers.

The dog walkers were far more consistent in sticking with the program than those who were walking with humans. The response from participants in the dog-walking group — and their dog companions — was very different.

“When the people came to the animal shelter, they bounced off the bus and said, ‘Where’s my dog?”’ And the dogs never gave any discouragement from walking. Also, many people in the dog-walking group stopped using canes and walkers.

NYT

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The Hindu :

Boost the benefits of your workout and burn fat faster, with these seven smart food choices

Full of Goodness Cinnamon

Add these foods to your daily diet and you can shed about 10 pounds over the course of a year.

Water with lemon

A study of 240 women found that dieters who replaced their sweetened drinks with water lost an average of 3 pounds more a year than those who didn’t.

Subjects who sipped more than 4 cups of water a day lost 2 additional pounds, compared with those who drank less. Plus, the phosphoric acid in soda may contribute to bone loss — and osteoporosis — by changing the acid balance in your blood.

High-fibre granola bars

A study found that women who eat a fibre-rich, high-carb breakfast burn twice as much fat during workouts later in the day as those who eat more refined (lower-fibre) foods. Try a granola bar with at least 4 gm of fibre, instead of the typical bar that contains just a single gram. Refined carbs spike your insulin levels, which limits your body’s ability to use fat as fuel.

Ground flaxseed

Flaxseed is rich in fibre and healthy fats, which help stabilise blood sugar, so you’re less likely to binge. Some research suggests flax can also help soothe symptoms of hormone swings because it’s high in plant estrogens.

Ground seeds are easier to digest. Sprinkle them over cereals, soups, or salads; add them to smoothies; or substitute one cup of ground flaxseed for 1/3 cup canola, corn, or other oil or shortening in muffins and cookies.

Note: Lower oven temperature slightly, since baked goods brown faster with flax.

Walnuts

Instead of snacking on some chips, open up a bag of nuts: Walnuts are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which may keep you feeling fuller longer. In a one-year study of people with diabetes who were following a low-fat diet, researchers discovered that those who included eight…More

The Hindu : SHONALI MUTHALALY

Vanilla has flavoured childhood dreams and India’s excellent crop of vanilla beans have found favour abroad

BETTER BEAN Vanilla pods

Ah, vanilla. Its gorgeous scent conjures up warm homemade cakes on school holidays. Here’s a flavour that laced our childhoods. Then why does a vanilla bean seem so unsettlingly unfamiliar?

Probably because India’s grown-up on vanilla essence. Made primarily of chemicals, the synthetic vanilla of our childhood is so cheap and plentiful it’s not only captivated the country, but — ironically — also kept natural vanilla out of our domestic market, kitchens and cakes. Which is tragic considering that Indian planters grow and produce excellent vanilla beans. However, since the local market has always been quite happy with the chemical pretender, almost all of India’s vanilla is exported.

This could be partly because it’s so unfamiliar, since it’s not an indigenous spice and therefore has no traditional links to Indian food. It has however been around for a while, since the British originally introduced it to India, according to V.K. Jagannathan of Vanam Orchids India, a company that provides support for growers. He says that the Spices Board, India, started promoting it in 2003, when Madagascar’s vanilla crop failed due to a cyclone, and thus international prices hit an all time high. “There was a boom, and vanilla was selling at Rs. 6,000 a kilo. That’s the highest it’s been in 40 years,” he says.

Philip C. Jacob, director of the Velimalai Rubber Company, which grows vanilla on it’s plantations across the southernmost tip of the Western Ghats, says that they originally found the plant in the Nilgiris about 15 years ago. “We had read about it, but didn’t have details on how to cultivate it. So we simply left it in one area of our plantation (producing mainly rubber, coffee and cardamom) and it grew like crazy.” He adds, “We were just going…More

The Hindu :

Increasing your bone mass has tonnes of benefits

B eing a woman does not mean you should be worried about increasing your muscle mass. Here’s why it has tonnes of benefits. The more muscle and bones you have, the greater the acid buffering power you have, you now have more protein, potassium, magnesium and calcium to buffer the acidity in your body. According to many studies, the greater your muscle mass the greater the longevity potential. It is, in fact, the number one biomarker of longevity. It is a far better predictor of longevity than total cholesterol or blood pressure.

The more muscle you have, the more insulin receptor sites you have, and the more sensitive they will be. Increased muscle prevents diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Translation: the more muscle you have, the easier it is to have low body fat and the more calories you burn at rest. It is estimated that for every pound of muscle you gain you burn an extra 50 calories a day. The more muscle you have, the more strength you have. Over the years I have seen that for every kilo of lean tissue gained, there was an equal loss of weight in body fat. In other words, the body composition changed dramatically.

For example, a female executive with a 60 kg bodyweight with 20 per cent body fat has 12 kg of fat. If, in 10 weeks, she gains 4 kg of muscle mass and loses 4 kg of fat, her body fat will now be 13 per cent. With these changes, not only will she feel more empowered, her body will also look good.

S. BASU

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