Popcorn, black olives and turnip pickle - a nice evening snack

By Vasudev Ram

I had this snack today:

Bought some popcorn and black olives (Figaro olives from Seville, Spain), and had them with some turnip pickle that I had made. Crazy, no? :) Turned out to be a good snack.

The turnip pickle was a simple one with salt and a couple of powdered spices - no oil.

As I sometimes do when I eat something, I googled olive and was interested to see that it is one of the most extensively cultivated fruit crops, more than apples, mangoes and bananas, according to Wikipedia:

[ Olives are one of the most extensively cultivated fruit crops in the world.[69] In 2011 there were about 9.6 million hectares planted with olive trees, which is more than twice the amount of land devoted to apples, bananas or mangoes. Only coconut trees and oil palms command more space. ]


- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

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Culinary pilgrimage to Punjab

Saw this article on the New York Times. Good one about food.

A culinary pilgrimage to Punjab.

Here are a couple of related pictures:

A thali:

.

Dishes: palak paneer, dal, pulao and a salad:

List of Indian dishes, with photos galore

List of Indian dishes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I came across the above list on Wikipedia, while looking up some specific food items in Google.
(Was looking for Bengal gram a.k.a. chickpea( (chana in Hindi) which led to horse gram which led to moth bean (matki) and then to usal and misal and then to the above list :)

The list is subdivided into four regions, North, South, East and West (of India) and you may have to click on the icons on the right on that page, to drop down each of those sub-lists. There are lots of photos of the many Indian dishes, with short descriptions. Some of them are hyper-linked so you can go pages about them.

Misal with pav (an Indian bread):

(Photo rotated 90 degrees for some reason ... original here.)

- Vasudev Ram

List of subreddits on Reddit.com

subreddits

There are many subreddits - maybe over 100.

Some are less active. Many are not related to tech or software - life, food, etc. etc. Useful resource.

-  Vasudev Ram
dancingbison.com

Parathas, cut parottas and roti canai - yum

Paratha - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Saw this article through a chain of food links, starting from the Rasa Malaysia blog.

Out of all the paratha varieties mentioned, I've had many of the North Indian varieties (alu, mooli, ...), Kerala parottas, cut parottas (kothu parotta), typically with egg included, and roti canai in Malaysia.

Like all of them.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roti_canai

Time for some grub :)

-Vasudev Ram
www.dancingbison.com

Faasos, a fast-food chain, uses Twitter

By Vasudev Ram


Faasos is a fast-food chain (called QSR - Quick Service Restaurant) in the industry jargon, based in Pune and Mumbai (as of now - it is expanding to other Indian cities).

They have decent food at fairly reasonable rates (given the inflation in India from the last few years, that is).

Among other things, they use Twitter to communicate with their customers.

I order food from Faasos now and then.

Links about Faasos:

http://www.faasos.com

http://www.faasos.com/menu.html

http://www.faasos.com/press.html

Sequoia Capital invested $5 million in them.

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-10-12/news/30270949_1_gv-ravishankar-sequoia-capital-india-paneer

http://business.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?278597

http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/ethnic-foods-investors-money/1/19596.html

https://twitter.com/faasos


- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

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Food trucks, startups of the US food industry

http://www.fastcompany.com/1830550/startup-tips-from-the-humble-food-truck

Nice one.

Mili Mittal's morsels

http://m.techcrunch.com/2012/04/16/mor-sl-offers-recipe-recommendations-to-hungry-webonauts/

Rice plate is ready :-)

Rice plate is ready (*)

By Vasudev Ram - dancingbison.com | @vasudevram | jugad2.blogspot.com

Housefed is a new Sil(ly) Valley based startup in the area of food. Looks interesting.

Excerpt from the TechCrunch link below, saying what it is about:

[ Housefed is a service for people to eat homecooked meals with others at the cook's home, whether in the city you live or while on the road. (Tip: Hunt for the Housefed blog, it counters much of the Silicon Valley groupthink.) ]

BTW, on a first scan of the Housefed tumblog, I'm not so sure I agree with that last statement above - i.e. "counters SV groupthink" - some of the blog posts seems to me like more of the same (groupthink), at least to some extent. But regardless of that, the startup's core concept sounds innovative.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/04/the-way-we-eat/

More links about Housefed below:

Site: http://housefed.com

Tumblog: http://housefed.tumblr.com

Twitter: @housefed

(*) The title of my post is a reference to that term used on signboards outside Indian restaurants that serve traditional Indian "thali"-type meals (simple, not the elaborate kind with twenty-odd different items, those are a different and more expensive category). The simple thalis are also called "rice plates", and the signboard often says 'rice plate is ready' :) They are also called "meals" - e.g. - veg(etarian) meals (the default), chicken meals, mutton meals, etc. I saw more than one use of the word "meals" on the Housefed tumblog, so titled the post (indirectly) based on that.

Here are some hits from a Google search for "rice plate is ready":

http://www.indiamike.com/india/chai-and-chat-f73/thali-meals-t131861/

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/448403.aspx

Above link also has a reference to "Quick Gun Murugun" and "Rice Plate Reddy" :)

Thali: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thali

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- Vasudev Ram