By Tara Narayan

FOR some time now I’ve been trying to start the note on an alkaline note… but it rarely happens! A cup of ginger-flavored tea is my first drink of the day, never mind that I tell myself drink a glass of warm water, add the juice of a lemon to it, or squeeze some orange juice, or lick a teaspoon of honey and mustard if nothing else. It doesn’t happen. Even the fresh aonla or Indian gooseberry in the fridge lie there for it takes too much time to take them out, wash, grate and drink the juice for vitamin C – the most healing vitamin of them all is in aonla or amla, or so I’ve read in Ayurveda texts. A tablespoon of aonla juice and honey is your best start to the day, something like that, add a teaspoon of pure turmeric if you like for faster healing!
Funny or not funny. When I’m really thirsty from the inside out I still try to get to my old favourite Chaat Street down town Panaji to linger over a cool ginger-lemon soda (it’s the best, real ginger in it and ginger is one of our naturopathy pain killers, very alkaline too, plus the lemon juice in it, and the soda). Of course I can make the very same if not better ginger lemon soda at home if I take the trouble to find real organically grown ginger, pure yellow within and not a ghastly oozing grey or pretend ginger, god along know where it grew up!
These furnace hot days one is constantly seeking cooling, genuinely thirst-quenching drinks and before you forget, nothing which comes with loads of refined sugar in it will quench your thirst, it will only increase it, okay. Remember that. Honey is fine, jiggery is fine and any other natural sweetener. Just not refined sugar. Sugar is carcinogenic, you must know that. Sugar in everything. Just be conscious of this when you’re looking for something to put in your mouth.
Try any of the freshly-fixed sodas be it kokum soda, ginger soda, lemon soda and other fresh fruit soda; fresh and very satisfying caju neero or the juice of the caju fruit is varnishing although some vendors at the Panaji pavement market in the early morning are still retailing it in plastic bottles for Rs100 or Rs150. But check if it is still sweetly delicious or on its way to turning into urrack…fresh urrack is everywhere now. In Goa March and April are for seeking caju neero, May is for seeking urrack, forget fenny, I don’t like it.
The country’s favorite fresh summer drinks are of course thin buttermilks and lassi, sugarcane juice, in Guju homes you will find limbu-gor nu paani (lemon and jiggery sweetened sherbet, spiked with a bit of jeeralu powder); there’s aam ka panna, the fruit of the kokum rules the Konkan coast states in small town refreshing eateries…nowadays you may even find a jackfruit sherbet. Needless to say fresh anything is superior bottled anything in the marketplace. Pure aqua is what we need the most, preferably from the Chashmashahi water spring in Srinagar, Kashmir! With the kind of mind-blowing development China is doing up in the mountains of the Himalaya, the days of mountain springs are numbered for sure. Can anybody stop China’s monstrous development of the mountains of the Himalaya?
I DON’T go looking for interesting food these days but at Chaat Street I noticed someone has taken it into his head to offer a novelty “dosa pizza” or some such thing (Rs100, don’t even look at the promo poster up here at this closet-styled chaat eatery I’m so fond of, although I don’t drop in so often now, only for old times sake and these days anew for the ginger soda)…love their ginger lemon soda, Rs60…of course you may replicate it at home except that home I would like somebody else to make and serve it to me with love forever after, no chance). Sigh, in the autumn of my life I find doing food is fine but cleaning up the stove and washing up in the kitchen is a real pain given the full blast summer heat.
So much for beginning the day on an alkaline note. For some time now I’ve been thinking only one cooked meal a day, one meal of banana (rich in magnesium and other good things) or papaya or apple…fruit salad maybe, veggie salad maybe, not cooked, just tossed in lemon, honey, Himalayan salt and fresh black pepper, lots of chopped green parsley or green coriander. Starting the day on alkaline notes means fasting on water or on a green juice, or a sprouts Buddhist bowl of a salad nicely done. No bread, butter, jam, cheese, eggs in any form. No cooked. Only soft steam cooked for palatability if desired.
A toast to alkaline breakfasts, may they happen for me sooooon! For some reason I’m not making the finest summer-time food of them all that is “dahi-bhaat” or the southern Indian states “curd-rice”…you’ll be surprised how many nutritionists do prescribe curd-rice to patients who have ailing stomachs. This is a pro-biotic recipe and with a dash of real oil-less lemon pickle it is very heaven combo. At one time I used to make my curd-rice really exotic, doing my tempering in Gir cow desi ghee, curry leaves, mustard seeds or cumin seeds, pinch hing and yes for good alkalizing value I would grate in carrot or cucumber, stir in pineapple or mango pieces…a medley of veggies like broccoli, cooked drumsticks, and some more. Try orange segments!
YOU know some of the south Indian Udipi dishes are catching fire in Goa, at least in Panaji I notice. The other day I even found that the Café Tato menu listed idli, medhuvada, dosa on their traditional Goan menu of snacks. More and more Goan eateries are introducing these south Indian healthy summer foods on their menu and last time around the executive chef of the Fidalgo enclave of eateries shared that they had also added “kanjeevaram idli” to their south Indian repertoire on the menu…
This is to say vegetarian and south Indian Udupi breakfast food and snacks are catching fire in Goa and doing great business; although I will always drop by at Café Bangalore just because this is where they serve everything on first-class eco-friendly betal-leaf ware. Packaging okay, happier me! Food retailers don’t get it that staple pins are banned in pack-away food or delivery services…staples pins are ILLEGAL. Having accepted this most are struggling with tapes of various denomination and it takes as much time to undo these tapes as the staple pins of old….in any case what’s the use if the food packed is in designer plasticware, which is all put into a brown paper bag?
It’s like someone commented over social media, we humans are a retarded lot. We go shopping and buy a zillion things in plastics and then piously tell the cashier, “Oh please, no plastic bags, don’t charge me, see, I have brought my own cloth bags, use them! I hate plastics, my dear, we really shouldn’t patronize them!” Go take your head out of your asses my dears. Hypocrites big time. We deserve to die out from planet earth to free Mother Earth from her most toxic animal, or enemy.
THAT said, I will prescribe this for fussy gluten-sick stomachs. In my search for millet baked breads I discovered “ragi poie” at where else but at Delphino’s in Taleigao. At least the girl here said, “Ma’am it’s 99% ragi or nachne flour…only some maida!” Needless to say it’s become my favorite poie and I go pick it up regularly, it’s Rs8 per ragi poie. It’s light and scrumptious, stuff in a medley of salad stuff –honey mustard dressing — and enjoy your evening summer meals.

What is acidic and alkaline pH?

LOT of us who take an interest in staying alive happily learn that lifestyle is all about respecting and maintaining homeostasis. That is, balance. A body at ease internally and externally enjoys good homeostasis.
And yes, it is your lifestyle in toto which determines the body’s internal biological mechanisms and one of these is to do with maintaining a healthy acid-base balance. In the absence of pathological disease the pH of the human body ranges between 7.35 to 7.45 with an average at 7.40
When the body becomes over acidic (acidosis) or over alkaline (alkalosis) it affects us and it is pH imbalance which leads to sleepiness, fatigue, headaches, loss of appetite, confusion, vomiting, etcetera. Hey, life on earth revolves around the maintenance of appropriate pH levels in and around living organisms and cells.
Human life requires a tightly controlled pH level in the region of about 7.4. That is a slightly alkaline range of 7.35 to 7.45 to survive. Needless to say the more acidic our lifestyles (a lot of it is to do with what we put into our mouth by way of food and beverages) the more we set the stage for degeneration of body beautiful internally and externally.
Hence, the perennially search today by the educated and learned for a lifestyle which is more alkaline than acidic. Mind and body, heart and soul, all play key roles in this challenge which we all have to deal with to cope with staying alive.
And this bit: If our pH levels drop below 6.9, it can lead to coma. However, different body fluids have different pH values, for example, the pH of saliva ranges from 6.5 to 7.5. After swallowing food it reaches the stomach where upper and lower parts of stomach have different pH values. The upper part has a pH of 4-6.5, while the lower part is highly acidic with a pH of 1.5-4.0. It then enters the intestine which is slightly alkaline, with a pH of 7-8.5.
It is maintaining the pH values of different regions which is critical for their function. The body’s overall pH is maintained in the body using primarily three mechanisms: buffer, systems, respiratory control and renal control. The abnormalities in acid-base balance are of two types: acidosis and alkalosis. Both are caused due to imbalance of acid-base secretion by the kidneys or altered levels of CO2 in the blood due to breathing disorders.
Finally, the story is that if your can maintain body beautiful’s pH more on the alkaline side, the fitter it is. When measured on the pH scale anything above a 7 on the pH scale is considered a base. When the pH level exceeds 12.5 pH – then comes trouble as with all hazardous wastes when in contact with human or environmental health.
The moral of the story is strive to adopt a balanced, intelligent, pro-Mother Earth lifestyle – it will stand you in good stead. Be your own best friend instead of your own worst enemy. Be more alkaline than acidic in your lifestyle, be organic, be simple, be down to earth, respect the laws and rules of maintaining of body beautiful!