Healing Bytes

Hello folks, If you are wondering what Shikran poli is, I totally get you as I felt the same when I first heard of this last year. Then I went to our most favourite destination for finding any information, yup, you are right, it is Google! One hit at the search button and there landed many images and blogs describing this simple Maharashtrian recipe. I then found that Shikran is a dessert prepared with mashed banana with milk, sugar and cardamom powder that can be served as is or with roti. When served with roti/ poli, it becomes Shikran poli. That’s an easy- peasy recipe, isn’t it? I thought to myself what could be so special about this recipe. And boy, was I impressed. It turned out to be a treat to the palate and not to forget the gut health promoting prebiotics from banana makes it a frequent appearance at my breakfast. I always give dishes my own twist and so did I with this. I generally prefer jaggery over sugar, so this was pretty obvious for me and I actually liked this...

Hello folks, After a long post on seed cycling and sharing the recipe for sesame- sunflower seeds laddu, this post is a short read. You can skip to the recipe directly if you have a time crunch. The way we started preparing this laddu comes from a decade of trial and error. Yes, you read it right, a decade of trial and error before landing on this combination of ingredients and ratio. Flax seeds was an ingredient unheard of when our trichologist suggested us to include it in our daily diet for managing hair fall (back in 2012, isn’t it interesting how time flies!). These brown seeds have a walnutty- flavour which was not accepted well by our palate and we still consumed it as we were at wits end to help our hair become healthy. Dates was another food item that was suggested to be taken daily. They say necessity is the mother of invention, it was proved right in this case when Subhashini grounded dates and flaxseeds together and made a laddu out of it. We tasted it and suddenly it seeme...

Hello folks, Seed cycling has been all the rage for a while among women experiencing hormonal imbalance, irregular periods and PCOS. In case you are wondering what it’s all about, let me clarify it here. As per the seed cycling concept, a woman in menstruating years is to consume a certain combination of seeds in sync with her menstrual cycle to regulate the two major reproductive hormones- progesterone and oestrogen. Going little deeper, that would be 1 tbsp each of flaxseeds and pumpkin seeds in the first half of cycle (from menstruation to ovulation) and sunflower seeds and sesame seeds in the second half of the cycle (from ovulation to menstruation).  The key here is to consume them in grounded  form to improve nutrient absorption. They can be had as is or added to shakes, smoothies, yoghurt, energy bars etc. When I first heard about the concept, I felt making them into laddus seemed a convenient way to go about it, especially considering that women with PCOS also e...