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A spicy feast with Conscious Food

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A recent warmish Wednesday evening somewhere in Clapham, Kristina from Conscious Food hosted a little dinner for a few bloggers to introduce their new range of food and spices.

Conscious Food is an Indian Organic Food company and part of its range was brought to the UK by Kristina Locke. They make seriously healthy gluten free and dairy free snacks. Much of that is made with millet.  Conscious Food uses three types of millet: Pearl, Finger and Sorghum – all ancient grains coming from different parts of the Indian subcontinent and farmed for centuries using traditional methods.

Kristina cooked up a great feast which included a spiced roast lamb, a really delicious millet salad (not unlike coucous but more of a bite) and a very interesting rice puddingy sort of dessert made with millet. The millet, spices and some of the other ingredients were Conscious Food’s products but only a limited range of this is available in the UK for now.

We also tried the millet crackers with a spicy dal dip. So glad to have found this as it will replace the corn tortilla chips that I have with my alkali guacamole. (See my alkali diet).

I was very keen to try the millet salad and was glad to find out that you cook it just like rice and you substitute it for cous cous in recipes. Result.

Conscious Food

Why millet is my new favourite food

Millet Salad
Millet Salad

Recently, I found out that a friend of mine has got cancer and after a couple of weeks at an Austrian health spa, she has promptly swapped over to a full alkali diet. I have been trying this out with her on my non meat eating days. If you don’t know what it’s about, basically it is a vegan diet which changes your blood PH to an alkali state. This prevents the growth of cancer cells. Sounded like a great idea to me except that I have no idea what to eat anymore as I have to chuck out most of the stuff in my kitchen. Millet is on the allowed food list and am so glad to have been introduced to it and will use it to replace rice, pasta, etc from now on.

Millet is one of the world’s ancient grains and is considered a sacred crop. In the West we tend to think of millet as bird/animal seed but it is one of the planet’s most nutrient-dense grains containing amino acids, lecithin, Vitamin E, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, zinc and potassium.

Additionally, millet is made up of 15% protein, has high amounts of fibre, and is rich in phytochemicals. Important for people with allergies, millet is non-glutinous, is extremely high in alkaline, and is considered one of the most digestible grains around. With its sweet, nut-like taste, millet is warming to the body, making it an ideal winter food.

Millet Pudding Recipe

(This is a bit like rice pudding but better for you.)

Take a bowl and in it put:
1 cup ground cashew nuts
¾ cup of millet flour
mix with 1 can coconut milk
Melt jaggery to taste – start with a good knob – and pour into the bowl. You also add a knob of melted butter.
You can add any of the following to enhance flavour: whole raisins, 2 ground cardamom pods, 1 vanilla pod or whole cashews.
Then grease a ovenproof bowl (needs to be 6cm deep – and a flat bowl rather than a deep bowl) with butter or ghee.  Then in a preheated oven (180c) place the pudding and cook for 20-30 minutes –checking on the colour.  When it is golden then the pudding is done.
Serve with fresh mango slices or some cardamom ice cream.
I really respect the ethos of Conscious Food in supporting Fair Trade with the small local farmers. There are still over 10m bonded slaves in India who live as small farmers, owing the landowners so much that it will take over 5 generations to repay. (Slight detour and a small for the charity that I support – Anti Slavery Charity.) Every little bit done to help them is a great effort.
More about Conscious Food and stockist on their site.

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