Dear Locavore,

 

Just post Christmas, after four odd months of being away, I found myself back in my apartment on the outskirts of Goa, in a small border town called Banda. Alone after what felt like a very long time. I had a suitcase full of laundry, a cat waiting at the door, and a racing mind that couldn’t finish a thought.

 

Everything seemed daunting, even the smallest tasks. So I switched off my phone and computer, and began the painstaking process of putting my life back together, no longer partnered.

 

Entering the kitchen was the hardest part; being alone reveals a different relationship to food than when we are peopled. 

 

After I came back online, a friend texted, “What did you eat today?” Another, like forgiveness, said, “Well, you’ve never liked solo eating or cooking.” And it’s true. I can’t get a sense of the portions, I overbuy the produce, and I always, inexplicably, oversalt everything when I make it for myself. 

 

We come to food from many places, our motivations an amalgam of the impulses and desires that govern us: tastes, health, bodies, camaraderie. Food systems, climate change, and politics. And the same is true of us entering our kitchens—an overflowing fridge, an affinity with cookbooks, feeding families. Compulsion sometimes, but oftentimes love.

 

Whatever it might be, reader, eat we must. And my alone-ness revealed what an uneasy relationship I had with both—food and cooking.

The container of granola that tided me over through these days of drift was a gift from colleagues, and a recipe created by ChefTZac during the covid-19 pandemic to raise funds for the Khaana Chahiye Foundation. The desi jowar and ragi millet flakes in it came from OOO Farms, which works with farmers across Maharashtra and Gujarat to safeguard their indigenous wisdom and agricultural practices. The cacao nibs from Mason & Co., a bean-to-bar chocolate pioneer based in Auroville.

 

Every sweet bite reminded me that my hunger was assuaged by people coming together everywhere, in many big, small, and often invisible ways. This is the bedrock of every tentative, tenuous, tenacious relationship we ever form. 

 

Something reaches, something catches. We are held. 

 

A few days later, I made this millet congee, the recipe for which was developed in the Millet Revival Project’s cooking lab. I don’t know Ankita Jain and Sayani Sengupta—the volunteers in the lab who developed this recipe. But as I bungled through their instructions with whatever I had in the pantry, it was as if they knew me, and held my hand ever so gently. The onions, garlic, and ginger that went into the broth were all sent by Amma, who grew them on her farm on the outskirts of Pune. The foxtail millet (yes, I know the recipe calls for barnyard, but I was out of it) is from Tillage, which spotlights and sells ingredients sourced from farmers across the country. 

 

Across our kitchens, no matter who or where we are, these ingredients are our silent companions. Sometimes we get along, and at other times, we don’t. And sometimes, they demand more than we are able to give. But like any companion, we must choose them with tenderness, and with an eye for doing right by them. 

 

I made too much congee, of course. So I shared it with my landlady, who was feeling under the weather, and she loved it! It doesn’t matter if there are no mushrooms or bok choy or chilli oil. What matters is that we keep trying to reach one another, and just as much, ourselves. And if there is a little bit of extra salt along the way, well, so be it. 

 

When I spoke to Ankita later in the week, this is where we met: over the memory of a steaming hot bowl of congee. Mine, in the cold of winter; hers, made by her mother with rice, one rainy night. Both oh-so-comforting.

 

I like how accessible these recipes are, how forgiving, because god knows I need it. The cooking lab is doing an incredible job of experimenting not just with a variety of millets, but also cuisines across India. 

 

For anyone just starting out with cooking millets, or those wanting to replace some quantity of rice and wheat in their diets, this is the perfect starting point. Or, like me, a place to begin again. Ankita is now working on bringing us recipes that use cooking methods and ingredients from Manipur and Mizoram, but with millets as their base ingredients. The rest of the team are exploring other regions across the country. In the coming months, I hope we can bring you many more of these.

 

In the meantime, I’ve started a dabba service with a neighbour who runs a canteen, and uses fresh, local produce to run the kitchen. She sent ragi bhakris, and green beans with fresh grated coconut. The bhakris were soft and warm, and I’m not going to lie, I teared up a little when I tasted them. Biting into them reminded me of the story we published in December, about Anand Ramu, a farmer in Tamil Nadu, and Nishant Srinivasaiah, an elephant behavioural ecologist, and how they came together to enable farmers to grow ragi and other food crops in a region fraught with animal-wildlife conflict. Anand couldn’t have done this himself, and neither could Nishant. 

 

We will always need each other, to make sense of things when they seem hard. In the last of these cold winter days, I hope it warms your heart as much as it has mine. 

 

I don’t feel so lonesome anymore. Sometimes we just have to wait for things to settle. And settle into them in turn. When my mind settled, my appetite returned. When I settled into the house, the kitchen opened its doors.