It was a relaxing get together on a late Saturday morning. The weather outside was perfect and so was the atmosphere inside In The Pink Organic Bazaar and Restaurant. It was nice to walk in and meet Dr. Nandita Shah of SHARAN India who was all set and ready to start with one of her famous cooking demos.
The Art of New Age Cooking was an interactive workshop which was made possible by the coordination efforts of Archana Saraf. It focused on creating healthy, organic, extremely delicious food.
We started off with introductions. Most people, like me, had already attended one of Dr. Nandita’s seminars. One can never have too many workshops with her because there’s always something new to learn.
Many of us present were vegans. Some long time, some new. There were also a handful of beginners who were on their path to becoming vegan. They knew the benefits of veganism on the Earth and on their health. And most importantly, they were well aware of the ethical implications of switching to a compassionate lifestyle free of all animal derived products. But they just needed that extra little push in the right direction and who better to give them that than Dr. Nandita? As far as I’m concerned, she is the guru of veganism in India. Not only is she extremely knowledgeable, but she is also well qualified to share this knowledge. On top of that she has an immense passion for spreading veganism in a positive, constructive way.
The cooking demo covered 12 vegan dishes of various varieties. From nut butters and nut milks to salads and steamed lentil cutlets. Throughout the demo, Dr. Nandita shared a lot of information with us about the benefits of putting whole, organic, plant based foods into our systems. She also answered all the questions we asked her while she cooked and managed to go back each time to whatever she was talking about. A highly impressive multi-tasking effort. 🙂
She gave an open invitation to any of us to walk up and lend a helping hand in the cooking (making sure we washed our hands well before doing so of course). Arun, Sujoy, Smitha, Lata and a few others did a great job lending a hand in the cooking.
Of course, she also had Archana and a couple of kind, In The Pink employees by her side, helping out through the whole session.
Needless to say, by the end of the demo, all of us were ravenous! We needed to distract ourselves by shopping at the nice little grocery section at In The Pink while the buffet was being set up.
What an amazing vegan spread it was!! It took a lot of will power on my part to click photographs before wolfing down the food. So don’t blame me for not pausing to click pics of the desserts when they were brought out. We were all way too stuffed from that hearty meal but somehow the raw banana ice cream with a cinnamon walnut topping and the mysore paks seemed to slip nicely into our tummies. :p
I hope Dr. Nandita holds more of her wonderful cooking demos in Namma Bengaluru in the near future. And I surely hope that all of you will be lucky enough to attend them.
Bengaluru Vegans 
Missed it.
Mystickally,
Taantraa
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Taantraa, I hope you get to attend Dr. Nandita’s next workshop. 🙂
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Very nice article and beautiful pictures…. It was an Honor for us to host the workshop… Thank you Susmitha 🙂
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Thank you Aparna. 🙂 In The Pink was the perfect place for this workshop!
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When is the next demo?
How do I register ?
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Nirmala, you can take a look at the events list on the SHARAN website: http://sharan-india.org/home/events/
As of now, there isn’t anything planned for Bangalore over the next few months, but if something comes up, we’ll post it here on the Vegan Bengaluru blog.
You can also join the Vegan Bengaluru Facebook Group to get more updates about such events.
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