Republic Day 2021

26th of January as India celebrate the 72nd Republic day it’s an opportunity to serve Relish food to the Happy Village sponsored by The Shishu Bhavan day care centre Arpora - Goa. Relish food to the slums all begun when the nationwide lockdown was declared there was no food or essentials.

That’s’s when Kevin and Connie took the opportunity to provide cooked food to the children and parents of The Shishu Bhvan twice a week. It was an amazing experience especially seeing the joy our food brings to the community.

The cooked food was provided at 6.00 pm the menu was white rice, mixed lentil / chickpea curry, egg curry and again this Sunday there will be lentils with vegetables, chicken curry and rice.

It’s an even more special when the festival is happening as the people are more excited and the kids happy and all dressed up looking forward to visiting every household as is tradition.

We are always made to feel welcome and special; the sweets and drinks were offered to us countless times which is great to see their personality.

Republic day celebrations do not just last one day they go on throughout the month.

Relish was given an opportunity to provide food for lunch, On the menu this time was Butter chicken (orange) rice (white) and Chickpea with spinach curry (green) resembling the Indian national flag colours.

Indian festivals are never without sweets hence we made Kheer (lentil and vermicelli pudding)

In preparation for the meal, it was an early start for the day trip to Mapusa vegetable market to get the well ripen tomatoes and other vegetables and also, we had soaked chick pea overnight. All the ingredients necessary were in place at the Relish kitchen by 9.30 am.

Arif and his assistant Deepak were ready with Vijender and me to do the cooking. First thing is to marinate the chicken with Tandoori paste and keep it in the fridge for 2 hours. Meanwhile we started to make the Makhani gravy (base gravy of butter chicken) and onion base for chickpea.

Simultaneously we started to cook chickpeas as it takes a while to cook due to the quantity.

One and half hours before serving the food we started to light the charcoal grill, we then put the chicken in Tandoori oven, once cooked we cut into pieces ready for serving.

We start seasoning the chickpeas along with blanched spinach puree and simmer on low.

Next, we start cooking 1st batch of rice and butter chicken simultaneously.

I was responsible for the sweet as it is one of my forte and I also enjoy making it.

By 1.30 pm second batch of rice is ready it’s time to pack the food in drums and call Sharif.

Sharif was there in no time with the rikshaw and he helped us to load the drums of food to the rikshaw and 5 mins ride we were at the Happy Village.

So when the food reached the village it’s always piping hot and tasty too.

Teacher Roopa has amazing control as everyone listens to her and made sure everyone formed a queue and food was distributed to everyone.

So far not even once we had shortage of food which is always the goal without food going to waste.

If you would like to support this cause please log on to www.shishubhavngoa.simplesite.com for ways to donate.

Thanks for your time to read this blog.

Curry King Vinny