Vacation Travel India

http://www.ashdenawards.org/winners/arti06 ARTI won an Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy in 2006. To find out more visit the link above and check out the Ashden Awards Blog http://ashdenawards.blogspot.com

The Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI) in Pune has developed a biogas plant which uses food waste rather than manure as feedstock and supplies biogas for cooking. The plant is sufficiently compact to be used by urban households, and over 700 are currently in use.

Pune is a relatively affluent city in south India, and many people use liquid petroleum gas (LPG) or kerosene for cooking. Waste food is often discarded at the side of the road, as in many cities, attracting stray dogs, flies and rats and creating a public health hazard. The ARTI compact biogas plant is made from two standard high-density polyethylene (HDPE) water tanks: the larger tank acts as the digester and the smaller one is inverted and placed into it to serve as a gas-holder. The plant safely digests kitchen waste, food waste or waste flour from mills, thus reducing the problem of waste disposal. A 1,000 litre plant produces sufficient biogas to at least halve the use of LPG or kerosene for cooking in a household, as well as a small amount of liquid effluent which can be used as fertiliser. ARTI has developed the technology, field tested it, and managed the supply of about 700 biogas plants in Maharashtra. Around 100 plants are now being installed every month.

The first-prize Ashden Award to ARTI recognises the enormous potential for using this compact biogas digester in towns and cities, both to supply cooking gas and to ist in the disposal of organic waste.

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Technorati Tags: anaerobic, Appropriate, ARTI, ashden, awards, Biogas, cooking, digestion, energy, food, India, Institute, Rural, sustainable, Technology, waste

One of the most important “part” of the India tour packages is the food. Characteristic of the many and diverse styles of Indian cookery is the use of spices, used not only for flavor but also as appetite nulators and digestives. Care is taken to ensure that the spices enhance rather than dominate the basic flavor. Traditionally, the ingredients in each meal were governed by the time of the year and classifications of heating or cooling foods, age, and even personality. Once there were also injunctions on the six rasas or flavors to be included in every meal: sweet, salty, bitter, astringent, sour and pungent. Each was believed to have its particular physical benefit and was prescribed in specific ratio to the others.

Essential ingredients

Other than spices, the important ingredients in Indian cuisine include milk and milk products, particularly ghee and dahi (curd). To the orthodox, a meal is “pure” only if cooked in ghee; an emphasis that derives not just from its distinctive fullness and unique flavour but from its acclaimed preservative qualities.

Dahi is part of almost any Indian menu. Served to mitigate the chilli “hotness” of some dishes, it is often mixed with vegetables or fruit and is lightly spiced to create the raitas of the North and the pachadis of the South. An important ingredient in several recipes, dahi is also churned and salted or sweetened to taste and served in summer as lassi, a cooling drink.

Dais (split lentils) are common to most parts of the country. Regional preferences and availability have resulted in a bewildering variety, from the thick tamarind-flavored sambars of the South and the sweetish dais of Gujarat to the delicious makhani dal of North India.

Vegetarian variety

The style of vegetable cooking is determined by the cereal or main dish with which they are served. Deep-fried vegetable crisps are perfect accessories to the sambhar and rice of Tamil Nadu. The thick avial stew of Kerala cooked in coconut oil, or the kaottu in a coconut and gram sauce, are perfect for rice-based meals. Sarson ka sag, mustard greens, eaten with maki ki roti (maize bread), is a particular favorite in the Punjab, while the delicately flavored chorchori of Bengal complements Bengal’s rice and fish.

India presents a vast range of vegetarian cooking. The roasted and steamed food of the south is lighter than northern cooking. Rice is the basis of every meal. It is served with sambar, rasam (a thin peppery soup), vegetables, both dry and in a sauce, andpachadi. Coconut is used in cooked foods as well as chutneys. Made of fermented rice and dal batter, the dosa, vada and idli are South Indian snacks popular all over the country.

The semolina-based upma, cooked with curry leaves and garnished with nuts and copra, is another favorite. Other in-between bites found everywhere are the samosa, a three-cornered deep-fried pastry parcel with potatoes, and pakoras or bhajiyas - vegetables coated in a gram batter and deep-fried. In Gujarat, another region famous for its vegetarian food, gram flour, a source of protein, is used in bread-making and as a component of various dishes.

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