BOOK: Deepa’s Secrets: Slow Carb New Indian Cuisine

I met Deepa Thomas several weeks ago at an event at Melissa’s Produce. I’ve been so so many of these events, and I’ve loved them all. However, something was different this time. There was something magnetic about Deepa, and her stories were mesmerizing, perhaps because they resonate so deeply with me.

Deepa’s Secrets: Slow Carb New Indian Cuisine is a cookbook dotted with family stories, unraveling a history behind the journey of this book. Indian cuisine is very high in carbs, and it is one of the major reasons why I don’t eat it very often. Another, is the fact that anything you eat in a restaurant is going to be oily, and generally, puts me into a food coma shortly after.

Deepa’s husband, Thampy, a diabetic, was on insulin shots twice a day — not unlike myself — and Deepa found a way to adjust and recreate age-old family recipes to suit a modern lifestyle. Thampy no longer requires insulin, and he didn’t do it by giving up foods he loved, but rather, eats these delicious foods which are now being created with complex carbs (good carbs) instead of the ubiquitous white rice, and bread, which bode heavily within Indian cuisine.

After the event, I returned home and read the book cover to cover, relishing in Deepa’s memoirs, which opens each chapter. Then, using Post-Its, I marked the pages I want to return to and make some of these dishes I enjoyed at Melissa’s Produce, one of which was these chicken skewers.

If you’ve ever wanted to make healthy, but tasty Indian food at home, Deepa’s Secrets is it! Not only is it a beautiful book, but 100% of the proceeds from the book goes to FoodCorps, a non-profit organization whose mission is to connect kids to healthy food in school. FoodCorps places service members in limited-resource communities where they spend a year working with teachers and students to establish farm to school programs, incorporate nutrition education into school curricula, plant school gardens, and engage in other initiatives to improve school food.

To purchase a copy of Deepa’s Secrets, please visit Amazon.com