Have you ever wondered what your great grandparents cooked in their kitchen? SATTVIK, a traditional food festival, aims at fulfilling that curiosity while highlighting diversity in cultures and taste. About 45,000 visitors came to last year’s event. This shows the growing interest in traditional food items and organic products coupled with a sustainable lifestyle. Some of the stalls had sold out their items within one day! Music, folk dance, story telling, children’s drawing and idea competitions and more activities offered a vast number of opportunities to explore and experiment with food, colours and senses.
SATTVIK was first organised in 2003 by SRISTI (Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions) in collaboration with GIAN (Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network) , NIF (National Innovation Foundation), and IIMA (Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad) to stimulate demand for local crops and their varieties. The aim is to generate market based incentives for their conservation.
The event is held every year usually during the 3rd week of December. This year, we will be organising SATTVIK on 29 – 31 December 2012 at IIM Ahmedabad.
SATTVIK aims to
- provide a platform for popularising traditional recipes made from lesser known crop varieties like Kodra (Paspalum scrobiculatum), Bavta (Eleusine coracana), Nagli (Elusine coracana), Samo (Echinocloa colonum), Jowar (Sorghum vulgare), Bajri (Millet), Makai (Zea mays) and many more;
- help conserving and popularising such lesser known varieties;
- prepare and serve varieties of delicious dishes made from these unnoticed crops;
- popularise the use of uncultivated vegetables which are not consumed due to ignorance about their nutritional value;
- exhibit creativity and innovation of traditional knowledge holders and students;
- provide a platform for traditional organic farmers and help in creating market linkages for their products;
- provide a platform for herbal medicines based on traditional knowledge and innovations;
- promote dialogue between students and innovators, and thus encourage the spirit of innovation and creativity;
- present and popularise folklore, folk songs, folk tales, art, forgotten traditional music and instruments;
Recipe competitions & food art
Recipe competitions are organised to revive traditional food and folklore, and to create awareness about minor millets and uncultivated plants, and their health and nutritional benefits among the urbanites. This festival also brings various institutions working for the cause of organic agriculture on a common platform.
Stalls are set up by various organisations, farmers’ cooperatives and individuals to showcase and sell lesser known, highly nutritious foods. Various activities in the realm of creative games, painting, card making out of traditional grains, face painting, hand painting and T-shirt painting are organised for children.
We welcome you all to join in the fun and grab a bite of the numerous treats. If you have some good recipes made out of traditional, lesser known, vegetarian foods, please do share them with us. Selected recipes will be posted on our blog.
You can also write to us via e-mail if you have fashioned any specimen of food art. We all know that preparation of food is an art!
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Email us at – hbncon@gmail.com with the subject line: SATTVIK recipes and food art!
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