I’m sure we are all praying right now that humanitarian supplies including food and medicine are able to reach the civilian Lebanese population. Not to take away at all from that situation but since it is being thoroughly discussed elsewhere in the news and on the web, I thought I would divert the attention of SM readers for just a few minutes by speaking out about the looming crisis here in America and among other Diasporic desi communities. Folks, we have a daal shortage that hasn’t received nearly enough attention and it’s not going to be pretty when it all plays out. India West reports:
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Soon to be more precious than gold? |
Faced with an unexpected crunch in supply of dal and lentils, the staple item of the Indian meal, that’s the advice hapless store owners are giving to worried customers after an Indian ban on exports of lentils (I-W, June 30) has sent prices soaring and supplies dwindling. The Indian government has banned the export of dals and lentils until March 2007 to curb rising commodity prices.
“We advise customers to concentrate more on the vegetable than the dal,” Dinesh Kumar of India Cash and Carry, a busy Indian grocery store in Sunnyvale, Calif., told India-West.
No Indian meal is complete without dal, and it is a critical source of protein for vegetarians. Over the weekend, customers have been flocking to the aisle that stores dal, Kumar said. [Link]
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p>The advice they are giving us is to “concentrate more on the vegetable than the dal?” That’s like asking someone to concentrate more on their job than on love, or to concentrate more on a blogger instead of the doctor or the finance guy. It just isn’t going to happen. As the article points out, daal is a CRITICAL source of protein for vegetarians. Is this some sort of bad karma for when all the vegetarians poked fun at the beef eaters for their mad-cow friendly ways? Now the chief protein source of vegetarian desis has come under threat.
“People are in a little panic for dals right now, even though we are requesting them to not take too many packets,” said Kumar, whose store has set a limit of a four-pound pack per household. People were cooperating, he said.
Prices have shot up. Toor dal, which retailed for less than a dollar a pound a couple of weeks ago, has shot up to almost two dollars a pound. [Link]
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p>When I went to the Indian grocery store on my block last weekend I saw a little boy get trampled by three aunties who all reached for the same package of daal on the shelf. As the paramedics loaded him onto the ambulance he kept crying, “why Bhagwan, why?”
“Demands have gone up way high. Everybody is looking for dal and there is not enough in the market,” Parmar told India-West. “We have to supply each and every store; we have limited quantity to supply…” [Link]
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p>Because of my blogging duties I knew about this looming crisis before most in the media and public. I have been steadily stocking up on daal by filling up one of the storage rooms here in our North Dakota bunker. Even my co-bloggers have remained in the dark about my grand designs. My power and influence in the blogosphere and the world in general will no doubt rise as knowledge of my new wealth spreads.
It’s hard to tell how this would play out, he said. “As of now, the market is in a period of uncertainty,” Soni said. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen in the course of the next month…” [Link]
In a post-apocalyptic world where daal is scarce I will have my choice of a beautiful desi bride in search of protein…or perhaps several brides.
Good god, I had no idea. I’m going to Vik’s right now!! Thanks for the warning Abhi.
Focus on the garbanzo beans–they grow locally.
oh man – am i ever glad i cant stand this imported vegetarian stuff – a nice juicy steak with potatoes au gratin is all i want and it isnt running out anytime soon in ontario – life is good.
chiecken eat grain. lions eat meat. be a lion, not a chicken.
is that a call for commenting regular, Chickpea? 🙂
Lentils aren’t grown in the US? We could have a great export market to India! I mean, really, the only way Americans eat lentils is in lentil soup, and that’s probably only by folks of Italian descent and college students who can’t afford anything more substantial.
By the way, I’m a great fan of the Curried Lentil soup from Au Bon Pan served on my campus. (Seems to be served only in the winter, though).
The grocery store uncle in Buffalo didn’t seem particularly worried. Yes, the prices have gone up (double, so far). But he says it is only a matter of time before he figures out business deals in other countries where lentils are produced (China, Ethiopia, Morocco, Argentina, and even Syria are apparently key producers of different kinds of lentils).
Where do the bulk lentils from Whole Foods come from? They have less rocks and dodgy lentils than Uncle Ji’s bazaar.
are you saying there is something black in the lentils?
hairy_d: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
If anyone feels the crunch, let me know. The UK’s still good on daal, and I have about 50-odd kilos of it lying around in conveniently sized packaging. Toor, masoor, mung…
Yes! I don’t know the word, meteorites maybe? If you don’t sift through your lentils well before cooking them, you will bite a lentil meteorite and speak many expletives.
You can get lentils, red/kidney beans, black eye peas, and black beans from other sources – many of the whole dals, although not all of my favorites. Unfortunately, the ban imposed goes way beyond just the humble lentil (which you can get from France):
I love me some black chole, and I’ve never seen them from another source 🙁
There’s a daal crisis? I really haven’t been calling home enough, my mom usually tells me these things 🙂 I’m all concerned now.
I just had “kaaley choley!” Don’t tell me that was my last time! Say it ain’t so!
Dal shmal, soy make desi strong like bull 🙂
Our local Indian store in California gave us the same news last week, but I didn’t realize the crisis was of this magnitude. Any word on why there’s such a shortage?
However, if we don’t consume as much daal or choley, we probably won’t be as gassy. I’m not sure if that’s a positive or a negative. The repercussions of this shortage are serious.
Daal Mein Kuchh Kaala Hai … a Hindi colloquialism. It means, literally, “There’s something black in the lentils;” and figuratively, “There’s something fishy going on.” (from a post by Nancy Gandhi)
Some would say that you wouldn’t need daal to supply the lovely ladies with the requisite protein intake.
Someone with a very filthy sense of humour and who gets a masochistic thrill out of women throwing their shoes at him might say that, I mean. Not me, of course.
I don’t think there’s anything funny at all about the term “protein shake”. Stop sniggering at the back, there.
And a medical professional would inform such a badmash that such (ahem) activities provide glucose, not protein and therefore would not assist Abhi.
Jai…you went there. I noticed that approx 15 hours ago and decided not to do anything about it with the purpose of keeping a post about daal as vegetarian as possible. But now that you’ve spilled the lentils, let’s get Freudian, shall we?
“And a medical professional would inform such a badmash that such (ahem) activities provide glucose, not protein “
Technically, it is Fructose , not glucose…….
Saravana Bhavan is not making vadas for a while now due to lack of “raw materials”. So this is serious, isn’t it?
Now this is not to shift the discussion from the detailed medical analysis of cough protein intake.
As the son of a medical professional* and someone who has a biomedical science-related university background (amongst several other totally-unrelated postgraduate areas), let me assure you that the homemade sweet/salty lassi concerned does indeed contain protein and a variety of other nutritious supplements too. Wikipedia even has a page on it. And no I’m not so badmaash that I’ll supply the link. Go to our friend Google sahib and ask him for directions.
Abhi or a suitably chivalrous gentleman, were he so inclined, would therefore be able to assist his special ladyfriend in such a post-apocalyptic daal-restricted era by supplying her with her daily dose of protein “straight from the tap”, if you know what I mean.
*Not that we talk about such things in our family, of course. And yes I know there are desi medical families around who are much more open about these matters, several of my close friends are amongst them.
I am amazed how this discussion went from lentil to seed!
my local dosa joint just upped the price on dosas / vadas by 200% ….. damnn !!! and no extra sambar for free !!! thats a ripoff … lol
Isn’t Canada a major exporter of lentils?
Jokes aside, the shortage is a fairly serious situation for India and [East] Africa, as both regions had crop-failures which collaboratively resulted in pricing-instability, shortage and export-bans. If the problems continue, a large population of people who rely on low-priced dal as their only protein will have serious concerns.
I’m not saying we’re going to have the Potato Famine or anything, but it will have immediate and long-term effects on those who don’t have the economic means to find protein-subtitutions. The GoI will do its part, but since no one ever considered this a real possibility…
Isn’t Canada a major exporter of lentils?
Yes, I think they’re actually the largest exporter of lentils… Lentils are a cool weather crop, maybe this is a good opportunity for the U.S. to step up and solve its agro-economic woes by importing cheap dal to India (and, of course, find a satisfying irony in the reverse-outsourcing).
I know I’m going to have to kick myself for ever getting involved in this “protein” conversation but what can I say, I’ve spent far too much time around friends who tended to love such discussions and I could never resist correcting them 🙂
“Some would say that you wouldn’t need daal to supply the lovely ladies with the requisite protein intake” That would be a pretty shady definition of “requisite,” you would get between 5 to 15 calories per ahem, serving (that’s like one jolly rancher right?), and the amount of protein is similar to that found in the white of one egg (and yes, it may seem strange, but I know this because a prof decided it would be a funny way to end a lecture)
So yeah, I’ve done my correcting and I’ll just go off now and try to collect the shreds of my net dignity 🙂
Sleepy,
You know far too much about this topic, considering my original comments were just off-hand jokes 😉
This entire conversation is very shady. But that’s okay, because shady ladies are always appreciated.
So what’s the problem ? He’s happy and she’s happy, assuming that the lucky guy gets enough time to reload and has sufficient ammunition in-between volleys, depending on his firepower.
Anyway…..using one’s head, it may be a good time to head off this conversation before it goes to people’s heads, considering it’s a fairly heady topic and this sentence is already quite a mouthful, so let’s give everyone time to swallow all the facts before moving onto the next prominent subject they get their hands on.
I know, I know…..Far too much badmaashi for a Monday morning…..
And I thought no one cared when I posted this in the ‘News’ section last week.
Thanks for the post. I went promptly to the desi store and stocked up on daal for my vegetarian hubby. The fellow at the Patel Bros empire store in my town indicated they have enough daal in their bunker to ride out the ban.
He must be searching for a wife in post-apocalyptic times also.
^^^Aaaaaand there’s the money-shot 😉
Okay, I’ll stop now. I promise.
Well, not really.
“he kept crying ‘why bhagwan, why?'”- I just picture that kid from a gujarati natak and I laugh and laugh.
Noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!! What will I, as a South Indian, do?
OMG, Saravana Bhavan not making vadas?????? They had better make them next month when I’m back home.
BTW, the Saravana in NYC (murray hill) is utter crap and seems to share only a name with the original. Bah.
The high cost of high prices. A better way to curb commodity prices would be to let foreign retailers to enter the market. But I guess this is more politically sustainable.
abhi,
i thought you wouldn’t marry vegetarian anyway – since you’re such a proponent of consuming meat. am i wrong?
I’m not a proponent of eating meat. I just like to point out that eating meat was cruical to the evolution of humans and that anyone that claims vegetarians are more “natural” are simply wrong. That being said the cosmos has probably fated me to marry a vegetarian I’m sure. I’ve even been known to stock my fridge with Vegan ice-cream when I’m crushing on someone and right now I am really in to Trader Joe’s Vegan Chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies. So yes. Thankfully you are wrong. Its hard enough for me to meat a girl without disqualifying all the herbivores.
Errrr…I meant “meet” a girl. Damn.
Thanks for clarifying :). I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that I was wrong. You might want to consider delving into more vegan items considering the heat wave out there in cali and the hit the dairy market is taking because of it.
Not sure if this helps all of you…but theres a website thats offering dal for cheap. They are actually delivering it to your house as well for free. Its at http://www.spicyusa.com. Ive ordered from them before and their quality is better than my local Indian grocery store. Anyways, hope this helps!
Come on! Being the meat such a tasty meal, you can’t leave that aside in your diet! Try toasting for 10 minutes a peace of meat in the oven with some oil, then add a cup (the big ones) of mustard and red wine. Turn the meat round and round every 10 minutes, 3 or 4 times (check if it’s cooked for you) and as the side dish some good old fashion potatoes sliced in medium cubes in the oven too (there’s the vegetables hehehe, see, I care about vegetables) and then tell me if you can resist to that!!