Millet Mixer, Kochi Edition
Sundays are for fun! At The Locavore, we take fun quite seriously. And the Millet Mixer, the second edition of which was held in Kochi, was all about making conversations around climate more accessible and lucid while engaging meaningfully to take small steps and build community for a better future.
The breezy restaurant area at the Cochin Yacht Club overlooking the glistening water, was the perfect setup!
Bringing together 67 millet enthusiasts, the Millet Mixer was conducted by The Locavore as part of the Millet Revival Project in collaboration with the Rainmatter Foundation. We host weekend events in a different city across India every three months, allowing us to engage with locavores directly, subsequently enabling personal interactions and creating long-lasting impact.
The Millet Mixer took place at the picturesque Cochin Yacht Club in Kochi. Photo by Team Locavore.
Events hosted under the MRP umbrella are designed to explore, educate, and celebrate the diverse uses of millets in India. Photo by Team Locavore.
Two exciting games helped guests familiarise themselves with millets and sustainable food choices before the event commenced. A dart game (produced by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a think-tank based in New Delhi), nudged participants to think about sustainability and wastage in food systems, and how likely they are to take steps towards making better consumption choices.
On the other hand, the Tinder millet profile game allowed people to get a sense of the difference in textures, tastes, and preferences surrounding millets.
We welcomed everyone to the space with tea and coffee. Photo By Team Locavore.
As people registered and enjoyed the view, we encouraged them to look through flyers of the work we do at the Millet Revival Project. Photo By Team Locavore.
We began with a crowd favourite, The Locavore Shuffle. An interactive game that has now become a staple at our events, it goes beyond perfunctory introductions to engage with one another’s food and cultural history. Among themselves, participants ask questions about a favourite festive food, a dish that lingers in one’s memory, whether cooking with millets was daunting,and the millet recipes they’ve tried and loved!
In an attempt to reduce our use of paper, this was the first time we tried the Shuffle without chits, using our homegrown app instead to generate questions—and it was a huge success.
The Locavore Shuffle in action. We’ve realised that the game is a sureshot way to break the ice among strangers and foster a sense of community. Photo by Team Locavore.
We then split up into teams—it was time for ChefTZac’s pub quiz! The quiz is, more often than not, a boisterous affair, and those competing don’t always anticipate how much fun they are going to have!
The team names for the quiz ranged from Millet Mafia to Ragi Bombs to Millet Mania. That there are extra points for coming up with the best names only adds to the excitement. The winners this time around— team Millet Mafia—scoring over 400 points, won a gift hamper filled to the brim with items from our many partner producers, along with copies of the Millet Mantra cookbook, and our incredible Wild Food zine.
The Gift Hamper Won By Team Millet Mafia. Photo by Team Locavore.
Two lies and a truth. Make your own recipes. Kochi’s food history. Climate change and millets. This pub quiz had it all. Photo By Team Locavore.
How can a gathering be complete without food? The table was laden with fresh salad ingredients put together by ChefTZac, helped along by ingredients that Manju from Forest Post (one of our partner producers) had brought, foraged by the indigenous women Forest Post works with. These included wild fern and the most incredibly tart wild grapes.
There were four different types of millets that participants could get a taste of—foxtail, kodo, barnyard, and little millet. The toppings were aplenty—such as pickled tendli, cucumber, fresh red amaranth leaves, coriander, spring onions, wild grapes, chopped green chillies, and sauteed mushrooms.
Four types of dressings—chimichurri, garlic yoghurt, Andaman krill pickle dressing, and wild honey vinaigrette—further added to the endless mix-and-match possibilities.
The best part? The variety of potluck dishes many enthusiastic Kochi Locavores had brought along, featuring millets in umpteen creative ways. There was beef and pork pidi, cutlets, bacon and ragi “cake”, bajra rotis, curd varagu and foxtail millet biryani, to name just a few, ranging from snacks to main course to “dessert”!
(L) ChefTZac’s DIY millet salad bar. (R) Bajra cutlets, one of many special millet treats we tried at our Kochi community potluck. Photos By Team Locavore.
When people are able to come together and have a good time, we can build communities that take action together. Photo by Team Locavore.
We had several participants come up and chat with us about how unexpected it was to eat such tasty variations of millets, and that they were returning home with a sense of excitement, waiting to add these grains to their pantries and diets.
For all of us at The Locavore, and for our partner, the Rainmatter Foundation, having conversations around the climate and engaging more people in climate action means attempting to move the conversation from despair to hope—and our programming with the Millet Mixer reflects just that.
Our collective hope is that people went away from this weekend more enthusiastic and knowledgeable about how millets are climate-resilient as well as nutritious, and why incorporating them into our diets is already a step towards a better food future.
As for Team Locavore, we left the Cochin Yacht Club with our bellies full but our hearts fuller. Mission accomplished, for now!
At The Locavore, we love planning and executing events that highlight India’s diverse local foods, celebrating community, sustainability, and cultural heritage. Our events feature engaging workshops, discussions, immersive experiences and other formats that connect you to India’s rich food culture. Interested in collaborating or having us organise an event? Reach out at connect@thelocavore.in.
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