Photos By Content Volunteer, Sitara Menon.
HOST
CO-HOST
CONTENT VOLUNTEER
Yay to everyone who was there today. What a fantastic time spent. Laughing. Chattering. Exchanging notes. What fun it was. Time just whizzed past. LFC, thanks! Yeh dil maange more!
SHARMILA
Haven’t enjoyed stepping out on a Sunday, meeting up with strangers, and bonding like this in so long. Thank you, everyone, for bringing a piece of you today.
APRAJITA
A big thank you to LFC, and to everyone who came and shared their stories, recipes, food, ingredients, and warmth. Cannot wait for the June potluck! Such a warm, lovely bunch.
SHREYA
The Borishal Chingri Pithe—a shrimp cake cooked on a tawa and wrapped in banana leaves.
Pumpkin blossoms, which are often overlooked as mere flowers! The blossoms are edible and lend a sweet essence to several dishes.
The Mango Mor Kuzhambu, made with ripe mangoes cooked in a coconut and yoghurt gravy.
MEET YOUR HOST
What does local mean to you?
To me, local goes beyond ingredients grown within a specific radius. It’s very personal—about familiarity and memory. Even though I live in Delhi, a city shaped by migration and cultural diversity, my idea of ‘local’ includes what I grew up with at home. As a Bengali living here, ingredients like pumpkin blossoms or freshwater fish are local to me, because they’re what I grew up eating, and so readily available in my neighbourhood market.
When I was 11, I was obsessed with MasterChef and the cooking shows on [the TV channel] TLC. I begged my mom to buy me a children’s cookbook from the school book fair. I was too short to reach most of the kitchen counters, so the only thing I could really make on my own were pancakes. I made them every single day, for anybody who came home.
My family always said they were perfect, though I’m sure they weren’t. I’ve never made pancakes again, but I think a part of me wants to preserve that memory exactly as is.
Fried cricket, a very popular street food in Laos. It was really salty and crispy. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I loved it, but it was fun for sure!
They say you are what you eat, I guess that makes me a strange mix of bhindi and guava.
I would love for it to become a space where people from all walks of life feel like they truly belong—not just those from a certain strata of society. I believe those who don’t usually have access to such spaces need to feel welcome and included.