Founded in 2010 by Sheila Chacko Kallivayalil, Sheilas makes preserves and pickles from produce grown in and around Mundakayam in the Kottayam district in Kerala. Their range of products also includes jams, and marmalades made from fruits and vegetables such as bananas, Kandari chillies, bilimbi, oranges and mangoes, and seafood like prawns and Veluri fish or white sardines.
After retiring as an assistant stock broker in 2000, Sheila moved to her family’s estate in Mundakayam. She began pickling as an effort to save the excess produce at the estate that primarily grows cocoa, pepper, bananas and oranges. What began as an exercise in stocking products in small batches at a local bakery in Kochi, is now a full-fledged operation retailing artisanal preserves across stores in the city, and their own website too.
While Sheila inherited recipes from her mother, grandmother, and mother-in-law, she did not have much experience with pickling herself. However, trial-and-error methods have allowed her to rekindle traditional techniques like sundrying and wood fired cooking along with developing her own recipes such as her garlic and brinjal pickles. Their team of four now largely comprises women, who do all the chopping, mixing, and bottling by hand.
The Locavore Bite
TL Bite offers a glimpse into how a partner producer runs their operations, and reflects their core principles and values. The idea is to provide insights into their practices and highlight their positive efforts descriptively. We have identified seven key areas of assessment – origin and source of ingredients, composition and integrity of the products, workforce policies, production practices, community-related initiatives, approach towards preserving or celebrating traditional knowledge and the materials used in packaging. While this assessment may not be entirely comprehensive, we hope it helps you make an informed decision about why you might want to support them, and the ways in which to do so.
The information below offers you a snapshot of where Sheilas stands on these parameters. We have put this together based on several rounds of conversations with Sheila. Click on a piece of the pie below to find out more.
Why We Love Sheilas
Small-batch production: In order to maintain quality and consistency, Sheilas focuses on small-batch production. Their batches are limited to around 70 bottles at a time. As the production is done manually, smaller batches also means the production process is less physically taxing on the team.
Showcasing seasonality: Sheilas only produces certain pickles keeping seasonality in mind, especially for pickles made from bilimbi, mango, and fish when the produce is available. They refrain from stocking large quantities of ingredients in the season for the same reason. The only exception is oranges, as, according to Sheila, they can be frozen for longer without hampering their quality.
Celebrating diversity: Drawing from a combination of traditional and self-developed recipes, Sheilas showcases a variety of seasonal ingredients in their pickles. These include vilumbi puli pickle, nelikka (amla) pickle, Kandari chilli pickle, date pickle, seer fish pickle, and veluri fish pickle along with preserves such as plantain jam and orange marmalade.
Why do you think it’s important for a brand that makes preserves to focus on seasonality?
Old wisdom said that our eating should follow the seasons. There is a reason why communities were restricted to consuming what grew in the area before greenhouses and refrigeration. Nature had its own pattern of determining what grew when. For example, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots and green peas were winter vegetables. When we lived in Bihar, the only vegetable that was available in the sabzi mandi in summer was okra/bhindi and we had to work around that.
Nowadays, all vegetables are available at all times of the year, which I think is not the ideal rhythm for optimising nutrition. Nature intended the appearance of certain fruits and vegetables in certain seasons. We are breaking that pattern, forcing the cultivation of produce through growth boosters and preservatives to enhance shelf life and reduce spoilage during transit which is basically against the law of nature.
—Sheila Chacko Kallivayalil, Founder
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How to Buy
If you would like to learn more about Sheilas, or try their products, check out their website. If you’re interested in supporting them in other ways, please contact us at connect@thelocavore.in.
This is a paid partnership with Sheilas. At The Locavore, we strive to keep the practices of a producer transparent and honest across all forms of partnerships.
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