Maggi Noodles vs Samosa!
The battle for the ideal evening snack!
Do you like Maggi? 90% of Indian youth and children will answer yes! But what about us, elderly people who cannot eat it regularly.
Every evening my husband goes out at 5 PM for a walk and asks “Do you want something to eat?” Hidden in his question is the intention to buy freshly prepared, hot, spicy, crunchy samosa from a shop near my home. But, I and my daughter answer no! as we cannot eat samosa, regularly. Now the question is what we should eat as a 5 PM snack?
As we take our lunch around 1–2 PM, we are hungry by tea time. Our dinner time is fixed at 8 PM, so we need a filling snack in the interim. Not one for fruits, I have spent a lot of time wondering which would make an ideal snack — Maggi or Samosa!
The case for Samosa
In India, samosa is a universal snack, available everywhere, and made fresh. It has a triangular shape and is a crunchy maida or refined wheat flour shell filled with spicy boiled potato, usually. Several variants of samosa are available that play on the filling like cauliflower samosa, meat-filled samosas, etc. They are also prepared with fillings of dry, ground, powdered, spicy pulses to give a long shelf life. During festivals, sweet samosa are also prepared stuffed with dry fruits and khoya (thickened milk). Samosa is a part of Indian culture and slogans were made on samosa, including elections ones. One such slogan is -
“Jab tak rahega samose mai aloo,
Tab tak rahega Bihar mai Lalu”
meaning — Lalu (a north Indian politician) will rule the province of Bihar for as long as there is potato in the samosa! (he is neither rules nor lives in Bihar at this point).
And who can forget this famous homage to the samosa from the 90s!
While the samosa may seem like a nutrition hell, I do recall one study where it was shown to be better than a burger — of course, that may just make the samosa the lesser of two evils.
The case for the Maggi noodles
In India, we are all too fond of Chinese noodles. During the 1970s, noodles were only available in restaurants. Therefore, when Maggi was introduced in the market, it became popular overnight, due to its easy, quick recipe. When my children were young, I used to prepare Maggi with lots of vegetables like bottle gourd, homegrown beans, and carrot. My children used to eat all vegetables happily as it was mixed with Maggi. Now as adults, they have also stopped eating bottle gourd with Maggi.
They now prefer it with other seasonal vegetables like pea, carrot, cabbage, and cauliflower. Maggi prepared without any fresh vegetables is not that tasty and difficult to reheat. I also don't think Maggi is much nutritive once you take all the veggies out. The seasoning also contains a lot of sodium which is unhealthy especially for the elderly.
Decisions! Decisions!
So what to do then? Maggi or Samosa for the evening snack? Eating Maggi daily in the evening is not possible for me. Eating samosa while tastier, to be honest, is also not a wise idea. Since summer is right around the corner, I made up my mind on the snack with evening tea!
Again I heard the steps of my husband near my room, he came to ask if he should buy or anything else! I thought for a second and answered no — to both Maggie and Samosa.
Summer is arriving and I have made up my mind to eat barley or sattu — made out of grams. These indigenous snacks are both nutritious and cool the body.
That being said, while I have decided to forego both Maggi and Samosa, I am open to suggestions for other snacks.
Bhavna Narula, Anjum Hasan, A Rustic Mind (Manali Desai), Ankita Srivastava, and other writers if you have a better suggestion for my evening snack do share!
