The Egg Factory

"A true friend is one who thinks you are a good egg even if you are half-cracked!"

A lazy Sunday afternoon, Bangalore' s weather at its best, your best friend by your side, and of course food. What else does one need to lead a happy life?

The experience of eating good food becomes all the more enjoyable and memorable when you have a person as special and wonderful as your BFF to share it with. Mridula and I have been friends since the fifth semester of college and like every healthy relationship; our friendship has only grown stronger with time. Of course, there have been times when we have had our disagreements mostly because of the difference in our temperaments (she is way more forgiving and modest than I am). But at the end of the day when I need someone to just talk to, she s the person who comes first to my mind. I hope it’s the same with her too. It better be!

This is my third visit to The Egg Factory in the past one year. Wow, time just flies. It is located in one of the by lanes of St Marks road. I still vividly remember what a hard time I had locating it the first time around, given how inconspicuous it is. The minute you enter The Egg Factory, you will be taken aback by the sheer simplicity of this place- wooden flooring, wooden chairs and tables and a few colourful cushions strewn around. The ambience is subtle in its appearance and lovely to look at. Considering the fact that both, Mridu and I were born and live to eat, we started ordering almost instantly. The menu is very wittily designed with words such as "Eggsamplers”,"Eggxilarative”,”Eggspectations”… used to categorise the menu.

Drinks: All you cocktail and liquor lovers may be a tad disappointed because this place doesn’t serve alcoholic drinks. Most of the drinks are fruit based such as – fresh fruit juices( which weren’t available) , a host of smoothies and of course the usual cold coffee. We choose the “I love Apple” smoothie.I know, what a name! It was fresh, not too sugary and served in just the right amount without any ice.

Main course: The Egg Factory provides a gamut of options to choose from for the main course. After flipping through pages and pages of the menu, Mridu zeroed in on the Frittata A la Mexicana and I choose my all-time favourite French toast with Maple syrup. The very aroma of the syrup with the toast just sprung my taste buds back to life. It’s warm, comforting and an absolute must-try. And the Frittata, Mridu just loved it. It’s a combination of two omelettes, cooked with beans, olives and capsicum and topped with cheddar cheese, and served with garlic bread. It looks like a mini garden on the plate.

Dessert: Mridu choose the Caramel Custard. It’s a cup sized dessert with a tiny cherry on top. Unfortunately for me and fortunately for her, I have ultra-sensitive teeth that prohibit me from eating any kind of custard based dish. However, I did eat just a teaspoon of it. It melts in your mouth and makes you realise that the most delicious of dishes are sometimes the simplest.

Now, it’s time for my verdict. To put in one word- Eggsemplery. I still can’t make up my mind as to what I like the most about The Egg Factory, the ambience or the food; each one is better than the other. Places such as this are the ones that make Bangalore a foodie’s delight. The bill came up to just 450 Rupees. As you can see, it’s completely cost effective. I give this restaurant a 4.5/5. If you haven’t yet paid it a visit, then you are definitely missing out on something.

Weighty Issues..

         Let’s just admit it, at some or the other point in our lives we have faced one common issue: our weight. We all have wanted to lose or put on weight, fit into those pair of skinny jeans or yearned for that 10/10 body. For the uninitiated, I too was once a teenage girl who so badly wanted to lose weight. I was 18, weighed close to 65 kilos, stood 5’4’’ tall, and was at my tubbiest, chubbiest and flabbiest. I knew nothing about exercising and diet at that time, but had to start somewhere. Thus, began my battle against the bulge. Close to a year and a half later, and after copious amounts of sweat coupled with perseverance, I managed to knock off 10 kilos. I went from being overweight to medium to skinny to super skinny and I’m back to medium now.

 Enough has been said, written and discussed about weight loss. Dieticians, nutritionists, health books, TV programmes…have all gone gung- ho about it like it were some earth shattering phenomena. They say the same thing over and over again, and make weight loss sound like a complicated, insurmountable task. If u ask me, then I’d tell you that weight loss is simply a result of applying your common sense. If you are taking too many advices from people or researching too much about it, then stop. Listen to your body, not to the people around you. Considering the fact that this blog focuses on food, I’d like to share, rather simplify the correlation between food and our body.

Here are a few tips that have been inspired from my own weight loss saga. If they have worked on me, I can safely say that they have a good chance of working on you too. (And all this, at the risk of sounding a little preachy of course)

You must eat to lose weight:  Eating sets your stomach into action by urging it to secrete digestive juices to break down the food. Food keeps the stomach active and maintains your metabolism. People who want to lose weight, often begin to see food as a culprit, little do they realise that eating right is the simplest and most powerful weapon for a successful weight loss. How many of you knew that the stomach is approximately the same size of your two palms put together? Yes, it’s just that much. At any given point in time, we need to fill only three fourth of the stomach with food. Now, that is something we hardly follow. And for god’s sake, a burp after a meal is not indicative of a full stomach. It only means you have swallowed air while eating or drinking.

Meals: Even if you are in a tearing hurry in the morning, please make sure you eat your breakfast, even if it is just a banana. The body breaks its fast after nearly 8 hours in the morning, and is in desperate need of food to wake its cells up. So just give it what it needs, and at a time it needs it most. Instead of having three big meals a day, distribute your meals over the entire day, starting from the time you wake up and ending two hours before going to bed.

Binging: It’s absolutely OK to binge once in a while without having to feel guilty about it later. Do not make this a regular activity though.

Diet foods:  All the products that are available in the market today, that claim to be health foods are nothing but trash. Low fat sugar, low fat biscuits, low fat ice creams, low fat laddus, low fat chips…ufff, the list is endless. These products are completely robbed of their nutrients and are loaded with dangerously high quantities of preservatives. Keep them at bay. When in a mood to have something sweet or khaara- khaara, just indulge in the actual items, not in their so called low fat substitutes.

Fad diets: Blood group diet, Mediterranean diet, baby food diet, sleeping beauty diet (where one simply  has to sleep to lose weight, don’t ask me how it works), parasitic worm diet ( ewwwwww!), and here is the most scandalous one – only man-juice diet ( let’s not even get there) are just some of them . Most of these diets have caught on like wild fire because they are endorsed by celebrities, primarily in the West. These are the people who are apparently paid to look good and who have more plastic than flesh in their body. These diets do give startling results but at the cost of ruining your system. Once you are off the diet, all the weight comes back with a vengeance.

Exercise: Too much is too bad. I have seen a lot of my friends go completely overboard in the gym to get quick results. Well, it doesn’t work that way. The more slowly and steadily you lose weight, the longer will the results remain. Doing 100 ab crunches a day is a waste if you don’t do it the right way. Neither can the body handle it. Instead, do 20 crunches properly, with the right breathing technique o course and most importantly, in the presence of an instructor.

Lastly, accept your body the way it is. There are two things about the human psyche that baffle me. One is the tendency to judge and categorise our body into shapes that resemble fruits – apple, pear, cucumber…what not. Second is our obsession with numbers- body weight, body mass index, size 0, 2, 4, 6…Our body types are more or less pre decided by our genes. There isn’t much that one can do to change it, neither should we even try. What we can do is to only make it fitter and more agile. If you are naturally lean, then be that way. If you are naturally broad boned, remain that way. Why go against the laws of nature and heredity and try so hard to be something that you are not?

Losing weight and looking good are not as important as feeling fit, both physically and mentally. Eating right and exercising should be lifelong commitments. They make absolutely no sense if they are restricted to just three months of your life or the four walls of your gym. Do not equate your self-esteem to your weight. After all, you are only as sexy, beautiful and charming as you think you are!