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Aparajita, the blue butterfly pea, flowers best in six or more hours of direct sun in a pot that drains freely. It is a legume that fixes its own nitrogen, so rich oil-cake feeding gives a leafy vine with few flowers. Feed it lightly: under 10 g of wood ash per pot once a season on a mix below pH 7, and 50 g of plant growth promoter every 45 days from March to October.
Gobindobhog is a short-grain, white, aromatic rice from the Bardhaman belt of West Bengal, named for its use as bhog, the food offered at temples. It cooks soft and slightly sticky with a sweet, buttery aroma, which suits kheer and payesh, bhog khichdi and mild pulao. Rinse it, soak it 15 to 20 minutes, and cook 1 cup with about 1.5 cups of water. It is not a basmati substitute.
India's everyday dals come from about ten pulses: moong, urad, chana, masoor, toor, matki, kulthi, rajma, lobia and kabuli chana. Most are sold both whole and split, which is why moong and chana appear twice on every list. On India's own composition tables, raw protein runs from 24.35 g per 100 g in masoor dal to 18.77 g in whole kala chana, and the split form usually carries a little more protein and much less fibre.
Mogra, the Arabian jasmine, flowers from March to September in North India if it gets at least six hours of sun and steady feeding. It is a heavy feeder: give about 100 g of mustard cake per 12 to 14 inch pot every 30 to 45 days in the flowering season, under 10 g of wood ash at first buds on a mix below pH 7, and trim the tips after every flush so new flowering shoots form.
ICMR-NIN's 2024 Dietary Guidelines limit visible fat, which means cooking oil, ghee and butter together, to 20 to 50 g per person a day, or 4 to 10 teaspoons, depending on activity; about 27 to 30 g suits a 2,000 kcal diet. At 30 g a day one person uses roughly a litre a month and a family of four 3.5 to 4 litres. FSSAI's 2025 campaign asks households to cut oil by 10%.
Sprouts earn their reputation by subtraction. Forty-eight hours of germination cut phytic acid in mung beans by 39.74% and raised in-vitro protein digestibility from 78.05% to 81.49% in a 2025 study, while chickpea phytic acid barely moved. The seed makes no new protein. It dismantles the compounds that were blocking what it already had, and it builds vitamin C from almost nothing.
