About Us
The creators of this blog:
1. Tushar Trivedi graduated with Chemistry/Physics from St. Xaviers College and post-graduated from the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai – formerly UDCT – specializing in Food Technology. There were several academic distinctions. This was followed by over four decades of quality professional experience in processing and managing, including 7 years as the Head of a Manufacturing Unit and 20 years of consulting, marked by several executed innovations. The dominant theme during this phase was all aspects of transition from small batch processes for oilseed and oil processing to relatively large continuous processses – a tryly enriching experience clearly differentiated from very large and totally automated processes. This is genuine empowerment for managing all aspects of modern very large and totally automated processes which can benefit from process and innovation insights.
A relatively rare case of being an innovative, foodie food technologist he has also collaborated with his wife Preeti in the kitchen for the last 20 years. A firm believer in ‘kitchen is the home-plant’ and cooking is ‘domestic food processing’, he has combined food science and technology with ciulinery art. The result has been a series of innovations in domestic food processing and product development, with emphasis on material, energy and time efficiencies. Natural interest in human anatomy and physiology and proximity to medical professionals all his life have helped develop insights in what food does and can do for health. Several differentiated health-foods on the ‘lab’ scale have been the result, with broad scale-up details worked out from plant scale experience. He will be the writer of all the blog posts and nothing will be derived from ‘open sources’; this blog is straight from him – this is who he is.
2. Preeti Trivedi is Tushar’s wife and a post-graduate chemist with a good academic record. Since marriage, for the last 40 odd years, she has been a full time home-maker with focus on her family’s health and happiness. As Tushar’s collaborator in the lab called her kitchen, she sterilized glass bottles some 20 years ago and has, since then, (i) frozen mango and strawberry slices and pulp, versions of Shrikhand, tomato puree’, ginger extract, lemon juice, shelled peas and green beans, (ii) made highly differentiated and value-added Chyavanprash and rose syrup and her own versions of individual spice powders, compounded spice powders (like multi-purpose garam masala and immunity boosting kahwa masala) and tomato ketchup, and, (iii) steadfastly avoided artificial preservatives, colours and flavours. On the anvil: a nutritive tomato ketchup substitute without added sugar, salt and preservatives and, eventually, a ‘cocoay’ bar product to challenge the increasingly expensive moulded chocolates.
Her family has started the day with lemon water laced with a pinch of fenugreek seed powder for about 5 years and Tushar’s gout has vanished; he has no ‘mainstream’ conditions like hypertension and diabetes. She has been incorporating their specially formulated and processed ‘powder’ in all her cooking for the last 6 months and her family has enjoyed experientially better gut health and freedom from disease. Serum glucose lelevels have dropped and there is no health event on the horizon. She is particularly proud of their development of a new way of cooking mixed vegetables with the aforesaid powder into a juice so loaded with benefits that an entire blog-post is planned on it.
3. Shubhra Trivedi is Preeti and Tushar’s daughter, a total fitness enthusiast and confirms having been a beneficiary of her parents’ food innovations. She is a Chemical Engineer from the Nirma University with distinction and holds the reputed CFA (USA) Charter. She has 14 years of professional experience in the areas of Specialty Chemicals and Banking. She helps out with product development whenever possible but her main contribution is the conversion of all the written text into this blog as you experience it along with its maintenance.
4. Ananya Trivedi, after graduation and 2 years’ quality engg. experience in India, left for the USA to pursue MS in Electrical and Computer Engg. at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in August 2017. After a 2.5 year stint as a Software Engineer at a reputed car automation company in the US (post MS), he has been pursuing PhD in Robotics enabled by AI in the US since January 2022. He recently presented a research paper and two ‘workshop papers’ at an international conference in Japan. A fitness enthusiast (daily 100 pushups are a part of routine), he contributes to this blog thru his experience of writing research papers and of American cooking ingredients and processed foods. Relatively deprived of his family’s ‘health and happiness innovations’, he still enjoys his mother’s special spice powders in the US.