Quick Bites with The Cooking Doc Featuring Dr. Meenakshi Budhraja

23 Jan Quick Bites with The Cooking Doc Featuring Dr. Meenakshi Budhraja

In April of this year, I’ll have the honor of leading a cooking demonstration at one of the most innovative kidney disease conferences around: KIDNEYcon.

Over the course of 3 hours at the Pulaski Technical College in Little Rock, Arkansas, I will be joined by Dr. Meenakshi Budhraja and Chef Cynthia Malik, as we teach 30 doctors how to use food to treat kidney disease – and how to cook. Though all nephrologists know that food can help manage and prevent kidney disease, high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes, they aren’t taught how to translate this knowledge into practical information for patients. This workshop will get them started.

I am thrilled to have a talented and dedicated physician (and chef) helping me in this workshop. While there are other GI doctors out there with an interest in nutrition and diet, few have the cooking expertise and enthusiasm that Dr. Budhraja has. She dedicates and volunteers large portions of her time to the culinary education of other medical professionals and to the nutrition education of local chefs. Her work unites the medical and culinary communities in ways that will provide long-lasting benefit to the Little Rock community, and anywhere these professionals choose to practice.

Dr. Budhraja was kind enough to answer a few questions about herself and her relationship to food. Turns out she’s a poet too.

Tell me about yourself in one (or two) sentences:

I’m obsessed with the connection between Food and Health. And I want you to be too.

What is your favorite recipe?

My go-to is this gram flour recipe that’s good for any time and has a hundred variations and needs nothing but pantry ingredients and no special skills (a caveman could do it).

What’s your best cooking tip?

Toast your spices

What’s the craziest food you’ve ever eaten?

Crickets (only got the courage up after a glass of wine)

If you could be only one fruit or vegetable, what would you be?

Butternut Squash

Why?

Let me count the ways:-)

-It’s hard to get to
-Just look at that organic shape and hold it in both your palms and close your eyes, you will see the future
-It has neither butter 🧈 or nuts 🥜 but it tastes like it does
-It’s like a little black dress that can go from appetizer to dessert effortlessly
-Stack it- Roast it – Slice it – Dice it – It’s hard to go wrong with it
-It plays well with legumes, spices, and grains
-Only thing it does not like is tofu, and I can live with that since I’m not a huge fan either

#foodasmedicine
#culinarymedicine
#thecookingdoc
#drblake
#changeyourbuds