Book Review: J B Lobo's Home Encyclopaedia

JB Lobo's Home Encyclopedia is the only recipe book my grandmother ever referred to when cooking, so almost every woman in my family has a copy. The book is plain text, there are no glossy pictures and an average of 3-4 recipes on each page. A bare bones recipe book, it expects the reader to have a good grasp of cooking. It does have some rare recipes like that for suckling pig Manglorean style that are difficult to find elsewhere. While it claims to have recipes from other parts of the world, remember that this book was written over 25 years ago, so those recipes aren't completely authentic. But the Manglorean recipes are really good. More than half the book is taken by the home encyclopedia which has home remedies for everything from sore eyes to snake bites and scorpion stings. There is a section on how to guard against burglars, how to clean ivory articles and how to buy a cow by checking her udders. There is even a section on sex education. While the book at 900+ pages is quite heavy, only 250 pages or so are dedicated to recipes. I do wish they would come out with a version that has just the recipes. It would be so much easier to manage while trying to cook from it. The book is also published in Kannada as Gruha Sangaathi & I think it has both a vegetarian and a non-vegetarian version. Rating : 4 / 5

Home Remedy : Sore eyes

A common remedy for sore eyes/Conjunctivitis/red eyes in Mangalore is corriander seeds soaked in water.

If you have sore eyes (red corneas often accompanied with sticky discharge which quite possibly crusts the eyes closed in the morning) this is a Manglorean home remedy.



Get a teaspoon of coriander seeds, wash them clean of any surface dirt. Tie them up in the corner of a clean handkerchief or muslin cloth. Soak the corner of the cloth with the seeds in about 100 ml of clean water (boiled and cooled or bottled water) for 4-8 hours.

Drop a few drops of the liquid into the affected eyes, 3-4 times daily (or more often if there is a lot of oozing). Make a fresh liquid at least every 24 hours.

The liquid from the coriander seeds is also cooling and soothing for tired eyes.