INTRODUCTION

The kitchen in Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Ettimadai serves around 4800 students and around 1000 teaching and non-teaching staffs. It is nearly 13 years old and yet employs sophisticated culinary machines, both fully and semi-automatic. Providing good quality and healthy food has always been the prime objective of Amrita.

DIVISIONS
The entire campus has been divided into two blocks, A and B. The Agasthiya Bhavanam, Vashishta Bhavanam, Gauthama Bhavanam, staff canteen and the Vidyalaya hostel is under the A block. The B block contains the Yagnavalkya Bhavanam, Mythreyi Bhavanam, Vyasa Bhavanam, Gargi Bhavanam, Anushya Bhavanam, Canteen-1, Canteen-2, Supervisor canteen, Site canteen, Gokulam canteen, Guest house and the MBA canteen. The blocks will be provided with different breakfast and dinner but the menu for the lunch remains the same for both.

STATISTICS
The quantity of each item produced is collected from the kitchen manager Mr. Ponambalam. The statistics are given below.

Breakfast:
Item Bread Upma/pongal Idly/dosa Sambhar Chutney Quantity 350 loafs 90 kg 8500 pieces 350 l 175 l

Lunch:
Item Rice Chapatti Curry 2nd curry Sambhar Veg. curry Curd Pappad Juice Rasam Quantity 450 kg 160 kg (8500 pieces) 600 l 150 l 600 l 350 kg 250 l 11000 pieces 1200 l 210 l

Dinner:
Item Puri Channa masala Chapatti Rice Payasam Quantity 20000 pieces 400 l 22000 pieces 260 kg 1000 l

(The above statistics are just approximate values. The above is the quantity consumed by blocks A and B combined.)

MANAGEMENT OF EXCESS FOOD

The above table shows the amount of average food produced per day. Everyday approximately 5% of the food produced is brought back from the hostel as excess food. This is then combined with the food which is freshly produced and sent to the workers mess. The mess timings for the workers are scheduled in such a way that it starts immediately after the students mess closes. Also the excess food from the kitchen is supplied to the people of the Ettimadai village. As our honorable chancellor, Amritanandamayi insists, Amrita strictly adheres to the policy that food must never be wasted. Amrita tries it at most to minimize the food wastage.

THE WASTE COLLECTED FROM THE HOSTEL

The food which is dumped into the waste in hostels is sent to the compost pits where it is decomposed and used as manure. This food which is thrown as waste is around 200 litre. The water obtained from the kitchen after washing the rice is not thrown away. Instead, it is fed to the cattle. Thus it is evident that Amrita strives to minimize the quantity of food that is thrown away as waste.

KITCHEN STAFFS
The kitchen is headed by swami ----------. The staffs are efficiently managed by Mr.Ponambalam . The kitchen has 135 staffs coming from parts of Orissa, Tamil Nadu and Kerala and working in two shifts. Each shift has duration of 8 hrs. The staffs are divided into two groups. The first group starts the days cooking at 4 am till 8 am. They again have a shift at 3 pm till 7pm. The second group cooks the lunch and they stay till 8 pm. During dinner, both the groups prepare food to meet the maximum food demand. After the food is prepared, the manager inspects the food so that there is no compromise made in the quality of food produced.

CULINARY MACHINES
The Amrita kitchen employs machines for making chapatti, parotta, dosa and puri. The chapatti machine used is fully-automatic and can make 2000 chapattis per day. The parotta machine is made by the

mechanical engineers of amrita. The dosa and puri machines are semi-automatic. The machine used to cut vegetables costs around Rs. 7,00,000. The kitchen uses steam cooking due to the various pros.

SUPPLIES
Everyday 5 cylinders of LPG are consumed in the process of producing food. The supplies of coconut, brinjal, ladies finger, green chili etc. are obtained from the farms owned by Amrita. But they are not always relied upon.