Roasted corn, chickpeas, peanuts, and soybeans made up the major lunch meal for most Nepalese even in the Kathmandu-valley until a few decades ago. Back then, almost all households in Kathmandu had a small patch of land around their house where they grew enough of their own vegetables and grains to last a full year. Not many people could afford a refrigerator in those days, so the roasted grains made ideal snacks and lunches for most households.
Corn and soybeans are still part of Nepali meals for some Nepalese, but these grains are now roasted in a metal pot, unlike in the olden days when they were roasted in an earthen pot over a wood-burning stove. The wood burning stoves have also been replaced with kerosene or gas stoves in most households in Kathmandu.
Outside of Kathmandu there still is a unique tradition of serving makai ra bhatmas bhuteko with a glass of buttermilk. Sometimes, a few slices of raw radish or soft radish leaves accompanied makai ra bhatmas bhuteko. While radish is a digestive root-vegetable with very few calories, soybeans are high in protein but need to be eaten with grains to get the complete nutritional value out of them. Thus, eating soybeans with corn, radish, and buttermilk was an ingenious idea that they had learned through their own experience, not from a book!
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