South Indian Festivals

Last weekend i was busy with "Varalakshmi Pooja". This pooja is normally done by families who have been doing it for generations. When a newly wed girl enters in to a family with the tradition of doing this pooja, she also takes on this custom. It comes on a Friday in the Tamil month of Adi or Avani. This year the pooja day fell on Friday, the 20th of August. Ladies celebrate it in a grand way by decorating the face of Varalakshmi Amman & then cooking varieties of food. Items like idli, kozhakkatai, variety rice, vadai, appam, sundal & payasam are prepared for the pooja. I will give the recipes for a few of these items in my future blogs .

Week end was also time for another festival. This is the famous Onam festival of Kerala. Kerala was once ruled by King Mahabali. Keralites believe that their king visits them every year during this festival. They adorn their houses with rangolis done with flowers to invite the king in to their homes. This rangoli is called "Pookalam". The whole family gets together on this occasion & a grand feast is prepared. This feast is called "Ona Sadya". Sadya in Malayalam means feast. More than 20 different varieties are prepared for this feast & served in a plantain leaf. Will give the recipes of a few items soon. Onam this year was on 23rd August.

The festivals yet to come are - "Gokulashtami" or "Sri Krishna Jayanthi" on Sept. 1st & "Vinayaka Chathurthi" on Sept. 11th. I will give details about these festivals in due course.