Dinner

July 11th, 2008

Simple dinners are awesome. One such dinner was what I had today. My mom used to make all the varieties of podis like paruppu podi (dal powder – roughly speaking), karuvepalai podi etc. on a time to time basis and we used to devour them. Podi sadham is very famous in my home. We used to mix rice & podi along with gingely oil a.k.a nallenai & then eat that mixture. Gingely oil can also be replaced with ghee.

Today’s spread was very simple. We had piping hot boiled rice, few podis, avakka oorga (mango pickle) and then butter milk to finish off.

First we have a very small serving of the mango pickle near the corner of the plate. Then, a few rounds of piping hot rice is served & a spoonful or two of ghee or gingely oil. The aroma that starts wafting now … OMG !! its awesome! And on top of this, you have to put two or three teaspoons of podi, mix well and before you start eating a morsel, touch the avakka oorga with the tip of your index finger (meaning – konjam oorga thottuko) & then eat 😀 Now, close your eyes and relish the moment. The mixture of piping hot rice, podi, oorga and ghee will make you go crazy.

After a few rounds of this combo, comes more sadham or rice that is eaten with butter milk (making butter milk with perfect taste and proper thickness is a skill in itself). For the best effect, mix a small quantity of rice with lots of butter milk e.g. 1 portion of rice with 2 portions of butter milk. After you have mixed this well, add a few drops of the mango flavoured oil, taken from the avakka oorga container. Mix this well and oru kattu kattu !!

Enjoy 🙂

Change in breakfast

June 26th, 2007

Hi guys, Good Morning !

Just to try out a change in the everyday breakfast, I decided to have cornflakes. So, since this Monday, I’m on cornflakes. Here’s my preparation for you to try out.

1. Take a nice bowl and put 2 to 3 handful of cornflakes. Spread them out evenly.
2. Take a small cube of jaggery (called vellam in tamil) and crush it well. Add it to the cornflakes and mix it well by hand. Now, sprinkle some raisins (also called kanja draksha in tamil).
3. Get a half litre packet of cold milk and pour half of the “half litre pack” of milk to the mixture of cornflakes, jaggery and raisins. Don’t mix it now.
4. If you have honey, add a dash of it 😀
5. Get a banana, preferably ones that are big, such as the famous nenthirampazham or the pachai vazhai pazham (the bananas with the green skin). Cut them into small pieces and add them to the bowl.

Take a spoon and mix it well. Let it rest for a few minutes and then devour it 😀

Now, since this is mango season, instead of banana, you can use that also. Take a mango, a ripe one preferably. Peel off its skin properly, cut it into small pieces and add them to the bowl of cornflakes. That would make it delicious. Yesterday I tried out a mixture of both banana and mango and the resulting turned out to be awesome!

Try this out and let me know 😀