Virundhunar Saapadu from Tamil Nadu – A feast for my guests

Tamil Nadu, the state to which I belong, literally means ‘The Land of Tamils’. I was born and part bought up in this state. The capital of the state is Chennai, formerly known as Madras. Tamil Nadu is in the Southern most part of the Indian peninsula and is bordered by Puducherry, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Tamil is the official language of the state. Tamil Nadu is one of the ancient civilizations in India. It is known for its Hindu temples of Dravidian architecture. It is known for its classical art, dance, music and literature. Some of the literary works are over 2000 years old.

The cuisine also known as the Tamil cuisine is a very popular cuisine through the country. Food is traditionally served in banana leaves and I just love that. When serving the spread today for Virundhunar Saapadu, I was feeling very bad that I could not get banana leaf and thanks to my dear friend, who offered to bring a leaf from the banana tree that she has indoors. So I was able to serve the spread in the banana leaf and also enjoyed eating in that.

When eating in the leaf, the biggest challenge is eating the rasam rice. I for one love to eat my rasam rice with lot of rasam. So eating without spilling it outside the leaf comes from challenge. We always eat in the banana leaf in my paternal grandparent’s house which is a village near Mayiladuthurai. I grew up on traditional food and my mother is a great cook, of course next to my grandmothers. I would love to go back in time and eat my grandmother’s food.

I was initially planning to make this Virundhunar Saapadu as one post, but thanks to my dear blogging friends, they asked me to do it as individual posts as the post would have become very long and the page would take forever to load. I did not want to not so the step by step pictorials just because of this and hence decided to do them as individual posts. Doing this also gave me an idea of starting a meal spread or meal idea in the blog.

So the menu for today’s Virundhunar Saapadu is –

• Payatham paruppu Payasam
• Thayir pachadi
• Mango pachadi
• Kadalai Paruppu Kosumalli
• Kovakkai curry
• Chow chow kootu
• Chinna Vengayam araichu vitta sambhar
• Thakkali rasam
• Rice
• Ghee
• Yogurt
• Pickle

Payatham paruppu Payasam / Moong Dal Kheer –

Thayir pachadi –

Kadalai Paruppu Kosumalli –

Kovakkai Curry / Ivy Gourd curry –

Chow chow Kootu / Chayote squash Kootu –

Chinna vengayam Araichu Vitta sambhar –

Thakkali Rasam / Tomato Rasam –