What to Start.. How to Start ..these were the questions troubling me last 2,3 days soon after i got the courage to publish a food blog. Though i am a regular vistor of all these georgeous food blogs around this world, i never thought of starting my own.But now i cannot resist the temptation, i want to do something, i wont reach anywhere near to all these magnificant ladies but still i can just track down ..may be my daughter will find this useful in a later stage..huh who knows :) the big question is how long i will stick to this !! With a 'wonderful' history of non ending hobbies, i suspect this new interest will soon diminish , anyway lets see..
I was thinking which dish should i start with, Thought of starting with a Vilakku (Lamp) and a sweet dish, the way we start all things with this pooja ...hmm no ..i dont want to make dishes for the sake of blogging, let me start with something wont surprise my family members, otherwise they will start asking when did you prepare this ?hmm...
When thinking about food and cooking , definitely the first one to remember is my Amma.. Dont know how she taught us cooking, dont remeber an instance where she actually taught us something,by giving a systematic lesson on any dish, but things were smooth and at the time of marriage we all were able to manage something in the kitchen. Also now i always wonder how she handled everything with three hungry kids and a perfectionist husband.I cannot recall a single instance where she lament about what to cook for today, how to cook or even the time for doing all these things before 9:30 AM so she can go to school. We always had one or other very healthy food for breakfast, packed lunch boxes (including the big tumbler for pappa) and in the evenings too we had some evening snack followed by dinner..Her school was very near so by the time we come home, evening tea and snack will be ready in the table..We never bothered about all these things at that time, in fact she too never asked for any of our company in the morning time , sometimes in the evenings we did some cleaning works and chapathi making etc..but now with so many time saving machines and a single 5 year old, I lament daily twice or thrice, making menu plans, fuming brain on what to cook, searching blogs to see how to cook ,what else ..phew...... Hats off to Mom ..Moms are always like this( will my daughter get any feelings like me..hmmmmm) ..
So the first dish to open should be my moms favorite..When I remember her favorites always the first thing is Kappa & Meen (Tapioca & Fish), for her birthdays, wedding anniversaries or any other occasion we celebrate for her the smell of tapioca & fish spread in our house. At the time of planning itself pappa will tell with a smile..what else "korachu kappem varalu thalayum ", and the next day we all have the smooth tapioca with some good fish curry. After giving everyone good center pieces Amma will sit in the table with the fish head and everyone starts teasing her..everytime the head was for amma and she eats it satisfactorily.. We got good back water fishes those times, the fresh jumping fishes.. mmmm ..yummy ..
Though we all loved this Nadan keralite dish very much, it was not served for any of our guests. It was always considered as a local food, not glamourous for guests, it was always a favorite for our private celebrations, never for any distinguished guests like uncles/aunts..Always guest tables were decorated with chicken, beef, or fish curry but not tapioca ..But things changed with the entry of first son-in-law, he was served the hi-fi dishes first but later my sister told amma secretly that he is so simple, will be satisfied with kappa-meen.. it was hard to change our regular guest dishes, but seeing his smiles and facial expressions on the yellow color of tapioca, we all sighed relief. Then comes the second son-in-law , ya none other than my sweet heart :). Our relief sigh became a surprise sigh because he loved only tapioca & fish , I was confused to find Tapioca as the main dish in his surroundings, wherever we go everywhere tapioca followed. Later i followed the same dialogues my sister told amma and she happily started introducing Tapoioca & fish to the main stream. I started to hate seeing the yellow color always in all the celebrations and always wondered what these guys find in this.
Later after coming to Kuwait i started missing Tapioca again and then only i understood the impact of NRI feelings in this local dish ..yeah all gulf NRI's ( dont know much about other NRI's) miss Kerala badly, the rains, the greenery, the rivers, the backwaters, the fish and of course Tapoioca ..So amma's two son-in-laws were struck with those feelings and later daughters also followed the same.Now whenever we go for vacation, the good old yellow color cordially invites us in the table and happily all greedy NRI's jump into that. Now we buy frozen tapoioca sometimes here and try to recreate the same smell but the good old memories smell much more while eating :)
What else should i select to start my blog, a loving gift to my Amma and my hubby dear ..
A filling lunch for us
