Onam Sadya @ Atlanta

This year’s Onam was celebrated at Atlanta. First year of my job i missed to celebrate Onam with my family , but after that for all Onam celebrations I was there with my family enjoying everyone’s presence. its nice to be with everyone, all uncles , their family , grand mom, my parents and siblings…its lot of fun..

This year unfortunately i’m miles away from them, but still didn’t as most of the time i was Video chatting with all of them. Saturday evening (21st August), I went for shopping with my friend to 3 different grocery shops to get all vegetables for  the Sadya (feast)…A big shopping, still i didn’t get Drumstick..I got banana leaves..that was surprising. came back late night after a long shopping and was all set to sleep to wake up early next day..but unfortunately how come a weekend night u could sleep early…Slept around 1 at night i think, after keeping alarm for 7AM.

Alarm rang and i dismissed ( these days i don’t snooze, I hate cheating myself) it. Woke up after 1 hr….oh crap..I’m not gonna make it for lunch….Got up , had a cup of tea and straight  to kitchen…

Thought of starting with Avial, my Mom makes it minimum once /week. i used to hate eating that always…but that day i felt to start preparing that..it took around 30-40mins for me to cut all the vegetables..i had borrowed 1 vessel from my friend last night. So i had 3 vessels in total. Kept Avial for preparing and started with Cabbage thoran.  Meanwhile i started video chatting with my relatives ..Every one was there at my ancestral house after attending my brother’s engagement..ya, including that news also here..It was my brother’s engagement that day.. i missed it, but thats ok..I’m waiting for my trip back to India for attending my brother’s wedding… Every one was pretty amazed to see me cooking very seriously..i showed them the Avial that cooked by that time.. Should have taken the photos of their pics , i could read their mind “Krishnan preparing Avial!!!!” .Started preparing Pineapple Pullisery then. While talking with them i put more turmeric to Pullisery…but later adjusted( wont tell the secret). My mom started directing me from there…I told her then , please don’t remote instruct me..I’ll screw up more..:-)

I think all the first 3 dishes came well..then started the issue of not having more vessels…..by then my roommate woke up and i asked him to get more vessels from our other friends( whom i was planning to call for the Sadya). He got a rice cooker and called up another friend to get Aluminium foil containers…After doing the inital adjusting of transferring the prepared food to pressure cooker and all, I asked my friend in helping me in cutting vegetables for Sambhar and Kootucurry. Meanwhile started preparing for Parripu curry. But Parripu curry didn’t came well.It was not bad, but didn’t come anywhere near to what my Mom prepares. My roomie kept rice for cooking and i started Kootu curry. I asked him to call our friends who frequently visits our house.. by that time it was already 12:30PM. I had to prepare Sambhar, Paalada payasam, Papadam (Papad) and Olan.

Then i tried to increase the pace and forgot to put the Small onions into the Sambhar( its secret how we managed later ). Started Palada payasam also and it was already 2:30PM…Everyone has assembled and was very hungry…

I realised  then guys are always guys….they started drinking beer…I was totally against the idea of mixing sadya with beer…but left that…Friends arranged for sitting in the floor, since thats a kind of style we do in Kerala, were everyone sits on the floor with plantain leaf in front of them where in which the food is served. one of my friend started preparing Papad and it was all set, while the payasam was still in the cooking stage…

Served the food in the traditional style in the plantain leaf where the pickles are served on left top and Avial is placed on right top. It was good to see everyone having the food and complimenting..I know Parippu curry was not gr8, but everything else came fine…we had in two rounds, by the first round got over, the plantain leaves were over and we started eating in paper leaves (its US ). By that time we served Paalada Payasam also.

The Sadya(feast) for 11 included all these

1. Avial
2. Cabbage Thoran
3. Pineapple Pullisery
4. Kootu curry
5. Sambhar
6. Parripu curry
7. Paalada payasam
8. Pappadam (papad) and obviously
9. Rice and ready made pickle

The funny part was after the sadya….every one started feeling sleepy after having the feast they were wandering inside the house for a space to lie down…some ppl managed to get space in our beds, some managed to lean against, some rested in chair. It was fun to see one of my friend trying to get space in the cushion set.

We were talking for some one hour after that, gossiping, trying to find out different Indian road names ..it was fun and after having tea we went to Stone mountain park….Sat there for one+ hour and came back home….

My cousin’s in Newyork was not believing the fact that I prepared Sadya , until they saw the pics..

Oh ya adding pics here Over all it was a nice Ona Sadya and i enjoyed it having here at Atlanta. having it at Trivandrum would have been better, when you have to bother to eat only, no need to worry about  cooking

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