A-Z Food Cravings: Kaaradai

I was a bit lazy and wanted a new title for this letter. And since my friend was also equally lazy we both decided to do guest posts for it. So here is a post from K for Kishor who blogs at Blind Man’s Bluff

And here is where his A-Z series begins as well…

 

K for Kaaradai and Veladai

 

Any festival around my house-hold is often only remembered by me by the special dish I get to eat on that day. Kaaradai and Veladai (salt and sweet adai) are two dishes I get to eat during Kaaradiya Nombu. Now, I actual don’t know the significance of the festival except that my Dad ties a nombu thread on my Mom on that day and I get to eat these wonderful dishes.

My childhood memory of these dishes is, coming back from school and entering my house to the smell of sweet jaggery boiling as Mom doesn’t let me into the kitchen without a bath. I hold my hankering for the dishes and follow every rule my Mom puts in the dire hope of devouring the adais sooner. The two adais are best had with butter (uthukuli vennai) and words fail me in explaining how awesome the salt, sweet and butter just melts in your mouth.

After many years of deprivation from this marvelous dish due to me being in USA, I finally got to taste them a few weeks ago when the festival came again in March and my parents were with me. It was sort of fate since my Dad was supposed to go back to India leaving my Mom with me just the day before the festival. But a snow storm cancelled his flight and made him stay two more days. We celebrated the festival as we always do when I was a kid and I got back home from work that day to the same nostalgic jaggery smell. I had them with butter (USA vennai) and yet the taste and the feeling I got eating them remained the same.

 

 

Happy Eating!

 

And Thanks Kishor 🙂