Today is Onam. A festival celebrated by Malayalis from Kerala, a state in the South West of India. Regular readers of this blog will recollect that I have deep connections with Kerala, my late mother having been born there and apart from that, my having lived there for many years apart from visiting it in depth many times. I have friends there and also many Malayali diaspora friends and since morning have been flooded with Onam greeting messages which I have had to respond to.
While that part of the post was easy to create and write the next part is a little difficult. There are a number of families in India, who have suffered greatly during the lockdowns due to the pandemic and one of them is an entrepreneur who lives in my neighbourhood. She had to close down a small restaurant that she was running due to the lockdown. Unable to come out of the deep financial losses to restart her business, she has taken to cooking food at home and supplying to people desiring her specialities among them being food from Kerala.
A few days ago, a mutual friend had suggested to me to extend some support to this lady and since Onam was coming up I placed an order for two Onam specialities to be delivered to me today.
The top image is of Ela Ada and the lower one of Palada Pradhaman.
These two dishes were duly delivered this morning well in time for consuming during lunch and my son and I thoroughly enjoyed both dishes. Enough has been refrigerated for the DIL to have for her dinner on her return from work.
None of us are quite capable anymore of partaking traditional Onam meal like the one shown below, served on a plantain leaf.
