Where have all the goodies of yesteryears gone ?

Always old is gold, Mrs. Chith.
I think home-made taste is yummier than the store- bought, which is easily available for distribution.

sriniketan

 

Hi Chits,

I totally agree with your blog. Those soft idlis, perfect circle dosas and rotis, round gulab jamuns, crispy pappads (fried) as I see roasted in most houses now a days, upmas, everything is missing. In Mumbai we have settled to the Shetty's outlets (most of the hotels are run by Shetty's). Breakfast is Poha, Omlette, sheera, vadapav, bhajipav, misal pav. Lunch is masala dosa, daal rice and pappad, sada dosa, utthapa. Dinner is Pav Bhaji.
Missing all the good food. Though I prefer to stick to my old fashioned idlis, dosais, pohas, sambhar rice, more kuttan etc..

 

Dear Chithra,

I enjoyed reading your nostalgic blog. First things first. Don't use "foodie" in a derogatory sense on yourself. If you are a foodie, I am a "kanakkie" and so is Mr. Viswanathan. And no work is superior to another. Anyday I would prefer a first grade vatha kuzhambu to a third grade poetry. Honestly,while hungry I would prefer a second grade vathakuzhambu (and paruppu usili) to a first grade poetry.
You took me to my childhood days where sweet-making in our house will be a big "kalyaanam.". My aunt, my grand mother and my mom will be busy in the kitchen all day. We will be hovering around that area to get the first taste of delicacies.

Packaged sweets were unheard at that time. Sweets were there only for very important festivals. The preparations will go for two days non-stop, followed by a week of non-stop eating. We would restrict our food intake so that we can eat more sweets.

Today we order sweets by phone. Modern Restaurant makes a door delivery in their van. The sweets are professionally made. But what happened to that taste, which was there in the laddu (and rava laadus) prepared in a poorly lighted kitchen which did not even have a gas stove, let alone other amenities?

Thanks for taking us in the time machine to the nostalgic past.

regards,
sridhar

 

This is an awesome thread.. My observation - One reason why we are losing the goodies is because it is no longer mandatory for a girl to learn making them any more.. My mom's generation used to have a professional training of all kitchen goodies before she got married. But a generation later, well nobody insisted. I was in the US and knew how to survive with a normal sambar, rasam, poriyal, koottu and took a month off to get married But one good thing about this generation is that they go out of the way to learn things if they are interested - be it cooking or music or traditions. Whoo whoo, never ever try to force it on them, because they suck big time if they don't have their heart in it. These arts would definitely not die - So many of us have tried making those yummy authentic recipes from this thread (akkaravadisal mmmmm..), learnt a couple of songs from musicindiaonline via infinie repeat sessions, learnt some nice shlokas, took a sneak peak at the philosophical threads..

Ofcourse the inevitable truth is that times will change and we shall not enjoy the same occassions in the same way forever.. I still remember the trip to marina beach and drive-in dinner on some privileged saturdays as a kid and we used to dream about it for 2 days before and relish it for 2 days after.. But now, going to a restaurant means nothing for a kid, because it happens whenever mom is tired to cook at home after her tiring week at work. We used to admire the Diwali dresses stacked in the shelf for weeks and try imagining how we would look on the D-Day wearing it and all those accessories (match-match collections).. Kids today get to wear new dresses so often that it is not as thrilling for them on Diwali day to wear them, as it were for me. I think the charm is not lost, but is distributed across the other new fun things that have sprung up. We all feel nostalgic about our childhood and yesteryears because I think it is human psychology to feel that we had better fun before than now.. Nice thread everyone, I didn't know until today that we had blogs here.. Yipppee..

Affly,
Gayu