Navarathri - Which is one of my favorite hindu festival. Since I was born and brought up in an Agraharam, we celebrate navarathri in a very grand manner. There were 40 residents in that Agraharam and 36 residents will have navarathri festival. Since I am the only girl in our family, my mom and my aunt used to put costumes everyday like madisaar mami, krishnar, Radha, Ramar, etc. It used to be really fun to visit everyone's place everyday without fail, with all my friends and most of all collecting Sundal is the main part of navarathri for us. We never bothered to see the decorations people have made or new idols sitting in the padi etc, our goal is to collect Sundal and we work hard (!) to collect maximum. Now a days my girls' miss all those fun. So I try to make whatever I could during these Navarathri days to make them happy and enjoy the festival. I didn't follow any particular theme this year cos one of my twin is sick with viral fever. I just arranged the idols. First padi is Vinayakar - Lakshmi - Saraswathi set, and Murugan - Valli kurathi - Deivanai kalyana kolam along with kalasam. Second padi is karthikai Pengal with baby Murugan in lotus flower set. Third padi is Dasavatharam (not kamal's movie) with a small Venkatachalapathy and Ragavendrar (some people believe, he is a avatar of Mahavishnu) and Laughing buddha. Fourth and Fifth padi were arranged by my twin girls. Fourth padi has a tusker elephant, Halloween pumpkin, Mermaid and Newyork skylights. Fifth padi has dolphins, santa, leather back seaturtle, snowman, birds, a small house and Lasvegas Luxor model. My better half is not interested in all these rituals and he doesn't believe in these rituals. So he never bothers to help us out.
This is what I made during Navrathri as Neivedhyam. First day started with Simple Vermicelli Payasam .
Next day I made Garbanzo Sundal which was really a hit.
On thursday I made Black eyed bean sundal with Quick Carrot Halwa.
On friday, I made Mixed vegetable Sundal with Paal and pazham (milk+banana+sugar) as sweet.
On Saturday, I made , Black Chickpeas Sundal with Oats Vadai and sojji(kesari).
On sunday, I had only rice, cos I had to visit friends' place to get navarathri thaamboolam.
On monday I made Rajma sundal with Pal Payasam.
On Tuesday I made carrot halwa and no Sundal(!). On wednesday, I just did the regular cooking with rice and milk as naivedhyam. and On thursday, I made paruppu vadai (will write the recipe in detail cos I didn't deep fry the vadai, instead I bake them) and sabudhana payasam as prasadham and finished the navarathri celebrations successfuly.
