Special Mom’s blog

Yesterday was Karadaiyan nombu. The women fast on that day and pray for a long life for their husbands. This is not a public holiday or a festival celebrated by all Hindus. A fasting and prayer done by a very small community. An offering to Goddess is made with rice, jaggery (a natural product of sugarcane), and black eyed beans (and butter as side dish). The fast is broken after the offering. I checked up on the recipe on YouTube and it had 50,000 hits, maybe not a small community!

It is really hard to keep jaggery in our house since my son obsesses with it. He can finish a pound of these cubed sweeteners within a few days, so we decided to buy it yesterday just before I prepared the dish. Do you know what is tricky? Shopping in a store while fasting. It is not as if I had an empty stomach. I did have a lot of liquid food but seeing the food, does make your stomach growl more!

As I prepared the food, my taste buds were opening up, but I made the dish quick. Along with my husband I offered the same with regular prayers. The custom is also that the food should not be tasted before it is offered. After the offering myself and my husband decided to taste it and that is when we found out the powdered jaggery which we purchased to cheat my son was not much of a sweetener. The sweet just tasted like plain rice cake! Maybe Goddess decided this sweetness was sufficient since we are both middle aged!

Rest assured my son is not going to touch this powdered jaggery!

Or on second thoughts was it the covid that we got a couple of months ago still lingering with the loss of taste? Have to wait and see for the jaggery to be finished!

Footnote:

Both salt rice cake, the white and sweet ones, the brown are offered and the salt one came out real good!