Rama Navami Panakam Recipe | Jaggery Limeade ~ Healthy & Refreshing Summer Drink

How to make Panakam or Panagam ~ Jaggery Limeade flavoured with crushed cardamoms, peppercorns and dry ginger, a refreshing and healthy summer drink

Today is the ninth and last day of Chaitra Navaratri as per Hindu calendar. Today is also Ram Navami, a festival that celebrates the arrival of Vishnu’s 7th avatar, Lord Rama. Growing up in South India, it meant eating kosambari (cucumber and moong bean salad) while guzzling down tall glass of Panakam (sweet and summery health drink of jaggery and lime flavoured with crushed green cardamom, peppercorns and dry ginger), listening to the tales of Ramayana.

I am not a religious person, but that doesn’t stop me from cooking and eating festive foods. As with any other Hindu festival, Ram Navami is also celebrated with special food offered to the deity called neivedyam. Once the food is offered to the god, it is distributed among people as prasad or prasadam, a blessed food. Panakam is one such food that is made during Ram Navami along with other neivedyams such as kosambari, and majjige neeru (spiced butter milk). They are simple and quite refreshing summer recipes, showcasing the wisdom and scientific reason with great health benefits behind every festival food designed by our ancestors. The word Panakam in Sanskrit means ‘sweet drink’ and as the name suggests, it’s a sweet drink of jaggery and lime flavoured with crushed green cardamoms, peppercorns and dry ginger.

Dum Aloo Kashmiri Recipe | How to Make Kashmiri Dum Alu

Learn how to make Dum Aloo Kashmiri ~ A traditional Kashmiri dish of deep fried baby potatoes cooked in creamy almond and cashew gravy, no onion-garlic recipe

After a month of sultry hot summer days, the skies have opened their doors to cool showers. The welcoming sight of rain drenched plants and trees and the pearly rain drops on a window pane is what exactly we needed after a days of heat waves. As the temperature dropped couple of degrees, our cravings for some spicy delights just went up a notch! Another reason to love the pittar-patter rain!

Husband had come home with a bag of baby potatoes from market and dropping few hints about the Dum Aloo Kashmiri he had had couple of years ago! I pretended not to hear him as the last few attempts of making the famous Kashmiri Dum Aloo were far from being a success story! And the triple sin of not just cooking the potatoes, but also deep frying them before dunking in a rich cashew-almond gravy was something I wanted to avoid when I am on a path of eating healthy! Well, I don’t have to say who won in the end! Interestingly I am not even ashamed to have had committed this triple sin! Ha…

Kashaya or Kashayam Recipe | A Herbal or Ayurvedic Drink from South India

Learn how to make Kashaya or Kashayam ~ Sweet and spicy herbal drink made using selected aromatic spices based on the ancient Indian health science of Ayurveda

I grew up in a joint family for the first 6 years of my life. When I was born, my first cousin was in his mid twenties while the youngest one was in his late teens. So it was not difficult for a chubby baby girl with jet black hair and cheeks that resembled a generous sized Idli to make every other person in our family to dance just by shaking my little fingers. I was pampered and a spoilt brat who had many people falling on my chubby feet for the first 22 months of my life. And then my exclusive control on everyone’s attention and being centre of everyone’s universe came to sudden halt!