Divine cuisine - Neivedyam and prasadam

Whenever I visit the Skandagiri  temple  and walk out with the prasadam, I end up thinking what is it with the prasadam that has this fulfilling taste and will give you satiation when you have even just a little from that small shallow leaf cup.  It is less than a ladle but you feel your dinner is complete  and the taste , oh so…. Heavenly!

Is it the ritualistic cooking  that goes into the making of the Neivedyam( offering to god)?

I have visited many temples where the visit is completed with the prasadam and everywhere I have experienced  such divine taste.  Most big  temples that I have visited have huge halls where meals are served and  the food offered here is  sattvic meal. 

One of them  that I have often visited  is the ISKCON temple near my parents home, here  though commercially it is called ‘Annakuta’ . 

 According to higher taste of ISKCON( Higher taste is their publication), the wholesome meal is cooked according to vedic scriptures  without the use of onions, garlic, eggs, caffeine and is never over- spiced and the food thus prepared is offered to god as ‘Neivedyam’. This food when partaken after offering to god with vedic vibrations sanctifies the food and renders the food tasty and is  called ‘Prasadam'.

                                ( Jagannath temple prasadam counter photo taken from my mobile)

 The food is cooked  according to the satvic principles of Vedas.  The food is  thus  created with positive vibrations & thoughts  and cleanses  both body and mind. It also keeps us healthier.  I have read that the important factor that goes into ritualistic cooking is that it is made with good thoughts.  While cooking the thoughts play a major role in the outcome.  The thoughts of the cook flow into the food that we cook and have their impact on it and so one should not cook food when one is angry and stressed .And, also the cleanliness/hygiene of the cooks and the vibrations of the various mantras they chant while cooking must be rendering the divine taste to the food. 

 At home too, it is a practice among my family elders in our native place   to treat cooking like a ritual. They cook food only after having their bath. They cook on slow fire  in special vessels which endow the taste and aroma , they  chant mantras while cooking. The food is first offered to God  along with ghee, then to  crows and then served to people at home. Perhaps the reason why it tastes divine and satiating. Food had with such positive vibrations peacefully are supposed to be healthy. 

There are many such places of worship which are famous for prasadam, some of which I have had the pleasure of  experiencing were -

1. The foremost is ofcourse  at Tirupati  – the GIS marked Laddu, dadhiyodanam(curd rice) and puliogre( tamarind rice).
2. At Udipi (Karnataka)which  is called Anna brahma kshetra( where food is treated as god) there is a huge hall catering to the devotees and serves food to all the devotees.
3. At Sri kshetra Dharmasthala again in Karnataka.
4. The sattvic meal at Ramanasramam( Sri Ramana maharishi's ashram). Here you will find many foreigners squatting on the floor and eating with their fingers from plaintain leaf as if they were born with the practice.
5.  The puliogre of most Vishnu temples especially the one at Devagiri( Bangalore). My in-laws would wait till 1.p.m( closing time) at the temple on Saturdays because my then 5 year old daughter loved this and would wait to grab it.
6. The thambittu( made with jaggery, ghee & riceflour on festive days) at most kannadiga homes.
7. The ksheera ( sugar, rava &ghee) during satyanarayana vrat
8. The kadubu( fried modaks) during sankatahara chaturthi
9. The aravana payasam of sabarimala, Kerala( rice kheer made with  jaggery)
10. The paal payasam @ guruvayoor( made with milk and rice)
11. The pazhani panchamirtham (tamilnadu) ( medley of fruits, honey and palmsugar)
12. The pongal at ISKCON, Bangalore  and the various Krishna Prasad like pizza, burger, vegan biscuits, cakes. Yes, every vegan product here is sold in the name of Krishna Prasad and it tastes divine.
13. The sundals( usal) at various homes during navratri visits.
14. The snake pit mud at kukke subramanya( remember this temple site got more hits when Sachin tendulkar visited)
15. The tilgul of shirdi( made with sugar and til)
16. The  sugar balls of varanasi and most temples up in the north.
17. The haldi at Saraswati temple, and the brahma temple @ Trichy

                 ..... and  many more I am leaving this list incomplete..........

Would you care to add yours in the comments section?

...... more about Anantgiri

The next day morning we woke up to the song call of birds and stepped on the balcony to see the valley veiled with mist. Closer below,  in the resort garden,  there were many  exotic birds hopping on the ground. We  found a bird with copper sulphate blue and dark blue plumes.

We decided to go sighting  birds so that we could find some exotic birds in their natural habitat and our  teens were eager to capture them in the new camera. They had gone through many online photgraphy  journals  the day before we started so that they could shoot some pictures.

 We  left our room  armed with camera but before driving out we hopped into the cafeteria for tea. We found that the cook arrived only at 7.30 and there would be no tea till then. The next tea shop is 6 kms downhill at Vikarabad or the one opposite the temple. We drove to the temple site and had tea outside the hotel.

As we were sipping tea , the sun was slowly peeping leaving a lovely morning weather. This was supreme driving weather  and we wanted to make use of it. We decided to explore and find where the road to the temple’s right would take us. (the road opposite to vikarabad)  and so off we went for  a joy drive early in the morning.

As we travelled down the road  for a kilometer, we saw there were many lorries giving us company. The road was excellent without any potholes and after a km, we found we were driving down hill, the road went in circles and we saw the real terrain here. Rocky and dry vegetation,  we could see a lake in the far end , we decided to drive there.

The destination of the joy ride  was the lake but due to a misguiding or miscommunication between a villager and me, we found ourselves  driving onto some plains on the right side amongst flower farms and tuvar dal farms, cabbage patches. The village which we entered by mistake had village houses with unique roofs. The roofs had stone slabs stacked one over the other. From the road, I could even see women using the chakki for grinding some grains.  A sight which I had seen in movies and in some urban museums depicting village life. This was a surprising sight as well. Most houses had dish antenna but relied on stone grinders instead of mixies.  I later came to know from a resort worker that this place was called Tandur and is famous for the famous tandur blue and yellow stones. These stone slabs are used for wall cladding and flooring and the creative people of tandur have even used them for roofing.  This was once the fluorishing and prospering town during the Nizam's times.  The rich forests in the nearby areas were the hunting grounds for the rulers of Golconda. But due to deforestation, many wildlife like tigers don't thrive here any more.  The stone slabs are transported to many places in India and abroad and now that explains those lorries which must have been on the way to the quarry. 

 the houses at tandur village, here the women were using chakki to grind. I heard later that jowar roti called bakri is the staple of the folks here. Perhaps, they were grinding the same( wish i had clicked that too).

                                    don't miss the dish tv antenna on the roof top and the roofing of course

Now,  that was indeed an unique joy ride and we drove uphill (resort) for breakfast and left for our trek. The same trail through those 50 steep steps, past the temple tank and three  kms into the forest amongst wild insects, trekking through some zig zag paths, bushes, chasing butterflies,  crossing brooks and listening to the calls and chirps of some unknown but beautiful birds. How i felt here  away from civilization( except for the off and on mobile network ) is something i won't succeed putting in words. The forest was'nt dense but it definitely was lonely and for me it was quite a task to pull out my adrenaline junkie family out of the forest.  We spent more than three hours there.

Perhaps the pictures taken by my teens can paint a picture. 

 My dot wanted to test one of the technic she had read about photography the previous day. to make the back ground hazy and the object sharp. She did it the other way round. hence the sharp background contrasting the hazy parrot.

 the size of the spider not just surprised me  but also made me wonder how much the forest provided for these to thrive. There were many such on our pathway.

             yeah, not very dense you can see the sun filtering in,  the pathway was easy.

                             some tree inter connections are fun for children to climb, hang and swing

                               this contrast in barks and the twining was interesting and there were many like these

                                                little  clear water streams that we crossed

                                         all these were grown enroute and we hoarded some home

                                                                           the tuvar dal plants in tandur 

 This is one of the easiest trek paths we had taken so far. (The toughest was at Abbey falls in coorg with leeches for company, but we were 13 years younger than). My energy levels have dipped since then.

We had an excellent time no doubt on that. But, was this the hunting grounds of the yesteryear kings? Sadly, we have lost lot of forest cover and we did'nt spot any wild boar or any animal not even a snake. This place was supposed to have had  good population of tigers once upon a time. Perhaps,  they have been the victims of animal-human conflict. It was evident from the amount of plastics strewn by the tourists and trekkers inside the forest other than the sharp edges of liquor bottles.  

Reams and reams have been/ are written in global press about conservation , protection, creating awarenss and threats to ecological balance and nature. The protection that nature provides for free might prove dear to replace unless some serious steps are taken. A nilam here and a sandy there often remind us to take care of the planet. 

Anyways, i put these thoughts aside, travelled down hill  to Vikarabad and found a beautiful mess which served homemade food by a lady.  After our lunch, we headed back home  hoarding  back some farm fresh vegetables  and we travelled into the festive city which was all decked up for Diwali. We did  some last minute festival shopping.

The next day, Just like you all, we too enjoyed Diwali :)