Join me for some “Thalis and Platters” all of this Apr!

Welcome to this year’s first Mega Blogging Marathon that happens twice a year! Unfortunately we will have only one Mega BM this year as the we had to postpone the April Mega BM on Thalis to September. The theme we had selected was Thalis and Platter.

It is a theme that we decided almost a year and a half before and it surely required so much planning ahead! The word Thali surely brings in a scare to many when they think they got to cook so much for a meal.

Thali is an Indian word referring to the meal that is served for Lunch or Dinner, mostly Lunch as we tend to eat heavy meals. Thali refers to the huge circular plate on which different dishes are served in small cups or Katoris. In the South Indian States, thalis can refer to the Banana leaf meals, where the food is served on a banana leaf.

However, when we refer to restaurant meals, the food is always served on plates that have many other smaller portions of dishes served at the same time. Thalis have always fascinated me and I have cooked many such thalis in the past. I have them tagged as South Indian Thali and North Indian Thali, that you can check out.

Coming to the theme on hand, while discussing this my friends were teasing me if I will be doing this theme on my C4AS site as well. Obviously, I can’t ignore this site. While most of my Mega BM cooking has always been a month before, this time I just can’t plan in that way, so I got myself plan the themes and what I plan to do on both the sites.

For this Mega BM on Thalis and Platters, we have 5 different themes spread for 5 weeks. We have the choice to pick the theme for each week, with two 4 days and three 6 days per week.

The themes decided were below
1. Simple every day assembled mini thalis.
2. Platters
3. Thalis featuring Indian Bread.
4. Thalis featuring Regional Cuisines. This thali focuses on perfect traditional Thali
5. Breakfasts from different states / Theme based thalis

Since I was doing on both, I had to pick a sub theme and it ended up being those weeks that were platters and themes, so as I do share Non Vegetarian food in this space, I decided to showcase the regional Cuisine with special Non Vegetarian Meals we cook on Sundays.

Though the sub themes have specific rules on the number of dishes per thali, I took the liberty to deviate. I may not have been able to showcase the said number of dishes per thali for this week, though I seriously tried. The fact is, when it comes to non veg dishes, my folks are very specific and won’t go into too many dishes. If I make biryani, at the most they like just the gravy served. They won’t mind some starters and dry dishes though. However, it becomes too much of work for us. So I didn’t plan it that way.

While I did plan and had some handful of thalis and platters done ahead, I was indisposed in between and couldn’t cook. When I got back to cooking, I had more than half the days to cook. I am happy that I managed to cook and complete major part of the days by mid March. I still have some more to get done, I am sure I will be able to do.

As always these themes and cooking wouldn’t have been possible without Amma’s help. She is always my soundboard for ideas. The rest of my family for enjoying the meal they end up eating. I must confess that each and every meal I have prepared for this theme, has been fantastic and everybody has requested a repeat. I may have gone overboard in picking some themes, my kids for being so patient for the shooting to get done before having their meal.

I have thoroughly enjoyed and have been exhausted before words. Still, I won’t mind doing it again! I hope my readers will enjoy what is going to be shared all through September!

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Posted in: Indian Cook