"You truly are a God-send! …I'm just learning to cook…I'm away from India and there's no one to guide me……Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for all your posts! (please put recipes for karthigai urundai also…)”
Breathless messages such as these await Latha Maami daily on ‘The Yum blog'. Grateful cooks have been writing to her since 2007.
Tired of being left out of all the Internet activity around her, Latha Narasimhan decided she also wanted a piece of the action. “I wanted to do something online too. But first, I had to learn how to operate the computer,” she admits wryly. She decided she would put down the plentiful recipes she had noted down while watching her mother cook. Today, Latha's blog has nearly 25 lakh hits. (She blogs with her daughter Lakshmi). Latha is anxious to preserve traditional recipes.
“ Deepavali marundhu , food for the new mom, the pregnant woman… We should not lose those recipes. Putting them on my blog ensures they stay around.” She collects recipes from the older cooks she knows such as her invaluable source, Parameshwari Akka, who lives in Kulithalai.
It is not just frantic ‘how-to-make-puliodharai' posts that Latha receives. Sometimes it is her opinion on a microwave oven, and once there was an SOS asking help to tie a nine-yard sari! During festivals she has to clear last-minute doubts. “I am usually running from kitchen to computer all day long,” she says. Lakshmi loves the idea of blogging with her mom. She says, “The Internet offers such a wonderful, democratic way to document, preserve and share.”
Marathon mom
Thirty-seven-year-old Srivalli has two blogs, one daughter and twin sons. So a lot of what goes into her ‘Spice your life' blog is kid-tested and approved. “My daughter has always been a fussy eater. So I had to come up with ideas to encourage her to eat. My boys, on the other hand, are fine with whatever I make. But I have noticed that when I say that I have made something especially for them, they eat better,” she says. Her other blog, ‘Cooking 4 all seasons' features everyday food. Srivalli says her blog is like a journal. “It records my adventures as a cook, mom, and a person passionate about food and writing.” Her chocolates, chicken biryani and sponge cake have won admirers and she is surprised how many people want to know how to make rasam! Grateful newly-weds have told her that her blog has saved their marriages. In Spice… Srivalli holds a blogging marathon in which participants post a recipe on 14 consecutive days on a particular theme. So if the theme is paayasam, bloggers have to post a paayasam recipe every day. They also have to read all the posts and leave comments on them. “Members tell me that the marathon pushes them to be regular bloggers and eggs them on to try new dishes. The marathon is a year old now.”
His paati's voice
In Krish Ashok's really funny blog called ‘Tambrahm rage cooks', paatis tell you how to make adai in their wobbly voices and stentorian periammas, arachuvitta sambaar and morekeerai . Ashok asks members of his family for recipes and records their instructions, without telling them. “Otherwise they may become self-conscious,” he says. The conversations are peppered with goofy questions.“I thought it was a good way to capture the voice of that generation,” he says. He runs the blog with co-founder Nandita Iyer, who has another blog too, called Saffron Trail.
Blogs such as Ashok's are sometimes so entertaining that people visit them not just for recipes. “They are like the fat glossy recipe books we drool over and not necessarily cook from, or like the luscious Nigella shows that are to be watched more for the pleasure of it than any edification,” says cookbook collector P. Ramya.
G. Krishnan feels the same way. “Once in a while I read a blog where my niece posts. It's called marriedtoadesi.com and she has a lot of recipes especially of use to a newly married Indian in the U.S. I also found one youtube video where a maami in Srirangam was giving cooking tips in Tamil.”
For Preeti, who loves to cook for her young family and friends, it is about nostalgia. She says, “I have subscribed to Tarla Dalal's blog. That is because she has been a part of my childhood. All the recipe books in our house were by her. Some nice recipes still come up and I do make them.”
Even Lakshmi of The Yum blog visits other blogs and not necessarily for recipes. “I just enjoy the writing and outstanding photography in some of them. My favourite for reading is whenmysoupcamealive.blogspot.com, and tastypalletes.com has perhaps the best photographed Indian food on the Net.”
