Join me for some “Thalis and Platters" all of this Sep!

Welcome to this year's first Mega Blogging Marathon that happens twice a year! This first one is themed on Thalis and Platter.

Life is so unpredictable and what was supposed to be for April 2020, had to be postponed to Sep. Things that happened forced us to take this depressing decision and we had to postpone the April Mega BM to Sep. So this year, we will have only one Mega BM.

Thali theme was decided almost two years 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. Even during our BM#100 Meet, we discussed this and were looking forward to it.

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 that site. While most of my Mega BM cooking happens during the month previous to Mega BM, 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

On C4AS I will be featuring a different set of themes for Thalis & Platters

Since I was doing on both my blogs, I had to pick a subtheme and it ended up being those weeks that were platters and themes, I picked up to do Kid's favorite. So in this space, you will see those themes that my kids enjoyed. I had picked up themes that were liked by the elders at home.

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 rush through the days to cope with all the themes I had planned. I am happy that I managed to cook and complete a major part of the planned schedule by mid March. I still have some more to get done, I am sure I will be able to do. This was what I had written when I schedule this during March.

I am updating this in June and I find that I still that many more posts to complete. I am hoping this two month's time will be done.

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!