Pongal Festival and Recipes

Pongal Festival is a 3 day festival which starts from the last day of the tamil calender month Margazhi and proceed till the second day of the Tamil Calender month Thai. The first day of the festival is called Bogi followed by Thai Pongal and ends with Kanu Pongal.

Bhogi	Thai Pongal	Kanu Pongal

For Thai Pongal, first we need to get few important things from shop. We need flowers, coconut, betel leaves and nut, Sugarcane, turmeric plant (Manjakothu). We need to get 2 turmeric plants. One of the plant should have lots of turmeric and other should have nice big leaves which we can cut and wrap it in a plastic sheet and refrigerate and use it on Kanu.

In earlier days Thai Pongal is prepared in a hand made pot which is decorated fully with turmeric, kumkum and sunnaambu. we need to tie turmeric plant with leaves and turmeric around the pot. We can also make plain rice and sakkarai pongal in bronze vessel.  Nowadays we are preparing pongal in cooker and hence we need to decorate the pressure cooker accordingly. While we get the whistles, we need to tell “Pongalo Pongal” and pray to god.

Wish you a very happy Pongal.!