Mothagam – vella kozhukattai is a must for Vinayagar chaturthi. We make usually mothagam with channa dal plus coconut pooranam. This time, I wanted to post kozhukattai recipe with thenga pooranam. So tried it, asking recipe from my friend Sangeeta’s MIL. It was super yummy!. I had always a thought that thenga pooranam may be too too sweet, and never tried. Only tasted twice at Jeyashris house. But when I tried this, I really loved this, its so easy too unlike the channa dal pooranam we usually make. Vj too loved it so much! Now my usual story about the festival, please feel free to skip it As a kid I have always enjoyed ‘pillayar sadhurthi’. Dad and bro are talented enough to make clay idol of vinayagar at home itself. We take mud from our own backyard for this. And when it comes to decoration, that is painting it colourful, I used to help. I loved that part.  When the day of celebration comes, we keep two black beads ready and after the ‘abishekam’ gets over, we insert that in the eye part, after which only vinayagar is officially born . I used to sit and watch eagerly what are all the things dad used for abishekam – lemon juice, honey, milk, curd, mashed banana,pure sandal (sandanam), turmeric etc and water in between each item... And not to miss the cute little mouse (moonjoor) also gets all these abishekams . My paati used to assist the whole thing. I feel now Aj misses all those things! In our in-laws house we celebrate the same way, but in a brief manner.
        And we make kozhukattais all of us sitting together – mom, dad, bro, paati and me.. Afternoon, just for padayal we make 11 kozhukattai in each and finish the padayal and in the evening we start to make lots for dinner. And we enjoy hot, soft and delicious - it goes in without any counts . And not only the pillayar chadhurthi day, as long as the pillayar is kept at home before its dissolved. Every evening mom makes something to offer the idol. Sundal and appam will be mostly made. Since there will not be any rivers or ponds nearby, we dissolve the idol in a big tub of water kept in our garden and after it gets dissolved super fast (yes super fast as its homemade) we pour the water to the flowering plants that we have in our garden. Sweet memories!