Arusuvai Friendship Chain and an Event Entry

During one of my usual blog hop, Meera's post on Eggless Banana Cake caught my attention. I always look for eggless cakes. Among the list of the ingredients, she had mentioned about doodh masala. She has posted the recipe for the same earlier. In the recipe for doodh masala , found one ingredient which was new to me.Haven't heard about that before. On further googling,landed at Indira's. Needless to say, its a treasure house of recipes featuring all most all ingredients used in various regions of India. She has introduced the ingredient for doodh masala in one of her posts on Indian ingredients. What to say about her pictures. They are so real that you might extend your hand to pick them from your screen.

Now cut to the Arusuvai Friendship Chain. Arusuvai is started in India by the mother-daughter duo - Latha amma and Lakshmi of The Yum blog. I had mailed Srivalli, of interest to be a part of the chain. Ever since, Srivalli mailed me that I was to receive from Gaurav, I have been visitng his blog everyday to see if he has posted on his arusuvai ingredient. What to say about the post
on Arusuvai, there wasn't any updations on his blog then. One fine day, there arrived his post. He made up for the delay with 3 posts on the ingredient he received. Still a week passed, with out his mail confirming he sending me the courier. Finally received the intimation from him. He had mentioned the courier guys asking for door no etc. In my place, the building/door no doesn't have any significance. Rest of the address details is enough to locate.

And it arrived at my door two days back. As soon as I opened I found a packet of some seeds. If not I have stumbled on Meera's post, I will not have known what it is. How hard I might guess. If I taste it, I might have a feeling of having tasted it before, but never its name. It was Charoli/Chironji/Saara Pappu. Many thanks to Indira for introdcing it to me and to Gaurav for giving me an opportunity to use it. I feel, this is the spirit of Arusuvai.

I prepared Dates Banana Milkshake adopting recipe of Chandrika of Akshayapatra.
Since I had to prepare for 5 and didnot have enough dates, I added some Dates syrup also. Garnished with the charoli seeds sent by Gaurav.

I am sending this off to Sig's MBP event, which has Mixed Drinks as the theme.

I will be sending a secret ingredient to Sunshinemom of TongueTicklers.

PS. If any of you , who reside in India and is interested to part of this friendship, please leave a comment in Srivalli's or at Bharathy's blog, who are co-ordinating this.