Arusuvai Friendship Chain; Another Season, The Celebration Begins

Before I start this post let me say Sorry to Bharathy as I could not keep up with my promises. She is a wonderful person which explains why she is still bearing with me when I single handedly delayed this whole post. This year has been very eventful for me and by that I mean everything went wrong. some incidents happened and is still happening to us that almost knocked us off, scared us to death and made us sick and tired. almost everything was on stake but then by God's grace we are safe and with his blessings fighting each and everyday. I don't want to talk about it much but things were and are not on my side lately...am so sorry for my delay but still I wanted to give it my best shot as this topic is very close to my heart.

It was the beginning of this year when I contacted Bharathy about the Arusuvai Friendship chain. before I tell about this friendship let me first tell you something that i never have revealed so far. my reason to enter the blogosphere. after my marriage I came to Bangalore, almost to an empty house. in this process of making a home for ourselves I started enjoying my role as a homemaker. I started experimenting with different cuisine and that was the time when I was introduced to food blogging. I found those recipes more trust worthy...as they are tried, tasted and real with a concern for family's health. I almost started spending my weekday afternoons browsing various blogs. on one such lazy afternoon I stumbled upon a blog where the blogger talked about this beautiful online friendship between food bloggers. I was touched with this and thought to myself that it must have been an awesome feeling to be a part of this community that shares almost everything, from recipes to feelings to ingredients. I might sound funny here but think of a channel where you have never met the other person but can open up your heart to ask for their opinion almost on everything...for me that was amazing and soon it intrigued me to be a part of this wonderful community with my little culinary knowledge. but by the time I was well aware of the various things going on in the community The Arusuvai chain was no where to be seen. so I contacted Bharathy to know the status and to start another season of this amazing friendship called Arusuvai.

The Inside Story:

Arusuvai Friendship chain is an online effort to touch the hearts of food bloggers across the world with a mystery ingredient and a promise of friendship. this was started in 2007 by Mrs. Latha Narasimhan of the 'Yum blog'.it was inspired by the Amish Friendship chain in the US which led her to think to start something similar to identify and unite Indian food bloggers too. in the beginning it worked as a chain by sending along a surprise ingredient to a friend to prepare something tasty with it, share the recipe and then passing on another mystery element to more people to continue the chain. Lathamma started the process by sending Bharathy and Renuka some mystery ingredient. she aptly named it Arusuvai which means " six tastes (aru=six, suvai=taste) in Tamizh and is used to refer for Tasty preparation with six tastes – inippu/ thithippu (sweet), orappu/ karam (hot), kassappu (bitter) , pulippu (sour), uppu(salt), tuvarpu (tastes that one gets in raw leaves). Her talented daughter Lakshmi came up with these beautiful logos for the event.

Later the format changed a little as Bharathy said, "Lakshmi and Lathamma were on a break. However, initially the chain went well with the predominant bloggers who knew one another. One more month to go and there was scarcity of recipients as many of the bloggers confronted with the same problem- who to send next??" 


So Bharathy and Srivalli started co-ordinating the whole process of identifying and listing interested bloggers and planning the donors and recipients. Finally they came up with a huge number of 50 food bloggers from all over India interested to start a new friendship with the help of Arusuvai. It was a daunting task which these two girls did with great enthusiasm and sincerity. you must read about their experience HERE and HERE.

Lets Join Hands:

Now cut to present time where I have got the green signal to again give it a fresh start but I with my problems delayed it so much. but as they say it's always better late than never so here I am, feeling extremely privileged and honored to announce another season of Arusuvai chain. so what are you waiting for friends? come along and be a part of this most cherished online friendship. I already have got my mystery package from Bhagrathy (recipe coming in next post) and trust me buddies cooking with an mystery ingredients is more fun and exciting than you think.

Rules:

now to the rules. the basic rule of the game goes like:


1. Bharathy has started the chain by sending me the secret ingredient. I will pass on the chain by sending mystery packages to 2 bloggers. They in turn will do the same to others, this way the chain will continue till we exhaust the list of all interested bloggers.

2. Now, the person who receives the package cooks something tasty with this and 
a. post recipe with a picture
b. the Recipe headline must include the name of Arusuvai. 

c. the post must include the Donor's name and the link of his/her blog

d. the links of the announcement posts (THIS ONE and BHARATHY'S and SRIVALLI's)

e. the links of the beginning posts of Bharathy, Srivalli and Lathamma

with the Arusuvai logo


(to get more idea of how it works you can click on any name on this round up.

3. If you don't blog, do share the recipe with the friend who gave it to you or post it as a guest post on someone you know who blogs.

4. bloggers and interested friends living outside India could also participate if you have an Indian address where we can send the package.

To start with I would volunteer to co ordinate the whole process and Bharathy has also confirmed to help by spreading the word. so please friends come forward and leave a comment with your name and email id at the end of this post or HERE or HERE. I will contact you within 48 hours. Please leave a comment within the next 3 weeks that is by 20th December'2010,  anytime you want but be quick to experience the fun at the earliest.  if you have any more questions please leave a comment or mail me at 
ahomemakersdiary@yahoo.in.

So don't wait much girls, come lets have fun together with what we enjoy most...our passion for cooking!!!

Hope to see you all in the chain soon.

Love

Sayantani