Gokulashtami Date, Recipes, Guide

Gokulashtami date, guide, recipe links. Gokulashtami is a festival to celebrate the birthday of Lord Krishna.  As a kid, I always have celebrated Gokulashtami in my parents place. We make kai murukku, uppu seedai, vella seedai, appam and payasam.
This is a festival to celebrate the birthday of Lord Krishna. As a kid, I always have celebrated Gokulashtami in my parents place. We make kai murukku, uppu seedai, vella seedai, appam and payasam.

I remember only seedai and murukku. And the maakolam we draw, the baby krishna’s feet that is drawn from entrance to the pooja room. Though I have not helped much and only see what my mom does, it always is a fascinating festivals when compared to others because of drawing the baby krishna’s foot in kolam. After marriage, I almost forgot everything, only for past few years I have started celebrating. Vj always insist me to do post on how one has to plan, prepare, do things. For past 2 years he has been insisting but this year I determined to post this sure.

 

Collection of recipes

These are the recipes we make

1. Nei appam recipe (or)
2. Instant Wheat flour appam recipe
3. Kai murukku recipe
4. Uppu seedai and vella seedai recipe
5. Paal payasam recipe (or)
6. Aval payasam recipe

       

Check out the other recipes you can make during festival.

                 

As a disclaimer, I have to say – this is only the way WE celebrate the festival in our family, only our family practices. This will be helpful for myself sure for future reference, and if anyone is benefited from this post, I am more than happy 🙂

After head bath, soak raw rice – for kai murukku, uppu seedai and vella seedai together  and for appam (if making nei appam with rice) separately and for maakolam separately. Buy fresh milk if possible and boil milk, set for curd, and separate butter if you want fresh butter. Or you can keep store bought butter too. You can finish all you other regular breakfast, lunch work and cleaning work and start the festival work. First you can finish drawing kolam so that it dries up while pooja. We draw baby Krishna’s feet from house entrance until pooja place and again draw from pooja place to house entrance. Meaning, we are inviting baby Krishna and finish our pooja, send him praying him to come next year same as this year and bless us.

Now off to Kitchen work. Spread the soaked rice for murukku seedai in a white cloth. Keep a clean white cloth separately for this purpose alone.As mentioned in the post, grind the rice and divide the flour for murukku and for seedai. For seedai, we need to dry roast until steam rises. So do that and keep aside. Now make dough for murukku, salt and sweet seedai.  In the clean cloth, make murukku one side and keep seedai rolled other side. Make 3 seepanguzhal for baby krishna  as mentioned in my seedai post (rolled as stick – lollipop version of seedai for baby krishna). You should fry murukkus first, salt seedai next and sweet seedai last as sweet seedai makes oil cloudy. Every time you handle murukku, seedai in hot oil BE IN A SAFE DISTANCE, after dropping in oil.

After this work, you can make paal payasam or aval payasam. Then make appam. Boil milk and add sugar candy, pacha karpooram to it. Now keep ready payasam, butter, curd, milk and aval (Poha/ rice flakes) each in a bowl. We add couple of tulsi leaves in each bowl for garnish.

For offering God :

If you have a Krishna idol or picture decorate it with tulsi, flowers (Sangu poo if possible) In front of Krishna, over the kolam, Spread banana leaf, keep murukku, seedai and appam. In the thaamboola thattu (Pithalai thattu) keep betel nut and leaves (vethala paaku) , fruits and coconut if possible. We break coconut while pooja. Keep along the other things like payasam, aval, butter, curd, milk in separate bowls (Silver if possible). We should keep these vessels separately just for offering to God. We usually keep all the things prepared in front of God and sweet separately in a banana leaf piece (yeadu) for the vilakku (lamp).

In our grand mom’s  house, they do the pooja at 12 am midnight. But we do only in the evening while we lit lamp. Above all, don’t frustrate yourself putting all works in your head and do it as burden. Once in a while these festivals come, so we can do it to our heart satisfaction with whatever we can do. If you are an office goer, do it simple with curd, milk, butter, aval (flattened rice) which are Krishna’s favourite, along with fruits. If possible, do payasam or appam. You can make muruuku sedai the previous day too.

So here’s my shopping list for the festival. Add or reduce as per your family practice.

Shopping list for Gokulashtami:

• Jaggery
• Cardamom
• Cashew nuts
• Urad dal
• Wheat flour (if making wheat flour appam)
• Raw rice
• Sesame seeds
• Aval (Poha/ flattened rice) 
• Oil
• Milk
• Butter
• Coconut 
• Betel nut leaves
• Fruits (Banana, Apple, Orange, Grapes, Guava)
• Banana leaf
• Flowers, Sangu poo, Tulsi,