Day by day I have started to feel the importance of our age old food habits and their medicinal benefits. We have totally forgotten about our grandmom's home remedies and we are heading to the Hospital everytime ending up having a big hole in our pockets!! Someday I would want to make a collection of these age old Indian Ayurveda and Vedic remedies to common ailments and even modern diseases. The ancient scripts which mention these remedies are not less than 1000 years old...!!!! They are the real jackpot we should aim for!!

So How many of us have heard about Navadhaniyam (Tamil word) or the Nine Cereals (Nava means Nine and Dhanya means grains)? It is mentioned in the ancient vedas, and is still used in India for all auspicious rituals. But we do not know the real importance of these cereals, it was supposed to be used as our staple food for leading a healthy life.

We are either having more rice or wheat in India now... South indians started having a lot of Wheat thinking it is better than having carbohydrates in Rice. But that's not true!! Wheat has gluten (Glue-like property) which is hard to digest. Another point Wheat will never suit South Indians... Having lots of wheat will create heat inside the body, which is only required to those who live in extremely cold places. And we have also started having a lot of Maida/flour nowadays in the form of Pizza, Paratha, Bread, etc. We have totally forgotten about the other healthy options!!

What are the Nine Differet Grains or Cereals?
Pigeon Peas (Toor dal/Thuvarai)
Wheat
Horse Gram (Kollu)
Green Gram (Moong Dal)
Paddy/Rice
White Beans (White rajma/Avarai kai)
Black Sesame (Til/Ellu)
Chickpeas (Channa/Konda kadalai)
Black gram (Urad dal/ Ulundu)

Auspicious Significance of the Nine Grains:
Each of these grains represents one of the nine planets, and hence they are used in performing Hindu rituals like Grahapravesham or House Warming Pooja, Navaratri Pooja, etc.

Suriyan (Sun) – Wheat
Chandiran (Moon) -  Paddy/Rice 
Chevvai (Mars) - Tuvarai (Toor)
Bhudhan (Mercury) - Greengram (Moong)
Guru (Jupitor) - Chickpeas (Channa) 
Sukiran (Venus) - White Beans (White Rajma or Motchai or Avarai seeds) 
Sani(Saturn) -  Black Sesame (Til)
Rahu – Black gram (Ulundu or Urad) 
Kethu – Horse gram (Kollu)

I usually try my mom's proven recipe for biriyani all these years. It's totally south indian and lip smacking recipe.. but I'm not talking about that one now. I would share that recipe on a another post. But this time I tried a different way to make chicken biriyani... and it ended as exactly I wanted it to be!! We love Andhra style biriyani served in Nagarjuna Hotel in Bangalore.... (not the Hyderabadi style). This is similar to south indian style, but more of green chillies. I tried a combination on my own to mimic the Nagarjuna Biriyani... and yayyyyyy I won it!! Sandy loved it to the core!! Now let's look into the recipe: