How to reduce food wastage in a wedding feast

Hi friends,
                   Hope many of you have taken time off this last week of the year before logging on to year 20s. Yep, we entered the millennium with usual fears and hopes, crossed the 'teens' and now ready to get into the next decade with usual hopes and apprehensions. I thought I will continue writing about the remaining part of our Europe travels, but for now I am touching an unplanned topic.
                                                     Recently, we attended a wedding in Bangalore where the wedding organizers were spreading awareness about 'zero-waste' wedding. We enjoyed the traditional, Tamil-Brahmin wedding feast and I did not waste anything what was served on the plantain leaf. My husband follows the principle that what is served on a plate or a plantain leaf should not be wasted. Being with him, I have learnt to be like that. As I am a Tamil Brahmin and most familiar with the wedding feast of our community, I know what is being served and in what order the items of the feast are served. The only other kind of feast I am familiar is Malayalee wedding feast as I have lived in Trivandrum.
                          In a typical wedding feast of our community, we sit before the empty plantain leaves. We clean the leaf with sprinkles of water, and then the items are served starting with payasam (milk kheer). The rest of the side items are served in quick succession starting from our right to left. I will just put the local names of those dishes. Starting with vegetable raitha, (thair pachadi), assortment of vegetable preparations like aviyal, thoran, aaloo roast, paruppu usili, olan or stew made with coconut milk,  fruit salad, vada, 2 to 3 kinds of pickles, fries, pappads, sometimes a variety rice, and then plain rice with sambar, followed by rasam , boli and second serving of payasam, then plain rice with curd or buttermilk to end the feast. Most of these items are served the 2nd time for people who want them. I am very much used to this way of serving during our feast that I naturally compare and contrast the way it is served in a different kind of wedding.

         
                                       Tamil Brahmin wedding feast (borrowed from google)

                                                      In a Malayali Hindu wedding, the dining hall will be closed for sometime and all the delicacies including rice are served on the plantain leaves before making the guests seated. The items are more elaborate which contain about 4 varieties of raitha, 4 varieties of kheer or payasams, typical Malayali vegetable preparations like kaalan (a kind of thick kadi made with curd and coconut paste), erisseri, watery lentil daal etc. By the time most people have those varieties of kheer, they hardly wait for curd rice like we Tamil Brahmins do. They fold the plantain leaves and leave to wash hands. People like us almost feel left out there.


                       Malayali wedding feast (borrowed from google)

                 

                                               I am not very familiar with other kinds of traditional wedding feasts to comment upon. I feel that in a Telugu feast, lot of spicy powders to be mixed with hot rice are served along with all the regular items. What I have observed in all these feasts is that there will be mind-boggling items that will be half eaten or untouched by the people. All these look to be insensitive when so many poor people around us are starving to get one square meal. It is anybody's guess what happens to those half eaten food items. These days, some wedding organizers tie up with NGOs who come and take away the large amount of leftover food in the wedding kitchens to be distributed to the poor. But much more awareness need to be created among the people about not wasting the food.
                               I may be biased , but I feel the way food is served in Tamil Brahmin feasts are more ideal. We can have more control over the items served on the leaves. One can say no to the dishes he/she is sure to waste. That is how I do. Charity begins at home. The adults need to show the value of each food item and teach the children how not to waste those items. Wedding organizers need to put a prominent notice giving importance to not wasting food, and emphasize on teaching the guests how to limit only to the portions they will consume. Even the wedding cards can devote some space giving importance to reduce the food wastage. We all know, how these feast menus are painfully and carefully planned by the families and it will be heart-wrenching to see the wastage of those items. We need to spread this awareness among our folks actively like the awareness we have created on the ill-effects of plastic on our environment.
                                                  What prompted me to write this article is my observation in the recent wedding that we attended, where one of the organizers who sat next to me wasted large quantities of items and left in a hurry!

Deepa.