Apeetha's Legacy of Love: a South Indian vegetarian cookbook
This book is named for Apeetha Narayanan who was born into a traditional Tamil Brahmin family in Madurai, South India. Being the youngest in her family, she was not really allowed to cook and had to learn by watching her own mother and older sisters cook and make delicacies for festivals. From her mother, she learnt the importance of using the freshest and finest ingredients at all times.  In 1950, Apeetha moved to Malaya together with her three young sons (Sundaresan, Suryamurthy, Subramaniam) to join her husband, Narayanan, who had left India earlier to seek a job as a physician in a small rural town in Malaya. Their three daughters (Swarnambal, Saradha and Anandi) were later born in Malaya. Today, her children Sundaresan and Swarnambal live in the US while Anandi lives in Paris. Her other three children continue to live in Malaysia. In those days, traditional Brahmin families did not eat out in restaurants as it was difficult to obtain vegetarian food outside the home. Apeetha cooked three meals a day for her family for over fifty years and served up this food with love and devotion. Even today, she still cooks for her family when they return home to visit. She also celebrated all the festivals so that her children and later grandchildren would understand and appreciate their cultural roots and traditions. She taught all her daughters how to cook and even involved her sons in making special foods for festivals. In addition, she was an accomplished musician and taught all her daughters how to play the veena. This book is the collaborative work of Apeetha's six children who felt that the recipes for the food they all enjoyed had to be preserved for posterity. Living in different parts of the world, the siblings have worked for over a year to collect, write up and test each recipe in this book.  They have also taken all the photographs presented in this book.