Our Story
Founded in 2011, Southern Living documents courtyard traditions of south India, particularly of Chettinad households. It’s an effort to share food. conversations, crafts and games that all developed around the courtyard. In these homes, the courtyard was a space filled with activity all year round.
While our documentation goes on, we continue to work with women across Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka. We encourage them to keep doing what they love doing – sun drying ingredients, vegetables, meats, fruits, flowers and herbs!
This effort is an attempt to bring back culinary traditions and skills; these traditions require time, patience and are back breaking (literally), but it ensured food security, healthy families and happy communities.
We also hope to inspire urban households to manage their kitchens better, and ensure they stock up when in season. In time, they should practice sun drying, make small batches of their own essentials and becoming more resilient. When the kitchen is set, everything else falls into place.
FAQ'S
Not at all. We are a social enterprise. The women are compensated for their effort, at a price they set. No bargaining there! Southern Living adds a small margin to take care of packaging, storing and marketing of their products.
The women make them in small batches and to a large extent there is not much price variation. But when ingredient or transportation cost goes up, it reflects on the price. We’ve tried to ensure there isn’t a price variation, but since the women tell us the price only after the making, we would rather price it batch wise, and let people know when they send an enquiry.
Does that answer your question?
Because we don’t have all the products, all the time and in large quantities. Often we are sold out, and there is a wait period (it’s all handcrafted and sun-kissed, so the products will take time). We don’t have the bandwidth to keep updating a website, and taking stock. So, we decided to treat this website to share information and encourage people to read the ‘Stories Around the Courtyard’ section that many writers contribute to.
Like we’ve always said, the sambhar your mother makes today, and what she makes tomorrow, using the same ingredients and cooking style and time, will vary! It’s inevitable, because we are not machines!
Like the flavourful sambhar, these product are handcrafted, so there will be a small variation between batches; sometimes when the dough is made for the vathals, people in the family chip in, to lay it out in the sun. Shapes will change, sizes will change, and sometimes (very rarely) we’ve noticed less salt, or less spice. But, that’s just how anything handcrafted works, and that’s what we love about it!
We tried doing a full range of organic vathals one year, and the price just sky rocketed! Besides the price, the women found it a hassle that we were changing their ingredients, and a few conveniently said , “I don’t how it will turn out!”.
So, we set our priorities – we are here to keep the skill of creating sundried products. Full stop.
Some women use traditional grains and millets, and few use organic products and a few others pick it up in bulk shop or market in their village. They work with ingredients they are confortable with.
Because we’ve visited their households, had tea with them and seen how they work. As of date we have about 10 teams who are part of this venture, and we trust them. We pick up their product for our families. So, we request you to rest assured that it’s safe.
- Send us a whatsapp message (+91 94447 84066 / +91 94440 76768)
- We will send you a list of products available and their prices.
- Decide what you would like to try
- We will make a bill
- You make a payment (bank transfer or gpay)
- We send out your order
It’s as simple as that!