By Ranjith Wijayasekara

The Sri Lankan community held one of their very popular Food Fairs, this one to aid the Lankarama Temple. The centre was filled with the aroma of spicy, mouth watering Sri Lankan food.

The event seems to be popular among other Australian ethnic groups outside Sri Lankan community as their presence was very noticeable. They waited patiently on a line to get hoppers without complaining and could see how satisfied they are after taking the first mouthful of this delicious dish. Hoppers in Sri Lanka was a breakfast menu few decades ago but now it has become a dinner favourite as many ‘Hopper Stalls ‘ has sprung up in every corner of many cities. This is the favourite ‘Fast Food’ in Sri Lanka today.

Hopper is a thin pancake of rice flour and coconut cream, with a thick centre, consumed with a hot onion salsa and a curry. When the soft centre is filled with an egg, it becomes an ‘Egg hopper’. It takes time to prepare, hence long lines at the stall, but well worth the wait!

Just like on previous Food Fairs many other stalls were ‘manned’ by smiling charming ladies selling “String Hoppers”, “Biriyani”, “Pol Rotti”, “Egg Rotty”, and “Kotthu”, sold together with “Pol Sambol” “Seeni Sambol”, various fish and meat curries. Sweets like different types of cakes, “Kawum”, “Kokis”,”Velithalapa” and puddings were sold with tea, coffee and soft drinks in various other stalls.

A novelty of this Food Fair was a Pineapple stall done by a well-known lady!

All the proceeds of the Fair will go towards Sydney Lankarama Vihara maintenance and Construction of Meditation Hall (Dharmasalawa). You may see the progress of ‘Dharma salawa’ which is being done with these proceeds, in our photo gallery and Lankarama web site http://lankarama.com.au.

SAVE LIVES – STEM CELL TRANSPLANT

At the entrance to the Fair was a table dealing with different type of meritorious deed. They were collecting names for a Stem Cells Donor Registry. It says very few South Asians particularly Sri Lankans are in this registry. As it is chances of finding a donor for a Sri Lankan for stem cell transplant stands at 1:20,000!

Stem cell transplant is helpful to cure many dreaded medical conditions including Leukaemia. Stem cells are no longer taken from bone marrow, which was a painful process. You just donate blood and peripheral blood machine will harvest the Stem Cells.

Refer to www.abmdr.org.au for more details about the registry and to www.facebook.com/cureShehan or Email to GetInvolvedTodat@Hotmail.com to contact a young Sri Lankan father who is in dire need for a transplant.

Click here to view an album of photos by Ranjith Wijayasekara