Retired school teacher Mohinder Kaur, 73, is eagerly awaiting Baisakhi (April 14). This is when farmers delight in seeing the plants on their farm heavy with golden wheat, or bulbous sugarcane ready for harvest. Kaur lives in Raikot sub-tehsil in Ludhiana district and says almost all the dishes cooked for Baisakhi have a wheat connect.

“We make jalebi, mithai, pakode, gulgule (roti dough allowed to ferment, mixed with saunf, soda and sugar and fried into pakodas), and jaggery-coated shakkarpara. We also make meetha chawal with jaggery and rice,” says Kaur.

Food columnist Rahul Varma says that all harvest festivals such as Baisakhi, Poila boisakh, Bohag Bihu, Ugadi and Vishu celebrate what is reaped. Which is why, this festival in April is marked with dishes prepared from wheat or rice. “There’s meethe chawal (sweet rice) in the North or payesh (thickened milk with rice) in Bengal, Assam, Odisha and elsewhere in the East. You will also find laddoos — prepared with coconut in the East, and often with besan in the North.”

There are three variants of the festival, and April is the time for Rongali or Bohag Bihu, says NorthEast food blogger Puspanjalee Das Dutta. In Assam, this is the beginning of the harvest cycle. “Upper Assam, which has more tribals, rings it in differently than Lower Assam. The former celebrates Bihu over seven days — day one is dedicated to the animals and on day seven, people offer Bihu Ura.”

When it comes to food, Pitha (sweet rice crepes) rules the roost for Bihu, as does Laru (laddoo). In Lower Assam, people eat neem leaves and raw turmeric on an empty stomach. Dried harp chirota (a native plant) is soaked overnight and its bitter juice drunk. “It is possible these were consumed, because both turmeric and neem leaves are bitter and help clean the gut,” says Dutta.

While rice is had only for dinner, they make a delicious laddoo of coconut, til and jaggery. Dutta adds, across Assam, people eat a dish made of 101 leafy greens and herbs.

After weeks of looking at mango trees and seeing the blossoms bloom, young mangoes take shape. In Maharashtra, tradition has it that mangoes must be eaten only in the month of Chaitra, which begins on Gudi Padwa, shares chef and author Saee Koranne-Khandekar.

Simple but popular dishes for this festival are ambyachi dal or kairichi dal, besides puran poli.

In the gudhi (a pole hung in the window with a silk cloth and the sugar garland and neem), neem paste and boiled sugar sweets such as batashe are hung. Dessert is as always shrikhand, filled with cooling yoghurt, says Khandekar.

Delhi-based nutritional consultant Sangeeta Khanna speaks of how all traditional food is nutritious by default. In the neighbourhood, eastern UP and Bihar delight in sattu made of jau (barley) and chana (gram). If you’re ever in the region check out farms where they roast tender wheat and serve it with with jaggery and ghee.

The stars in the menu are newly harvested rice, dal and jaggery fresh out of the cooking vat. There’s also a dash of tangy raw mango, in the form of mango rice. A must during Ugadi in Karnataka is bevu-bella (literally translates to neem-jaggery), a semi-liquid concoction of tender red-green neem leaves, white flowers, jaggery and, optionally, some finely chopped mango.

This bitter-sweet-sour mix is supposed to reflect life with all its highs and lows. Author Geetha Rao, who co-wrote with her mother Malati Srinivasan The Udupi Kitchen, a cookbook on Madhwa cuisine in the Udupi belt, has fond memories of eating sihi huggi, a sweet dish similar to Tamil Nadu’s sakkarai pongal, and holige (puran poli) made using dal, jaggery and coconut inside flattened dough. “The use of rice and dal is expected because they have just been harvested; the same holds true for jaggery,” says Rao.