Friday, November 16, 2012

Belated Diwali wishes!

Wishing you all a very happy (belated) Diwali! I hope you celebrated the festival with your loved ones just the way you wished!

Our Diwali was made special by K3 and AG who visited us from VA. Or it would have been just another long weekend with just the two of us. With fabulous company, it was all the more exciting to cook special favorites, shop and relax. In the four days of Diwali we cooked up quite a storm, literally. Never before has this little kitchen been so active (not counting mom's endless cooking).

Day 1 was shev-aloo pohe and ladoo for breakfast and bise bele hule anna and boondi raita with soan papdi for lunch. We ended the day with Skyfall and lunch leftovers.

Day 2 was more elaborate with shev-upma and soan papdi for breakfast and poori-shrikhand, potato bhaji and lemon rice or chitranna. An afternoon nap was really what the doctor ordered to recover from the lunch but instead we headed to a mall to get our Diwali shopping done. Dinner was a variety of dosas at an Indian restaurant.

Day 3 breakfast was subdued with just simple oatmeal and toasted bagels as our stomachs struggled from the previous day's eating. But the lunch menu was already planned and there was no looking back! We had black channa usal, bhendi panchamruta, gulab jamun, poli and tondli-bhaat. Yumm!! We seriously needed to rest that day to make breathing space in our well-fed bodies. :) And then we made some pani-poori in the evening to use up that space.

Day 4 breakfast was non-existent. :) We made some delicous vermicelli kheer, kadhi, simple yellow daal and rice, beans-potato bhaji and mixed peppers-apple raita for lunch. The evening highlight was the motichoor laddoos we bought for Lakshmi pooja.

The food we cooked had so many memories - we cooked them just the way my mom, amma cooks it. In their typical Maharashtrian-Karnataki style. When I told my grandmother (amma) on the phone that we had a good time at Diwali and really feasted like she would like us to, she specifically asked about every day's meal. :) We are such a foodie family!

K3 and A were wonderful sports as always, not getting overwhelmed with my bossy behavior in the kitchen and staying calm and getting their tasks done. :) What would I do without them!

There are a lot of pictures I want to share but would have to wait for K3. She was our official photographer you see.

And yeah the feasting is not done yet! We have some good old fashioned Diwali faraal of chakali, karanji, shev, ladoo, chvda and chirote coming to us all the way from Aurangabad! :D