I have been writing here for a little over a year now; and write I do in an off again and on again fashion. If there was an award for the most inconsistent blogger, I guess I will win hands down 
Unfortunately, the award I am talking about today is for a different category.
I have been nominated and selected to be in the top-5 for the beautiful header award @ Avant Garde Bloggies. Thanks to Apar for nominating me in this category (in a weird coincidence, she is in the top-5 as well ).
When I got married and moved here, I didn’t think too much about having K’s sister and her family live in the same locality as well. Over time, we have grown to cherish each other’s presence in our lives, look up to each other for guidance / advice and forged a lovely relationship. Her husband likes to be called Nalan (of the famous Nala-Damayanthi story who is supposed to be a great cook), atleast in the blogosphere and not without reason. He is an awesome cook; his vegetable biryani is to die for and he makes one of the best (home-made from scratch) pizza, I have ever had.
K and I land up in their house almost every other weekend (if not every) under some pretext or the other; why would we not when we get awesome food every time we go there He had made this pasta for a potluck family night dinner and when I tasted it, I knew I had to post this on my blog. It is such an easy, simple and healthy dish that is extremely kid-friendly; my nephew and niece will attest to that.
The weather has definitely gone cold here and I can feel Winter fast approaching. Well, with the way temperatures have gone south, it already feels like Winter. These days, it is almost like we have only 2 seasons these days - summer and winter, whatever happened to spring and fall, I wonder! All I want to do these days is to snuggle on the couch with a throw thrown over me and vegetate like a couch potato. For a Wintery day, what is better than having lip-smacking good, peppery rasam!
Rasam is a light lentil-tamarind-tomato based South Indian dish that can be eaten as is like a soup or with rice accompanied with pappadum or a dry veggie side-dish. Rasam is usually a sour dish and its sourness mainly comes from tomato with a little help from tamarind or lemon. Rasam is the go-to dish when you are under a bout of cold or fever, as it is not as lentil-heavy as sambhar and very soothing for the throat.
Buoyed with the success of Mysore pak, M and I started thinking of the next sweet that can be made. We were totally unprepared, so it had to be something that we could make with the ingredients we had in hand (can’t go shopping at 11:00 in the night ). After brainstorming a few potential candidates, we zeroed in on payatham Urundai (aka Moong Dhal Balls) - all it requires is payatham paruppu (split moong dhal), ghee and sugar - ingredients that are available in every desi household.
At 11 in the night, M & I started roasting payatham paruppu, as we were chatting or rather reminiscing our (childhood) memories on Deepavali. How our moms had their trademark snacks that they prepared without fail for every Deepavali (for my mom, no doubts here, it was Mysore Pak and for hers it was Chocolate cake, which I am hoping to make soon) and ended up creating their own tradition that we try to follow, tweak to make ours. It was an interesting evening with a lot of girly chatter and catching up that ended in a promise, or rather hope, that we try and do this for every Deepavali.
Two of my fondest memories of Deepavali are the smell of fresh, hot-off-the-stove mysore pak within the house and the fumes from firecrackers outside. My mom would spend the day before Deepavali in making various kinds of sweets and savories that culminated in dinner(the high point) - poori-masal - poori with potato masala, one of the most popular dishes in South India. She always started with Mysore Pak - a simple sweet, containing just 3 ingredients yet complicated in its own way and hence, difficult to master. It also happens to be one of my favorite sweets (well, I am a self-confessed sweet-o-phile ), so I try to follow my mom’s tradition and make mysore pak first and stop right there, as well - he he!
This year, M (who comments here regularly) and I decided to get together to make the Deepavali bhakshanam(snacks). M’s mom (who again is a regular reader / commentator of this blog) had already made yummy omapodi (thin sev flavored with ajwain) and “Deepavali marunthu”, literally means “Deepavali medicine”, which is quite unique to Deepavali. Made of medicinal elements like pepper and ginger, a small bit of this marunthu goes a long way in healing indigestion after gorging during the festival.
Mid-2007, I went on a trip, well not just a trip but a holy trail of sorts starting from Varanasi (Kasi) - the holiest of holy places for a Hindu -> Ayodhya - the birthplace of Lord Rama -> Naimisharanya - a small hamlet on the banks of Gomathi river where Srimad Bhagavatam was spoken by Sage Suta to several other rishis and the abode of many sages -> Allahabad - land of triveni sangamam -> Chitrakoot - the land o the banks of River Mandakini where Lord Rama is said to have spent the majority of his vanavas (the 14 years of forest exile) and back to Varanasi (Kasi).
Our first stop from Varanasi was Ayodhya; en route we made a quick halt at Nandigram, the village from where Bharata ruled Ayodhya when Rama was in exile:
Deepavali or Diwali, as the festival is popularly called, literally means “a row of lights”. It is usually celebrated on the 14th day after full-moon/new-moon day in the tamil month of Aipasi (or Ashwina in Sanskrit).
