Deepavali

Deepavali represents victory of good over bad!

Hope you all had a good Deepavali with friends and family!! 'Deepavali' this is how we call it down south. All festivals take me back to my childhood days. We will we woken up at 4am on Deepavali. After that very early morning bath and new dress, comes the bursting of crackers before we eat breakfast. For the sake of tradition and belief, we would all burn a kambithiri. Kambithiri is the long thin stick kind-of fireworks that you hold in your hand. Anycase, we would hurry up to breakfast after bursting the required firecrackers. My grandfather would insist in eating his breakfast before the sunrise, and that would be before 6:30am. So what was for breakfast? Dosai and ukkarai. Just to think, amma and mami would toil in the kitchen from early dawn making these dosai for about 20 people. And believe me, we never ate a few dosai, and especially since it comes with Ukkarai, we would goble-up 5-6 dosai in no time!

There is ofcourse some sweets and savories (snacks) prepared ahead of deepavali in all houses. Amma always makes badam halwa and badhusha for sweets; and ribbon pakoda and omapodi for savories. This doesn't stop here. There is also the brunch to be prepared after the breakfast-shop closes! Deepavali is not a big celebration in our home, so there is no strict requirement of menu/recipe. There is either a avial or kari (curry is a general name given by the British to any recipe that has the traditional Indian spices, but in each region it is different. As here we call in kari in South India). Since there is no traditional menu or recipe, even English vegetables (carrots and beans are not Indian vegetables!) are used. Sambhar and thayir (curd/yoghurt) or more (buttermilk) is always there. How can I forget the payasam? Pal payasam or any other pradhaman is usually cooked.

All the cracker-bursting happen before brunch and evening when it is getting dark. Fireworks look so beautiful when it gets dark, especially the new ones like the aeroplane and such that burst in varied colors and formats in the sky. I miss the atmosphere this whole fire-crackers, family and food creates. So for today, I invited a few friends of mine for dinner - adai, avial and nei payasam. wait for my recipes...

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