A very happy Deepavali to every one

2020 is the year of staying at home. Deepavali is a stay at home festival for the morning but in the evening, you go see all your friends and relatives and join them in the firecracker fun.. 

This year it has been a muted affair. The gatherings are smaller and we meet only people in "our bubble" which is a good thing.

We did have new clothes, great eats and some sparklers! San and me teamed up to make a lot of sweets and savories (and she got some guidance from our neighbor on some sweets and they reminded me of my grandma cooking with her aunt Ambulu when we were kids.. they would spend days planning before the cooking started!). We did go solo on some items..

She sparkles better than those sparklers..It was a good thing I adjusted an almost underexposed shot and realized this was actually a good thing!

This is the first Diwali without jr. being present at home. That was constantly in the back of my head and I am not sure how many years it will take for me to realize that you cannot expect to see kids for Diwali or take that for granted anymore! Given every now and then I manage to go to India to celebrate with my parents, know that the kids will come back home after they grow up to celebrate.. maybe more often than I did.

The little one knows of my secret plan to keep her closer to home and continues to roll her eyes everytime I suggest colleges within a 20 mile radius. 

Life comes full circle.. What I did to my parents, my kids will do to me. Good news is that I am already in the "brace" position. 

It is my sincere wish that we get over COVID soon in the coming year! People are still dying and folks are still denying the truth and reality. Diwali or Deepavali is literally the triump of truth over lies, light over darkness.. knowledge is the true illuminator! 

May knowledge and facts make a comeback after this Diwali !! 

For someone who is staying at home, we have done a good job dressing up at every opportunity.. 

Still don't know how my wife is able to handle Jr.'s being away so calmly compared to me. Either she is made of different stuff or she is faking it really well. Have some things to learn and understand.

Once again, wishing you all a wonderful Deepavali/ Diwali!!

Samosas - do it yourself

Last weekend I had gone for a grocery run and saw the empty samosa area in the Indian store. They used to have piping hot samosas there all the time. 

San or me would always get two samosas from any desi store run.. it was something we both do and it invariably makes the other person happy.. we share it with chai. 

When I told my kids how I missed samosas and it has been a long time since we had any, they piled up on me by saying they miss a lot of things like Chipotle too.. so I should shut up and make my own samosas just like how they are making their own mexican food at home!

Samosas are labor intensive and not easy to make on a small scale. Still having been encouraged (challenged if you take it in another way) by some fellow yogis.. decided to make it the weekend project. 

there is a lot of ground work required. I got 15 samosas after almost 90 minutes of effort.. guessing you can make 30 of these in 2 hours with same oil. 

Ended up with 1/2 the masala leftover which we plan to use to make parathas tomorrow. 

Recipe used (scaled everything down to 15 samosas)

1. 3 aaloos (potato) boiled, peeled, mushed

2. 1/2 cup peas

3. one clove garlic (dont need it actually), 1/2 onion (again you can skip this), 1 red chilli, 1 spoon of corriander seeds (dhaniya) - two spoons water and make into a paste. 

4. small bunch of cilantro

fry a spoon of jeera (cumin) in two spoons oil and add the paste, then add the cilantro, peas, potato and make the curry.

Separately  made the dough with 2 cups all purpose flour and 2 spoons of clarified butter (ghee).. think oil will be okay as well if you are vegan. Let the dough sit for 30 minutes under wrap. 

Make the samosas by using water to seal the dough after flattening and filling it with a spoon and a half of the potato masala. 

Trick is in the frying. Keep it at medium high to begin with.. after 30 seconds, drop heat to medium low and wait for a good 3-4 minutes before taking the samosas out.. Then set it medium high again, wait for 5 minutes before adding next batch in. The temperature toggling is what takes time.. so it makes sense to do 50 samosas at one time in a large kadai like in the street vendors.. Bihari (our tea shop from college days in Varanasi) used to make 25 at a time in his large kadai.. they would all come with a consistant golden brown color and a smooth texture.. 

One thing I realized.. the second batch came out with smooth surface like in store samosas simply because the moisture had gone a little bit as they waited. That is one trick I will use next time. That was not mentioned in any video... 

there are many recipes that use flour tortillas or pastry sheets to make samosas ... but if you are going to do something..... go for it with all your heart. No short cuts. 

The samosas came out very well. The feedback from family "masala is really good. The skin of the samosa is really thick in some places, but taste is really good."

They all liked the second batch better than the first batch. 

Had fun doing this.. have allergies thanks to the gardening effort earlier in the day.. so you can hear me sniffling all the time..

Now I am late for yoga class. Fortunately yoga class is only 20 steps away now instead of a 15 minute drive.. and we are on a flexi schedule. 

Here is a video of how this was made.. 

If I can do this, so can you.. so try it from scratch. It is intimidating when you watch all those videos. For a first attempt this came out well ! 

Coconut Burfi - a do it yourself video

Diwali came and went. There was no time to make any special sweets. San did make some delicious Badam Kheer to celebrate at home. 

Diwali felt incomplete unless some raw material is convereted to a finished product in the kitchen with some contribution from me.. just kidding..

There was a coconut that was part of the Lakshmi pooja that had to be grated. It is not "auspicious" to let that special coconut get spoilt. So, over the weekend, I decided to convert that into a coconut burfi. Please note: What you see below is not a normal sight in our house.. it is an anomaly. 

The last time I made this was almost a decade ago, in the pre video blogging days. 

The kids helped make the video. Apologies for the "uncut" version. 

Recipe is simple : 

Grate coconut. Eyeball how many cups of grated coconut you have (say 1 cup). Add same measure of sugar to same measure of water and stir to get sugar syrup thick enough. Don't let it caramelize. 

Add coconut to sugar syrup and stir like no tomorrow. Then add cashews roasted in excess ghee (clarified butter) to this and stir like there is no day after tomorrow either. 

When the whole thing becomes thick enough to roll like a ball off the vessel, pour it out. Add some powdered cardamom to the mix just before pouring out. 

Then cut into burfi's when cool. 

I love eating it even before the burfi has cooled down. 

Used to try this with coconut that is frozen and grated already. That does not taste good. You can also add some condensed milk or milk powder to this. It tastes better but also gets spoilt faster. 

My grandma makes it this way. Brings back memories.

Hope this motivates some fresh off the boat grad student who is longing for grandmas cooking to get that coconut and start grating.. 

The budding chef

The kids have been complaining that there are no new baby videos.. that is what they call old videos of them that we see in the blog before bedtime!

So we need more baby videos for three years from now.. Here is a start!

She is becoming quite a chef!

The older one is as elusive as a vampire in daylight! Will have to work hard to catch that one on camera doing something cute.

Have been busy with the new job the last week. Loving it so far. Also have a nice Macbook Air. A Mac work laptop after 15 years. Loving that too.. Getting used to the trackpad as fast as I can. 

The other amazing thing is that it runs VMware Fusion. That means with a swipe of the mouse it goes from a Mac screen to a Windows screen and runs my Windows apps!

We also spent some time with the kids today at Pier 39 watching the Blue Angels fly just between us and Alcatraz. Have some nice photos.. but the editing has to wait till middle of the week.

Until then..

The Apprentice

The little one has been learning how to cook things from Grandma recently.

She retices recipes for all tiffin items in step by step sequence, with a cute Tamil accent! Have to capture a secret video of that soon.

The other day she tells grandpa "how did you like it? I made it for you". Was kind of confused hearing that.

Then saw it in action last night and took a video of it. She seems to be okay with the way she sits on the countertop and so is grandma but it was not the safest and did scare me. So going to purchase a high stool for the little one so she can sit on that and stir, add ingredients etc.

Brought me back so many memories of sitting next to my grandma and her aunt (Ambulu) next to a clay made oven of sorts on the ground and helping them make "therattu paal".

Now I have a craving to eat that at 9:30 PM. Sigh!