Holi vilayaadu paapaa (ஹோலி விளையாடு பாப்பா)

As the great Mahakavi should have said "ஹோலி விளையாடு பாப்பா" ... as in dude speak "Let's play Holi babies!"

Holi was celebrated across the bay area over the last 8 days, read "two weekends" just like any other major festival is over the nearest weekends. 

We were fortunate to join one of the groups celebrating Holi over the weekend. It was great fun. 

Given it was with some of my IT-BHU seniors, brought back so many memories of playing Holi in BHU 20+ years ago!

The Holi monk with his kids..

The little one played holi till she was drop down tired in spite of starting off with a stuffy nose!

We also got to meet another group of really nice people who happened to celebrate in the same park. They came over and said "it is not nice to have two groups play holi separately. lets all join in!".  They brought their Jelabies and Tandaii over to our table and we all put colors on everyone. It was great to see the spirit of Holi in action. 

Next stop. Easter bunny hunt at some place or other for the kids is our guess.. 

It is great to be able to celebrate as many festivals as possible.. things we never did as kids in South India. Our kids are lucky to get this diverse an experience!

Happy Holi to everyone!

Mini me..

We had a quiet fireworks celebration in our backyard. Wanted to have a few pictures of this. So I set up a tripod and had the camera on self timer.

The first few round of sparklers was marked by me constantly requesting that all four of us start around the same time and look into the camera etc. Always get good shots with the black background, so I push for pictures.. 

After the third photo the little one yelled "Appa, I want to enjoy vedichiying the pattasu! So just come here and do this with us!" 

I promptly switched the camera off and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the pattasu vedichiying! (crackers bursting).

Watching the little one enjoying the fireworks with such intensity brings back so many memories of me bursting crackers as a kid.

If there is a "pattasu" gene, it has definitely been passed on to the next generation! 

Cashew Burfi (sweet) - A do it yourself Video

Made Cashew burfi for Deepavali sweet this year and it came out great!

Have been refining this recipe over the years with different results but we are locked into this final recipe.

Turns out the 4:3:2:1 ratio for select burfi's that my Lalli chitti taught me 20 years ago works for Cashew burfi as well!

We got a 100 pieces or so. 

Some notes before the video:

1. What you don't see in the video is that I doubled all quantities. (you see 200 grams of cashew or 2 cups of broken cashew being ground.. there was another identical batch added to the mix before heating)

2. This process is very very labor intensive. There is a lot of stirring almost 40 minutes of stirring on low heat and the last 10 minutes is extremely challenging. The thing is so thick that stirring it is difficult, but stir you must or it will start browning. 

3. It is more art than science when it comes to realizing "pour time". If you pour too early, it will be like a Halwa and will be a little gummy to eat. If you pour too late, the whole thing is hard and tastes like brittle candy or it has pieces of brittle hard stuff embedded in a matrix of the gummy stuff. That will taste good but kind of like having the almond noughats in chocholate texture.. The minute you start seeing the entire thing stick to your ladle and come off the pan as one blob, pour it! That is the secret.

The thing has to be just the right mix of crystallite stuff in an amorphous matrix..if you are a fab guy like me, think 550 C amorphous silicon! 

Here is a video explaining how to make this delicious treat! 

The ratios are 4 cups broken cashew : 3 cups sugar : ~2 cups milk (do 1 1/2 or even 1 and it will work) : ~ 1 cup Ghee which is added while heating and mixing

Think 4-3-2-1 and go easy on the milk and ghee.

Also made some thenkuzhal (did it with the right flour mix this time!) and San made some delicious Gulab Jamuns. 

The litlte one doesn't like "nuts" except when converted to burfi's or Halwa's. 

Next year we will do a Badam Halwa. 

Hope you have fun making this sweet.