Happy Deepawali

I am always a day late in wishing :) , but then I write the post after the day has passed!
Wish you and your family a very happy deepawali. May the year be filled with good news, cheer, good health and hope.

Diwali (or deepawali as it is called at home) for me was always associated with 2 things - the "nalla ennai" bath early in the morning and distrubuting sweets (wearing new clothes) to all neighbours. I am not much of a cracker person - been always scared of even the tiniest vedi and after sometime the smoke starts to bother me much. For Diwali this was the routine - we would wake up early, at about 4 or so, amma would apply the "nalla ennai" (gningely oil) on appa's and my head, take an aarthi of us and shoo us into the bathroom for a nice "head bath". After the bath, appa would hand over the new clothes to amma and me (i always love getting new clothes hee hee) and then we would go down to burst the crackers. In Andhra diwali is celeberated in the evening. So, for all the years that we lived there, in our street we would be the only ones bursting crackers in the morning! It was a competition (unwritten) between us and the other mama living 2 streets away - as to who would be the first to burst the crackers in the morning ! Then would come the best part for me - "showing off my new dress" - as I would go around distributing the sweets and "karam" to all neighbours. Appa was so good at this - arranging all the sweets and savouries in correct proportions in individual bowls (based on the number of family members). After we moved to chennai, there was one more step added to this routine - packing stuff in little plastic covers for the multitude of relatives we would be visiting in the day.

This is probably the first diwali(other than those 4 years of college), that I am away from home. It was so lonesome yesterday morning - both of us missing home and all that. In the evening, we had a couple friend at home - it was the lady (Swathi's bday) - so I invited them over for some snacks. We bought a small cake for her and I made "Bread rolls" (recipe below). We got talking of this and that and our moods lifted up a bit. They insisted that we go out with them for dinner - so we made a quick visit to the temple and then went for dinner. By the time we came back home, we both had nice smiles on our faces and felt it was a good diwali we had had :)....

One of my friends fowarded this to me. It feels so nice to see that Indians are so much honored in this country - why not - they are closed to being the largest non-american population in the USA. At office also, all our non-indian colleagues were eager to know about what diwali was and ensured that they wished us before they left home on Friday evening. It gave such a nice feeling :).

Okay - now for the "Bread Rolls" recipe. This was my first attempt at them and they came out quite well - so I was really pleased :)

Ingredients

2 medium sized potatoes - boiled and mashed well.

Salt, Red chilli powder - to taste

Corriander leaves - finely chopped

garam masala - 1/2 teaspoon.

8 large bread slices

Oil - for frying

Procedure

Add the chopped corriander leaves to the mashed potatoes. Heat a little bit oil in a kadai and add this mixture to it. Sprinkle the red chilli powder and salt and mix well so that the entire mixture gets fried a bit. Just before removing off the stove, add the garam masala and fry for a minute or so.

Keep this mixture aside.

Dip the bread slices in water and squeeze the water out well. Spread them on a tissue so that it would take off the extra water. Place a little bit of the mixture in the centre of one slice and roll it and seal off the edges by pressing them together. Make sure you do this process one by one and not dip all the bread pieces into water at once, as bread absorbs water very quickly and it becomes tough to roll it if it becomes too soggy.

Place these rolls on a plate and refrigerate them atleast for 2 hours. This will harden the rolls slightly so that when you fry them, they don't stick to the sides of the kadai and also don't soak much oil.

Heat oil in a kadai and deep fry the rolls while slightly turning them from time to time.

And voila ! bread rolls are ready. You can prepare them in advance and heat them for a mintue in microwave when you need to serve them.