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Festivals are a way of binding families and friends all over the world. And in a v. family-oriented country like India - festivals unite us with our cultural and traditional roots, making us nostalgic with fond memories of grandmom's and great aunt's lip smacking sweets and savouries along with their interesting anecdotes/stories regarding rhymes and reasons for the festivity.
Since I did most of my learning to cook on my own after marriage-far away from home - I always find myself in a fix to do traditional sweets, cos you need to see and learn from a very experienced person to do it properly yourself. But luckily I had my in-laws with us, who have come visiting, so was all geared up to join in Viji's RCI Event with Karthigai Deepam Batchanams/Sweets.
Karthigai Deepam is celebrated in the month of Nov-Dec, on the full moon day which falls in ascension of the Kritigai star. There are lots of varied reasons among Hindus for celebrating this festival. For some - its the plain Festival of Lights, while for others, its in celebration of Lord Shiva's greatness while for few others its the occasion of Vishnu Karthigai. All in all, this festival brings in memories of earthern Lamps, crackers,new clothes and lots and lots of prasadams. :)
Pori urundai's ,appams and vadai's are on the menu on this special day.I remember sitting with my mom and making laddus of Puffed rice/peanuts and getting scoldings for trying to nick few.
Lets start with the three items Mil and me made. Here I have to mention that we used lots of shortcuts from the original recipe which takes longer and more effort.
Peanut Laddus/Balls - Verkadalai Urundai
Method.
1. Mix little water and jaggery and heat it till jaggery is all melted without any lumps.
2.Heat it till it comes to a boil. My Mil did a drop-in-the-water-to-see-if-ready test. Drop some spoon of boiling jaggery in water. Leave it for 5 seconds and then take it and try to roll into a ball. If you can and it becomes hard, then its ready. Saute the coconut pieces in little ghee and keep aside.
3. Alternatively dry roast the peanuts
till evenly brown
and then add it to the jaggery syrup along with the coconut pieces. Incorporate well.
Let it cool a bit and then start making it into round shapes. Care should be taken to not let it cool a lot cos then it would be hard to shape them. The fingers should feel relatively hot. 
Puffed Rice Laddus - Pori Urundai
This is not the usual puffed rice variety that we get in local shops. You need the specific type called the Paddy Puffed rice and are mostly available in any Indian store.
This Urundai is also made from Puffed beaten Rice - Rice Flakes - Aval.
Method
1. Prepare the Jaggery syrup and coconut pieces just the same way as illustrated above.
2. Add the puffed rice and coconut piece and mix till incorporated
3. Let it cool a little bit and shape them into balls. The same rule as of Peanut urundai follows. The mixture should be still relatively hot to touch.
Appams
These are my perennial favourite and v v easy to make.
Method.
1.Mix jaggery with little water and blend it lump free. Mash the banana well.
2.Mix all the ingrediants together till well blended and looks like a thick batter
3. Heat some oil in a deep pan for frying.
4.Drop spoonfull of prepared batter into the hot oil.
5. Fry till both the sides are deep brown.
Now all that is left is to dig in and eat :) which is exactly what we did. The final outcome is below.
I guess, all this blogging and participating in themes are v infectious, cos its got my Mil v interested. She was surprised to know about such events and even people (irrespective of age/place/cultures) who are staying so far away from home still having strong foothold over one's traditional values and customs. So into it , that she said that she wanted to arrange and display on her own. Below are 2 photos showing my mil's arrangement :)
