So with all my food adventure enthusiasm I was in for 9 (most of which are brand new to my culinary skillset) pindivantalu - pulihora, dadhojanam, ariselu, kajjikayalu, poornam bonda, garelu, kobbari lauzu, pappu-chekalu and china-grass sweet (milk sweet made with agar-agar/china grass/vegetarian gelatin). Kaushik and I had the whole thing planned out (ya the planning freak in me had written it down!) - we would split the cooking and spread the preparations over the week before pooja and I would take the friday off.
It was a crazy week (week of July 27th). By Wednesday we had made pappu chekalu, kajjikayalu, ariselu, kobbari lauzu, china-grass sweet. By this time, I had blisters on my right palm... had been sleeping only 3-4 hours per night ( thanks to hectic work @ office)... the house smelled like a restaurant kitchen.. and the deep-fryed oil smell wasn't giving Kaushik any peace. I obviously had the other important tasks (including shopping for pooja-stuff) reserved for the day before and guess what!.. we had a fertilizer factory burn down in Bryan and we had mandatory evacuation orders by 4:00 pm on thursday !! what are the odds! I was almost in tears... there were rumours of the air being 'poisoned' and i was scared i would have to trash my hard work without even having a chance to taste it (talk about paronia!). I was like.. lets take the passport and the food with us!! We evacuated to the Navasota Omkarnath temple. God has his/her way of de-stressing us.. doesn't (s)he?!
On friday, things went by fast.. woke up.. took bath (?!)... put muggu (the search for a 'perfect' muggu is another story in itself!).. made pulihora, dadhojanam,.. and got stuck! I was dumb enough to not grind the chana daal after cooking it! argh! I realised this after ading jaggery. and i didn't think my lil magic bullet could take jaggery ladden chanadal in it (i might be totally wrong.. but then .. o well!) so i re-cook the chana daal till its soft in the jaggery water (which took soooooooooooooooo long!) and mash it.. till it was ok-soft. well after this, another shocker.. i could swear i didn't use ANY water to grind my urad daal but my garelu batter was runny! (reason: dad told me later, you are not supposed to let garelu batter stand for more than 1 hour if you want a hole in your garelu). Ya, the super-planner than I am.. I made my batter before-hand! so anyway I just made a couple holeless-garelu for prasadam. Finally! Now we are ready for the pooja.
This gave me the most joy... decorating ammavaru. After some hiccups with laptops, I finally managed to do my varalakshmi vratham. It was about 1 pm when I was done and I when I drank that coconut water-teertham...... I understood why coconut water. After all the empty-stomach-vratham-hard-work theertham gives the strength you need.
So that was my special day. Kaushik and I were so happy we did it and did it this way :)
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2 comments:
Hi..first time in my life am commenting on a post..
i know i read it after 4 yrs..but still its hold value..cos it was ur first vratham
main ineresting part is U didnt give up in diff times and with lot of dedication u completed with ur hubby support.
Hop this yr also u might be celebratring (may be with ur kids) :) GOd bless u
attractive piece of information, I had come to know about your blog from my friend arjun, ahmedabad,i have read atleast eleven posts of yours by now, and let me tell you, your website gives the best and the most interesting information. This is just the kind of information that i had been looking for, i'm already your rss reader now and i would regularly watch out for the new posts, once again hats off to you! Thanks a lot once again, Regards,
Varalakshmi Vratham
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