Varalakshmi Pooja 2009

The pooja always falls on a friday and the occasion starts on thursday evening. Each family has its own way of celebrating or worshipping the Goddess. Some draw the face of Goddess Lakshmi as a rangoli, some draw a face on a coconut with tumeric and kumkum and create a kalasham for the body. Some have a face made out in silver and thats us. On thursday we got to dress up the Goddess and welcome her home. The dressing up became a tricky experience this time in Haifa. Usually, we use a coconut against which the face is supported and use a brass utensil, called the sombu for the lower body and adorn her with some silk cloth and jewels. But, as mentioned in my prevoius post, i arrived here with the silver face alone. Made alternate arrangements for the sombu and used an orange in place of the coconut.

On thursday evening we are to dress her up and formally welcome her home.

The prashad for the evening must be a yellow rice! It slowly got changed into Venpongal over the years. Little A always looks forward to a sweet when i mention the word Prashad. He thinks only God can make sweets and any prashad is "God given". So i made a little Sharkarai Pongal, true to its name i used brown sugar due to unavailability of jaggery. In his usual way, he hen picks all the cashews tastes it and thanks God and also assures him its tasty! This time he made it a point to say it in hebrew - "thayim" meaning tasty.

On friday, the tradition goes like making prasadams the whole of the morning, followed by the pooja at the end of which a yellow thread - the saradu is tied onto our right hand wrist. A friend of mine asked if its a simple pooja or a hard one. I think it all depends on how much we are capable of doing given the time and the situations and surroundings and most of all patience. The usual prasadams are Mothakam, vada, payasam, idli and appam. Dont ask me why idli of all things. And more over i'm not supposed to eat curd or buttermilk the whole of friday. Yet again, i do not know why! For me more than anything, the region dictated the way i did the pooja. As they say live like a roman in Rome, i prayed like an Israeli in Israel, with candles and oranges. When the Jews observed Shabbath from Friday afternoon, we observed varalakshmi vratham! Talking about prasadams, i got to make vada,payasam and idli. Performed the pooja in my own possible way with some sloka chanting and my MIL had sent me a scanned copy of how to perform the pooja. It was all in tamil! With my "ezuthu kootal" knowledge of tamil managed to read through it. For people who want to do it the simple way, just chant the Lakshmi Ashtothram . Just like all the poojas start by worshipping the elephant god, Ganesha, this pooja too starts of by worshipping him.

A new Ganesha, a cone like structure is made out of turmeric and the akshadai and flowers are offered to him as we chant some slokas and mantras. The same is offered to Goddess Lakshmi as we chant mantras on her name (the ashtotram).

I drew a Soundarya Lahari rangoli (this deserves a separate post) and placed flowers on it as i chanted the ashtotram. Did i mention that i finally bought a bouquet if roses and lilly and managed the hibiscus and arali (its the tamil name) from a nearby park.

All set and done, I dont think the Goddess ever dictated means of worshipping her. I truly beleive only the interest involved and devotion and dedication matters. The pooja doesn't end here for me. Today evening, i'm supposed to take an arathi for the Goddess, welcome home some sumangalis (married women) and offer them thambulams. Tomorrow evening or the day after i.e on sunday morning i'm supposed to leave the Goddess to rest in a rice barrel.

Hmm, let me go see how i can go about doing these now.

Almost forgot to mention, the person performing the pooja is supopsed to wear the nine yards, madisaar, and yay! yay! i did it!

All Set

Am talking about the Varalakshmi Vratham. I thought i arrived in Haifa with the essentials for a complete festive year here too. But only as my MIL asked about the vastram, did it ring a bell that i had only carried the Varalakshmi mugam and not the accessories. My khoj for a perfect traditional indian wear for the Amman started a few days ago. I was hunting many a things in parellel - banana leaf, coconut, a sombu for kalasham, jaggery to make mothagam and appam, turmeric sticks etc etc. Discovered the plaintain in the gym, made alternate arrangements for the kalasham and as a friend suggested am gonna try subtituting the jaggery with brown sugar! I got the turmeric sticks from Akko along side sukku, sitharathai for little A's cold treatment. Talking about coconut as a support for the mugam, am going to use an Orange from the land of the Citrus.

Anyways, the dress for my varalakshmi was still a big question mark. My MIL suggested to just use a new blouse bit - that south indian currency which makes a full circle from door to door in an agraharam aka community. I didnt have any of that too, why would i carry blouse bits to Israel ??!! I'm totally against this whole blouse bit thing and for Navrathri i only distribute small useful gifts with the traditional vethalai pakku.

Coming back to the hunt, i visited many a baby shops looking for cute baby girl dresses that i might make use of as a vastram, but Alas! Its summer and one can guess the type if dresses available here for kids. I had made up my mind to even use the belly dancing cloth studded with gold coins that the dancers wear around the waist as a last resort. Luckily after nearly 3 days of khoj i found this one, that kind of looks like a traditional indian colored skirt - the red skirt! The only other color that i came across apart from summer colors like pink, lemon yellow, white....

A pretty long baby skirt, i cut it out, alter here and there, put a stitch or two to get a short pavadai and upper cloth. This is how it looks right now.

Am going to go look for some flowers now and if i dont succeed, i'm going to buy a bouquet!

Solar eclipse of July 22, 2009

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_July_22,_2009

This is scary - http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/15946

More scary stories, http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090720/sc_afp/scienceastronomyeclipseasiatourismsuperstition

Solar eclipse : All roads lead to Bihar

http://jaibihar.com/solar-eclipse-all-roads-lead-to-taregana-in-bihar/10306/

Truth Behind Google chrome logo

Times when even junk fwd emails carry some really good ones like this,

Rain in Bangalore

Couldn't resist sharing this picture, captured from Nandi Hills on a cloudy ~ rainy evening in Bangalore. Thanks Saurabh for sharing this :-)

Hummus and an easy sandwich

Its was 4pm was the time to think and plan for the night's dinner. I wanted to try something new. Checked the refrigerator and the can of chick peas caught my attention. I thought why not hummus or falafel balls. Hummus is wa easier than the later, which involves oil and frying etc etc.

So here we go, yummy hummus ready in no time (10 min).

1 can ~ 340 gm of chick peas
(If you do not have a can, soak the chick peas overnight, boil them for 45 min in a big sauce pan or in a pressure cooker up to 3 whistles, allow it to cool)
10 ml lemon syrup
10 ml olive oil
4 garlic cloves
2 - 4 red chillies (depending upon your the spice level)
2 tea spoon Tehina (If you do not have Tehina/tahini at home, try making a paste out of 50gm of sesame seeds)
To add more flavor one could optionally add, cumin powder and pepper powder.
Salt, to taste.

In a mixer or food processor, add all the above ingredients and grind by adding small portions of water as and when essential. For folks who do not like the smell of raw garlic, you could toss the sesame seeds (instead of tehina),garlic cloves and red chillies in little oil, allow them to cool and grind them well into a paste before adding the rest of the ingredients.


OK my hummus is ready. Now what for dinner ? Little A and I played some indoor cricket. It was around 6-ish and i had to pick AA from work. Way back home we were discussing about dinner with dishes involving freshly made hummus. We had pitas and some vegetables for a good sandwich. We hit across this idea of a good crunchy mushroom-pita salad with hummus spread :-) What a long name for an easy dish!

No sooner did we enter the house, i was at it - cutting cucumbers, tomatoes and boiling mushrooms. AA takes over the stage in frying the mushrooms in olive oil and red wine. Most of the time, the mushrooms dont reach or survive till their desired end, they get eaten up much before that. But this time they survived since i was busy helping little A with his dinner. Anyways, AA quoted the pitas with hummus, filled it up with the cut vegetables and those crunchy mushroom chunks. To add an indian touch to it, we sprinkled somce spicy coriander thogayal (made out of coriander, urad dhal, tamarind and red chillies. No coconut!) - left over's from the day before.

Thats it, end of a quick hummus making and quick sandwich for dinner.

Whatsup in G8 ?

Right from the Presidents to the news reporters, is this what they are all bothered about while at the G8 ?

http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/92794/?fp=1

President Obama is in the middle of the G8 conference, where he and other world leaders are trying to fix the climate, the global economy, and about a million other terrifying problems. And yet, all anyone can talk about is a photo that supposedly shows the U.S. president and French leader Nicolas Sarkozy checking out a young woman's posterior.

Once news of the photos broke, searches on "obama looking at woman's butt," "obama checking out butt," and the pun-tastic "tail to the chief" all soared through the roof. Also buzzing was the name of the young woman who Obama and his French counterpart were supposedly admiring: Mayara Tavares (some news outlets are spelling her first name "Mayora").

So who is Ms. Tavares, anyway? According to TheWeek.com, she is a junior delegate from Brazil. Lookups on her name are up an astounding 9,212% in one day. And while some are looking at the photo as proof that Obama and Sarkozy could use some manners, a video from "Good Morning America" absolves the two of leering. Well, it absolves Obama, anyway. Sarkozy, not so much.

Video : http://www.yahoo.com/s/1098534

Apple corer

While AA was looking for some Noddy videos for little A, he came across these kid's recipe videos. This one's called Noddy's Apple Car Delight.

http://www.sproutonline.com/sprout/recipes/detail.aspx?id=36c04c2b-a36f-4226-827c-997a0181a10a

After watching this tiny video, AA and I looked at each other, eyes wide open and with the same thought - "Are you thinking what I'm thinking" kinds. It was the apple corer which amused us the most. We didn't care a damn about the recipe, the cooking time nor how it tasted at the end of it. Our first thing on the to-buy list for the weekend was,
1. Apple Corer.



We were not even sure if we get them here in Haifa or anywhere in Israel for that matter. Our enthusiasm to own it was like, we were even ready to drive to IKEA (60km away) the same day.
Luckily i had to do some daily needs shopping yesterday. We ran out of milk already. Usually we pick up our weekly needs on Friday morning. But, this week, blame it on the weather, we consumed our milk tetra packs little earlier than usual as those cold-choco-drinks every evening! Anyways, while i was eying those delicious summer mangoes, AA was eying for the corer - and he did triumph! Not even for a second did we think that we would locate it in the hypermarket that we frequent every week. It's called the Shufersal. It's like Israel's Walmart, a one stop shop for everything from Vegetables to Spice corner to a Pharmacy.

Anyways, we welcome home the corer. Along with it, we happened to buy many many seeded fruits :-) in order to test it! So we enjoyed a good-evening-fruity-snack. Once again in the morning a good number of apples and plums for breakfast. I'm making little A to play a game with it, like using it as a telescope or seeing or spotting me through it and then the apple becomes his friend and he eats it too without any complaints!



As i write about this corer here, a friend of mine just mentioned about the age-old slicer or the wedger. The slicer opens up the apple and gives us 6-8 slices, separates the core and the apple for a second would like a fully bloomed flower. But that's very very beneficial for instanct consumption and for very very orthodox men and women. But for travel or to make recipes with apple rings or for folks who relish every bite of the apple, the corer is the best! I love to bite the apple as is and enjoy it, rather than slicing it up and allowing it to get DARK or brown or oxidize. I don't care about my grandmas saying - echal,10,11... The only hindrance till date was the core and the seeds. Towards the end of it as i approached the core, i always felt like a mouse or squirrel trying to grab those tiny chunks between the seeds. But now, hurray, the corer has relieved me of that trouble too.