🪔 Happy Diwali to all who celebrate! 🪔
We had a small, festive celebration yesterday with a few friends, featuring...
- Sweets, including my sister's chana jaggery mithai and kaju katli that I made
- Savory snacks including murukku and my sister's homemade poha chivda
- Street food- sprouts chaat, pav baji, chana masala
- Falooda for dessert, enjoyed around a cozy fire (friends lugged over a portable fire-pit)
- Sparklers for the kids after sunset
- Rows of tea lights (diyas) in and around the home
- Rangoli designs made by my daughter on the front and back porch
Our festivities were sponsored in large part by my sweet sister. Last week, I mentioned that the small Indian store near my house shut its doors abruptly, and in response, she sent me a large box of homemade and store-bought goodies, plus packets of rangoli powders.
I tried my hand at making some kaju katli for the first time, and I can't believe I waited so long to make this classic mithai. Kaju katli is one of our favorite Indian sweets, a rich fudge typically made in a diamond shape and often covered in silver leaf. V especially loves it.
When I started looking at recipes, I realized that it is simply cashew powder cooked in a sugar syrup, flavored with cardamom. It is unusual among Indian sweets in not being milk-based, although small amounts of ghee/ milk can be part of the recipe.
For my trial, I used the proportions from this recipe and also looked at a few short videos for the general method. This is how my experiment went:
- Blend 1.5 cups raw cashews to as fine a powder as possible without letting it get oily.
- I used my vitamix and it turns nuts into nut butter so quickly that I might use the food processor next time.
- My sister gave me two tips later: first, refrigerate the cashews for 30 minutes before grinding them, and second, sift the ground cashews.
- It is clear that the finer the nuts are ground, the smoother the kaju katli will be.
- I wonder if lightly roasting the cashews would be good.
- I am sure store-bought cashew flour would also work well here if you wanted to avoid grinding altogether.
- Mix 3/4 cup sugar and a little over 1/3 cup of water in a saucepan.
- Bring it to a boil and then add the cashew powder, plus cardamom powder and saffron strands for flavor. I also added a pinch of salt.
- Keep stirring until the mixture thickens.
- At this point I also added a teaspoon of ghee.
- When the mixture gets quite thick and starts coming off the edge of the pan, turn off the heat.
- I was unsure of when the mixture was cooked enough and just eyeballed it. I was afraid I overcooked it because it started to get toasty at the bottom.
- Transfer the mixture to a plate lined with buttered parchment paper and spread it out.
- After it cools, pat it down and cut into shapes with a pizza cutter.
- I should have cut diamonds but forgot and instead cut squares.
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Strength Training: IRON series
Since August, I've been doing my strength training workouts at home rather than at the gym. The school carpool schedule, dog walking, and morning meetings all conspire to make driving to the gym very difficult to fit in.
I was lucky to discover a fantastic 6-week workout series by the popular Irish trainer Caroline Girvan. It is called the IRON series for its emphasis on lifting weights and building muscle. The entire series of 30 videos is available free on YouTube. I completed my first round of IRON yesterday and it was a fantastic experience.
Here's everything I loved about it:
- The format
- The format of the series is 5 workouts per week, with two rest days. Yes, that's a lot of workouts in a week. But each one is only 30-32 minutes long, short but intense.
- With a 5 minute warm up (separate video) and cool down (included) on either end, that's a 45 minute workout in my own home, which is very doable five times a week.
- Of the 5 workouts, two are upper body focused, two are lower body focused and one is a full body workout.
- There's 6 weeks of this format, with new workouts every week, making it a series of 30 different workouts.
- Girvan posts a workout calendar here but I made my own printer-friendly calendar. It is fun to check off each workout as I go along.
- The exercises
- Girvan is an excellent trainer. This series focused on classic strength training. The exercises are mainly compound movements such as squats, lunges and presses, which work out large groups of muscles, making them effective and efficient.
- She tends to focus on particular muscle groups and work them intensely. For example, on shoulder day, you will relentlessly work on shoulder exercises for 30 minutes straight. A typical exercise format is 60 seconds of work followed by 30 seconds of rest, done twice. This is a short rest period making it an intense workout.
- Girvan is extremely strong and the weights she uses are astonishing. I simply used weights that were suitable for me. As she repeatedly says, "you do you." For some exercises like lunges, I just chose to do them as bodyweight exercises because I find them very challenging. Basically, I adjusted the workouts to my own ability.
- The equipment
- This is a dumbbell-focused series. Other equipment that is used includes a chair for dips, yoga mat for floor exercises, elastic bands, a box for step-ups and Bulgarian squats.
- I own a few pairs of dumbbells (not a huge variety) and am willing to buy a few more as I progress.
- The videos
- Caroline Girvan does a 2-min intro, and after that, there is no talking at all. Some tips and pointers occasionally appear on the screen, but otherwise there's no idle chatter or "you can do this". I love this!
- She does the entire workout so you can follow along in real time. The time goes by so fast.
- Girvan has a pleasant and joyful personality. Everything she says is straightforward and sensible. I love her emphasis on the mind-muscle connection.
- There are no ads in the middle of the workout.
- The music is upbeat, very "this-chick-that-chick" types. I am fine with this for an early morning workout.
- The series is beautifully produced and looks professional. There's an uncluttered set with a vase of flowers and a candle, with the trainer's outfit color coordinated to the flowers. It is aesthetically pleasing.
- I am grateful for people who create quality content and make it available completely free!
Want to join me? If you would like to do the series with me and get a solid 6 week of strength training done by the end of 2026, let me know! Maybe we could make an accountability group on email or WhatsApp to check in after every workout.
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OHS Retrospective: Feb 2005
I started this blog nearly 22 years ago. Now I'm going back to the very beginning and reading through my own posts and commenting on what's changed and what has not, discovering recipes I've forgotten, and updating some posts that deserve a refresh.
In February 2005, I was living in NYC, deep in the later stages of a doctoral program in the biomedical sciences. Stuck in a dark electron microscopy room most days. February in NYC is cold and dreary, a slump after the excitement of the holidays. This is probably why I was rooting around for some new little project at the time. I started the blog with no intro, no hello, just banged out a random post. LOL
My love for lists came through on the second post, where I tried to list some of my favorite things to buy in an Indian grocery store. It is a good list and I still buy and recommend all of these things, but the list is incomplete. I would expand several categories, add details and add several other items. I am going to update this post! What would you add to this list?
"One of my favorite activities is going into ethnic grocery stores and picking up new and weird foods and figuring out how to use them. I treat it as a cheap holiday, being transported to another culture for the price of a Metrocard ticket." This is still 100% true, even though I no longer live in NYC with all the wonderful specialty stores on every corner.
I wrote about an experiment with baked samosas, including a brief recipe for a potato-pea filling. The experiment was a fail (I've never tried making samosas with wonton wrappers again) but this recipe has been a constant in my cooking life for decades for just how versatile it is. Samosa-like foods are my go-to appetizers and potluck contributions. I never get tired of making versions of this filling and coming up with new ways to use it:
- You don't have to make it with just potatoes and peas. Many other veggies like cauliflower, green beans, peppers, carrot will fit in.
- As will some other stuff that you're wanting to use up- breadcrumbs or stale bread, bits of cheese.
- Puff pastry is the top choice for wrapper to make vegetable puffs or "faux-mosas".
- The filling works in rotis/ tortillas to make wraps or quesadillas.
- Or patted onto sliced bread and toasted.
- You don't even need any kind of wrapper. You can simply make patties or "naked samosas".
See you next week!
