'Pongal' is a harvest festival celebrated across the globe by the Tamil community. It is usually celebrated over a period of 4 days and during one of these days, a sweet rice-based dish called Pongal is prepared. To prepare Pongal, milk must be set to boil. As the milk gains temperature, it will begin to bubble and rise out of the pot when we add the rice. As the dish begins to boil and overflow out of the vessel, it symbolizes a shared wish for greater fortune in the years ahead. It is interesting to note that the word Pongal is derived from the Tamil word 'Ponga' which literally means to boil over or overflow. When this happens everyone loudly calls Pongal - O - Pongal and silently prays for what they desire.
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| Happy Pongal |
But apart from the celebration of the Pongal festival at our home, we also celebrated my father-in-law's birthday, or at least we tried to by making a quick box mix cake. Little did we know that our old conventional oven would break on us! The "Bake" setting didn't seem to work, but the "Broil" setting seemed to still function. Skeptically, we tried letting the oven run on Broil for a few minutes to heat up and then used the leftover heat to bake the cakes. We repeated that a few times before pulling out our cakes. But our worries did not go unfounded as we found ourselves with a cake that was burnt on top and had an uncooked center! What a shame! I didn't want to leave my father-in-law without a cake, but then my eyes caught sight of our Instant Pot. Perhaps all was not lost! I quickly browsed through the recipe booklet that came with the IP and found a small mini Lava Cake recipe that would make do. I decided to give the IP a try and to my relief, it worked! We ended up with a lovely mini cake, which made up for its small size in great flavor.
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| A snapshot of the Recipe. |
Lastly, it's also that time of the year when we start getting seeds prepared for our garden. To germinate them, we place them in a Ziploc bag on top of a water-soaked paper towel and set them somewhere dark. Once the seeds germinate, we grow them in our small plant nursery to be planted in April, once the last Spring frost is over. Our garden this year will have a wide variety of produce and veggies. We settled on growing some of our old garden favorites, including two varieties of tomatoes known as "Patio Tomatoes" and "Big Beef" tomatoes, as well as some varieties of okra. We also have a few chili peppers varieties like Thai chilies and Indian chilies. Besides our usual plants, we also have a new addition to our garden this year! Over the past few months, we've been collecting and drying Bitter Gourd seeds for the winter germination season. Hopefully, we will see some healthy Bitter Gourd plants growing in the summer!
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| Some of the germinating seeds. |
