I am back to the blogosphere. It was really a tough time to settle down and get things done. I really faced a very tough time as there were continuous doctors visits one after other in the family. I don't know what would have went wrong. Even now there are few more packed boxes, yet to be unpacked...and god only knows when it can be done.

Coming to the Indian Cooking Challenge, already I missed one (Murukku) last time. So I didn't want to miss this time too. I was planning this for almost one half month, got print outs of this recipe at least five times...got delayed....delayed and at the end I made it on sat evening.

Appah how many hurdles I should cross. I was grinding batter for Sunday breakfast and preparing the khova. All of a sudden my husband peeped into the kitchen and asked whether I will be able to prepare bajjis for him. It was raining outside and its a perfect time for a bajji too. It was really shock for me, as he is not a fan of bajji and he asked me for the first time in 3 years of my married life. What else...I got things ready for a bread bajji, the easier one. Finished off with the bajji session and I was very happy that my husband and kutty had a great time with the bajji.

Then started off with the jamuns, by that time the khova got ready and made the batter with the ingredients mentioned. Closed it and kept it. Kept the sugar syrup boiling. Used all the buffer time to finish off with my batter mixing. Once everything got ready, I fried the gulab jamuns and put it in the sugar syrup.

And then the comedy session started...I waited for half an hour....1 hr....8hrs....the next day morning too came....but jamun still remained hard enough.....ooops then only I realised on seeing the unopened cooking soda packet. :'( wat to do....Mission Failure. But the taste was good...but hard.

Please do read the comments from my husband and in laws

Husband - "I have sent one to Dr APJ, to try it as a new weapon and one more NASA to do a research on it"

BIL 1 - When my kid had a jamun in hand "Pappu hold it safe otherwise u may harm ur legs when it falls down"

BIL 2 - "Oh my god, you tried it a wrong time....we are done with the remodelling of our house and we don't need stones any more"

Its my fault and I am really scared of trying it anymore...as i was boiling 2 litres of milk on a LPG.

But anyway am posting this as I tried it. I am eager to see all your comments.

Vinayaga Chathurthi is always my favorite festival. Since I was brought up in a village, its always a joyful event to buy clay ganesha. I will be roaming around to get all decorative things like umbrella, erukka maalai and so on for that ganesha. But this time we missed this festival, as we had to attend a close relative's marriage at chidambaram. After that travel, I couldn't find time to prepare this, as I had to bring back home to normal. I missed khamam dhokla also, so I didn't want to miss this time too. So I made myself to prepare something at least for Indian Cooking Challenge. I reached home by 8.30 PM after that I started my venture. When I read through the procedures, I realized only 2 recipes can be made easily at that time. So ended up my list to kozhukattais and peanut ladoos(from Valli's recipe)

I prepared the same way as mentioned by Valli. This is the second time in my life, I am preparing kozhukattai. Because my mom used prepare only pidi kozhukkattai and not this one, so I never had a chance of learning this. As my husband is very much fond of this sweet, he is very particular about the taste and texture. He has a great list of specification on how a kozhikattai should be. Even after 25 years of excellence in kitchen, he will find faults with my MIL's preparation of this sweet. This made me keep away from preparing this. No other go, I ought to prepare this at least once in a year during this pooja. I thought I am saved this year, but this ICC trapped me into trouble :( .

My poornam came out well and the dough too. But after seeing my first set of kozhukattais, my husband thought he only will prepare it. I was very conscious on the getting a fully covered kozhukkattai, but he felt that the cover is too thick. So he only did all the kozhukatais after that. Really it came out well and you can see the snaps.

Making peanut ladoos was not a big deal and it also came out as expected. Actually I thought of doing a small pooja with this as the neivedhyam, but its was toooooooooo late.

Recipes are transferred from generations. In my case both my Mom and my MIL learnt cooking from my mom's mom. She was an expert and till now some of her masterpieces remains unacheivable. Like athirasam, idyappam, suzhiyam etc. Some of them were tried several times and left as it didnt turn out upto her level. Later they stopped trying even. When I heard of this Indian Cooking challenge, I felt very happy to get a chance to try out the tough ones. After mastering them, I can challenge my Mom and MIL ;) hehehe

Coming to the trial run, my trial run was a great success. As it is already month end, I decided to prepare it yesterday. I had all the ingredients ready at home. But when I started, immediately the power went off. Ooops what a bad sign I got. I determined to go ahead and finish it off with the charged light. Cooking in Candle Light:) As I am doing it for the first time, I took a print out of the recipe mentioned there. My hubby dear helped me in getting things done and reading out for me. The only thing is he was very keen on measurements. I wanted to have less sugar, but he was jumping on not use different measurements. It appeared so kiddish, but I really loved the overall experience.

I used the exact measurements and the same procedure as mentioned.

Only thing I couldnt achieve was, I couldnt get a good round shape, as it was so hot. I prepared the balls immediately, after I took off from the stove. Later I realised I would have waited for some more time, so that it would have cooled little bit. Any which ways, I will be preparing it often, as it turned out well.

The most lovable thing was, my son loved it so much. He was asking for it, before he went to bed. Later the next morning as soon as he got up, he took that box and was asking me to open it and give him one. Thats the appreciation I got.