California is surrounded by the fire disaster right now. There are 2 fires and thousands of people missing. I became aware of the smoke outside when I went to my apartment balcony early morning last friday. The sun felt weak and the instant reaction as soon as I took a breath - it feels or rather smells exactly like how it use to in India after Diwali. Once I reached office, my coworkers started asking if its good to bike and that was the moment when I actually came to know about the fires. Ignorance was bliss! May be this is what grace looks like that we are sitting in between 2 fires and still able to breathe.
Its sad to see the damages that have happened with the fire, the number of people missing and a lot more suffering. Whatever may be the real cause, but it is time to rethink the amount of damage we do to mother nature. Its also a good time to remember to not be too proud of your achievements and donate what you can - nobody gets to take anything with them!
Coming back to Besan Laddoo, I have a funny memory related to besan laddoos. It was one of the year during my undergraduate in Pilani, 2004 I think. My photographic memory shows me a picture of me in my Malaviya bhavan room where we spent our last year. I had a jar of besan laddoos packed with me from home when the fall semester started in July/August. By the time laddoos reached pilani, they had all merged into each other due to the hot weather and the enormous amount of ghee so it was one big besan laddoo stuck in a jar. May be they all were meditating all throughout the journey from home to Pilani that by the end of it they just forgot their bodily boundaries and merged! I think I just used a spoon to eat laddoos after that :-)
Ingredients:
1. Besan (I used a mix of fine besan and coarse laddoo besan) - 3 cups
2. Ghee - 2/3 cups
3. Sugar - 1 cup
Steps:
1. Heat a pan and dry roast the besan and set it aside.
2. Heat ghee in the pan and add besan to it. Keep stirring it so that it doesn't burn.
3. Keep roasting until you can smell the roasted ghee and besan and the besan has turned brown.
4. Add sugar and mix well.
5. Take the mix off the heat and let it cool a bit.
6. Make Laddoos by taking the mix in the palm and pressing it.
7. Final trick to make them smooth and shiny is to just roll them inside the palm as you would normally do with the dice before rolling them.
