Kai Holige

Wish you all a Very Happy Ugadi. Ugadi festival reminds me of childhood days. New clothes, lots of food and not to forget yummy ubatti. I still remember that song of our school days "Uga Ugadi Kaledaru"...what a lovely and meaningful lyrics. My cousin mentioned this festival is also called as "Ubbati Parab". Ubbati is a sweet dish prepared specially during Ugadi and Parab means festival in konkani.

My DH is not a big fan of chana dal. So I decided to replace ubbati with kai holige this time. He loved it ! My grandmother used to make this holige every year without fail right after Gauri festival. Because we celebrated Gauri puja at home, there used to be lots of coconut which is typically called as "vaina". It was her belief to make only sweet dishes out of vaina she used to make kai holige and distribute among her kids and their family.

Kai holige is made with coconut stuffing whereas ubbati with chana dal stuffing. We call this coconut stuffing as huran and the outside layer made with all purpose flour or maida as "kanik".This is my second attempt in preparing kai holige and this time the preparation was a bliss. Rolling after placing coconut dumpling came out perfect. This surely is a time consuming sweet dish and needs patience ! But the end result is something you can relish :)

Aamras/ Mango Pulp

Its mango season again :-) ! I just love mangoes. I used to avoid eating mangoes with a fear of gaining weight. Recently  I started reading about nutritional facts of mangoes and if it really causes weight gain the answer was "no". Wow what a relief to me ! I can have mangoes this season without any guilt !

I always buy mangoes for my DD from wholefoods. Those were so sweet and totally yum ! But I just love the ones we get from Indian grocery stores. The first mango I bought this year I could not stop myself from preparing aamras with poori. Yumilicious !