Celebrating Diwali in Indonesia
To help Jackson celebrate his Indian heritage, I invited a few friends for lunch to celebrate the Indian festival of Diwali.
Harold the Hedgehog joins us
After I sent out the invitations, Jackson’s teacher asked if he could take Harold the Hedgehog home for the weekend. Harold is the class pet, and the kids sign up to take care of him on the weekends. Harold was here to help us celebrate as well!
Several of our guests had been to India before. One did the ‘Rickshaw Run’ and traveled around India by motorized rickshaw. He was also in Chennai as part of his Semester at Sea program. Another backpacked through India over a summer. We enjoyed reminiscing about our times there. The kids just played. Coloring, Lego, hide and go seek. They finally went outside to the neighborhood playground!
For drinks, we had lime sodas, lemonade, and chai (spiced tea).
We started with Samosas. A fried pastry filled with potatoes, peas, and lots of spices.
We then had chicken biriyani (chicken and rice), chicken tikka masala (grilled chicken in a spicy tomato sauce), and palak paneer (paneer is a type of Indian cheese. The paneer was covered in a spinach cream sauce).
And for sweets we had galub jamun (like a donut hole soaked in sugar syrup with saffron and cardamom for flavor), Carrot Halwa (carrots cooked in sweetened milk, with golden raisins and cashews, and more cardamom), and Kaju Katli (cashew fudge – flavored with even more cardamom!)
I struggled with whether I really wanted to pull this off so soon after Halloween and before Thanksgiving. I just went for it and am glad that I did.