Marigold garlands

   Last evening my daughter S's daycare had their Diwali program, it was a power packed event filled with dance, masti and great food by the owner herself.
  There was Ram Leela, kids dance sequences as well the parents also jived  a Bollywood number !!All in all an evening well spent ...
  In the Ram-leela  for Ram-Sita wedding scene the organizer

needed a mala/garland so I offered to make one from the fresh Marigolds on my front porch ....

These Marigolds flourished all summer long and are still surviving, lets see how it goes  here on ..
Initially I just envisioned to just thread all the flowers and make two straight strings of flowers but as I started to make I realized that the flowers I plucked wont be enough and believe me I bared the plants and just left tiny buds on there.To make up for the quantity and I used some leaves, just fold them and string them ... but that wasn't enough so I tore some purple tissue paper and rolled a messy ball out of it ... they break the continuous yellow and also look dainty !!


Add caption

I really enjoyed making these and my little girl wanted to learn instantly she even pricked her little fingers couple times attempting to push the flowers through the needle ..

 The garland being used in the scene

Chole

My mother's receipe, on which me and my brother relished and relished. My brother studied away from home,whenever he returned for vacation, his very 1st demand was "Aai chole banav na".(mom please cook chole !! ) Oh ! I am getting nostalgic about those days...... [:)] Now chole can be made in variety of ways but this one I love the most. And here in the US the ready made canned choles (Garbanzo beans) are the best ones to use ,it avoids the step of soaking and boiling them.Chole are eaten along with Bhature (Huge pooris fried in oil....I am sure they must be tasting yummy.....),this is I suppose the traditional Punjabi receipe but we used to have them with chapati and yes Jeera rice too.
So here is what you need.

Ingredients:
1 can Garbanzo beans