How India Celebrates Christmas

Christmas in India – An Insight Into how India Celebrates Christmas

India has always held Christmas in high regard. Though the population of Christians is just around 2.5% of the total population, India has around 30 million Christians distributed over various states and territories.

Christmas Celebrations in Various Parts of India:

Goa has a Christian population of around 25%, which makes Christmas in Goa a sight to behold. It is a known fact that Goans love to celebrate Christmas with much fervour. People participate in midnight masses and gorge on traditional curries and Christmas pies. People also decorate and maintain traditional Christmas trees which helps in bringing the spirit of Christmas alive.

Christmas celebrations in Goa — Christmas in Goa

Goans prepare a traditional delicacy, called “Neureos”, which you could try at home today!

Meghalaya – A Beautifully Decorated Church

Let’s go from the Westernmost corner of India to the Easternmost corner. India’s North East also has a very high concentration of Christians who take pride in celebrating Christmas with much enthusiasm. In the Northeast, tribal Christians celebrate their Christmas week by going out every night, singing their traditional Christmas carols and telling the villagers the story of Christmas. The whole state is beautifully lit to welcome the arrival of their dear Santa Claus, and the air is alive with singing and merriment.

In Kerala, Christmas is an important festival, for about 20-23% of the population is Christian. The huge churches of Cochin are majestically decorated to get the town in the spirit of Christmas – not that it is required, though. Keralites hold Christmas close to their hearts, as is evident by their exalted celebrations. Syrian Catholics are known to fast from the 1st to the 24th of December, and will break their fast only on the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. The midnight mass sees an atmosphere of exuberance and excitement – Christmas is finally here.

christmas celebrations in cochin, kerala. — Christmas in Cochin, Kerala

Keralites take their Christmas food just as seriously as the festival itself. Here’s one of our favorites, Lemon-Garlic Herbs Grilled Chicken.

When talking about Christmas, one cannot ignore the decorous spirit of Mumbai in celebrating this festival. Mumbai’s public places are awash with Christmas lights and stores usually have a small Christmas tree up front. Christmas in Mumbai is much like Christmas in Australia – neither is it cold, nor is there any snow.

However, Mumbaikars celebrate Christmas with lots of enthusiasm. Here’s a list of a few Midnight Masses in Mumbai that you shouldn’t miss out on.

How Farmers Celebrate Christmas in India

India has a small number of Christian farmers. Most of them are marginal farmers who can barely make ends meet. However, this doesn’t stop most of them from getting into the spirit of Christmas. Sometimes, instead of a traditional Christmas tree, some people decorate Banyan or Mango trees, the reason being that they’re easily found and are significantly cheaper. For most Christian farmers, Christmas celebrations are all about affordability. Some will also use mango leaves to decorate their homes.

Fair Trade – How it Can Make Christmas Possible for Farmers, & What You Can Do:

‘Fair trade’ in agriculture simply means that the farmer gets sufficient monetary compensation for their efforts, rather than money being skimped off by middlemen and other intermediaries. Free trade involves a lot of local sourcing connections and can be difficult to establish in a system so fixated on middlemen.

It is a known fact that farmers are exploited six ways to Sunday by middlemen at every opportunity they get – and the opportunities are plenty. The result is that the farmer doesn’t get a fair compensation for all their hard work in tending to their crops.

Christmas is all about kindness and looking out for those around you. Farmers form a pretty significant part of our lives. Paying the farmers a fair price will only strengthen their resolve, helping you make their Christmas better.

Fair trade not only ensures the farmer a fair monetary compensation for their efforts, but also the respect that they so rightfully deserve.

What can you do to help farmers? For one, you could either start purchasing directly from local farmers without the added burden of middlemen, or buy from an organization that works closely with farmers to help these farmers make some money.

How You Can Go Organic This Christmas:

There are a quite a few things you could tweak this Christmas to go organic. Here are a few things you can readily implement this year:

1. Go for Seasonal, Organically Grown Veggies:

A lot of people host Christmas parties. The food you serve can be organic. Choose seasonal, organically grown vegetables to go into your menu as the bare minimum you can do to go organic.

2. Organic Cotton:

Cotton is regarded as one of the most polluting industries. Organic cotton, on the other hand is grown using sustainable farming practices. Indians use cotton for two purposes during Christmas – decorations and gifts.

Not all regions of India are blessed with snow during Christmas, resulting in widespread use of cotton to create the effect. The other use of cotton occurs in the form of gifts – a lot of people gift other people clothes during Christmas. Swapping for organically grown cotton will help reduce your carbon footprint, and help you go organic.

3. Identify Your Local Farmers:

This Christmas, ditch the supermarkets for your food-based needs. Identify your local farmers, locate their farms and try to spend at least a little time with them. This serves two purposes – one, you get to know the farmer and their hardships, and two, you get to help them by buying their produce directly.

The Bottom Line

Christmas has always been a big deal in India. Over the past few years, it has started gaining more popularity in terms of celebrations. You don’t necessarily have to be Christian to get into the Christmas spirit. It is rightfully said that Christmas isn’t just a festival – it’s a feeling.

Get into the Christmas spirit, take time off to be with your family and friends.

Daana wishes its customers a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

Mix Dal Vada

What do you make when you invite people for tea at your place? Thinking of making a snack for tea time always gets you into a chagrin – should it be a lavish tiffin or just namkeen ? Well, stop thinking and try this Mix Dal Vada which is a crispy protein rich snack, a big hit with the kids and am sure the guests too 🙂

Ingredients

Note: Please use a small cup, or you can even measure with a big serving spoon

1 cup Boiled Rice

1 cup Toor Dal

1 cup Moong Dal

1 cup Urad Dal

1 cup Chana Dal

1 tbsp chopped coconut

2 tsp whole pepper

4 -5 Red chillies

Curry leaves

Asafoetida

Salt acc to taste

Oil for frying

Method

Soak the boiled rice and all the dals together for an hour along with the red chillies. Drain the water and grind them into a coarse batter while adding salt. Now that the batter is ready, add freshly chopped coconut pieces, curry leaves,whole pepper and asafoetida to this. Mix well. Fry the vadas in oil and serve with any chutney or sauce of your choice.

The crunchy vadas with whole pieces of coconut and pepper make a good evening snack. I tried coriander chutney with this and it tasted great. You can add a twist to this recipe by giving a tadka (seasoning) of mustard seeds and hing(asafoetida) to the batter before frying.

Use Organic Dals and Cold Pressed Groundnut/Sunflower Oil for the best taste. You can find these ingredients on Amazon here

Cheers!!!

-Bhuvana

Home cooked Dal Makhni

When I eat at a restaurant, I oftentimes wonder if I can replicate the same dish at home: keep the richness of the flavour, but cut out that cloyingly heavy feeling you get by eating that cream-and-butter-laden restaurant dish.

If you’re like me, you will like this recipe for Dal Makhani, which I made yesterday. “Makhan” refers to homemade white butter. This recipe contains no butter, but tastes just as good.

dalmakhni

Ingredients: (all measurements are approximate. Feel free to add or subtract to suit your discretion)

One cup whole masoor dal (also known as whole red lentil. If you live outside the Indian subcontinent, you will find it in any Indian or middle eastern grocery store)
Half cup rajma (red kidney bean)
One onion, finely chopped
Few garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 green chillies, sliced lengthwise
3 tomatoes, finely chopped
One fistful of cashew nuts
Spices: Salt, dhania (Coriander) powder, jeera (Cumin) powder, haldi (turmeric) powder and optionally some pounded cinnamon, elaichi (cardamom). If you want it light on spices, skip the cinnamon and elaichi.

Method:

Soak the rajma in warm water for a hour. Soak the cashews in warm water separately for an hour.
Cook the masoor dal and rajma in a cooker and ensure they are well cooked, but not too gooey. Mash them with a hand masher so you can still see pieces of the lentil, but they’re soft and mixed together
In a kadai (wide saute pan), heat some groundnut oil, add the onions, garlic, green chillies. Saute until the onions are lightly brown, then add the tomatoes; reduce the flame, put a lid on and cook until the tomatoes turn soft
Now add the mashed dal, salt and other spices and let it simmer a few minutes. (I prefer to add the spices at this time, and not while sauteing the onions as this preserves their flavour and aroma)
Grind the soaked cashews into a fine, slightly runny paste. Add most of it into the dal and mix it up.
Pour into a bowl to serve, drizzle the rest of the cashew paste on top, add a few sprigs of coriander leaves to garnish.
Eat with hot rotis

This is an amazing comfort food during the rainy season. If there is any of it left over, just warm it up and eat it as a snack. Do try it out and let me know how it was.

Know Your Oils

Find out all about oils to decide which ones are better.

Know Your Oils

coldpressedoil

There is so much information about oils these days. Which oils are better, which ones are “healthier”, which ones to avoid etc etc. The hope of this article is to provide some simple clarity on oils.

What are oils? what sort of oils should we consume, and what should we avoid?
Oils are the fatty part of vegetables, seeds or nuts. Sunflower Oil, Sesame Oil, Coconut Oil, Olive Oil, Groundnut Oil etc. Oils are concentrated fat and hence must be used sparingly. Even if the plant source is extremely nutritious (eg: mustard), its oil must still be used sparingly.

Refined Oils: Ignore the use of words that make a product sound cool. Refined oils are hardly “suave and sophisticated”.

They are made by heating the seeds or nuts to very high temperatures to extract the oil. Oil molecules when heated to very high temperatures begin to break down into other compounds, some of which are carcinogenic in nature (ie cancer causing). High temperature extraction is used in the industry because it extracts a much higher percentage of oil from the base.
Commercial solvents such as hexane are used to extract more oils from the base. Exposure to hexane by inhalation is detrimental to health. This hexane isn’t affecting you directly, but it certainly does impact the workers who work in the oil refineries. Something to think about.
Commercial refined oils in the supermarket come with a combination of oils that aren’t listed in the ingredients. The most common of them being cottonseed oil. Cottonseed oil is a by product of the cotton industry. Remember, more than 90% of cotton grown in India is GMO cotton. You are essentially consuming GMO without your knowledge.
To keep the oil looking transparent and uniform and have a longer shelf life, a lot of other solvents and emulsifiers are used. More chemicals in your body that you don’t need.

Organic Cold Pressed Oils: The better and healthy oils. Why Organic? Simple. No toxic chemicals in our food, body, soils, groundwater and air. Healthy and safe for everyone. What is Cold Pressed?

The oil is extracted by placing it in a mortar, and ground by pressing it with a rotating pestle. This keeps the temperature of extraction low (under 49C) and the oil that comes out has never been heated before.
No solvents are used to extract more oil.
Cold pressing is done in “ghanis” in villages in India. The leftover base, called the oil cake is fed to cattle as fodder. It is a rural small scale industry that supplements farmers income from agriculture.
No emulsifiers or other chemicals are used to make it look pretty or increase its shelf life
Cold pressed oils have a lesser shelf life (about 3-4 months)
They are much more tasty because they have not been overheated, and the pressing method preserves taste and nutrients. Cold pressed groundnut oil has an amazing aroma and taste of groundnuts.

Other oil facts: There is no one oil that is better than another. Coconut, Sesame, Groundnut, Mustard, Safflower, all of them are just as good for cooking. In fact, optimal health is when there is variety. Use these oils in rotation, and don’t stick to just one oil alone.

New kids on the block: How about Rice Bran oil, Olive Oil, Soybean Oil etc? 10 years ago, these products weren’t even found in our supermarkets. Many of these are being “pushed” thanks to advertising, and demands are being “created”. If you eat unpolished/brown rice, you will get way more nutrition from rice bran, than you will by consuming rice bran oil, which is its concentrated fat extract. Olives are not native to India. Olive Oil is imported. It is expensive and isn’t of a singularly superlative health quality, that you should spend the money and effort trying to get it. Same with soybean oil. Simple rule: stick to oils that your grandmother used to get, and don’t worry about new “trends”.