Sakara(aka) Sweet Pongal

Its pongal month and how can we pass without making sweet pongal..Though we dont generally celebrate pongal at our home, we wanted to celebrate starting this year as a way of adding our cultural thought in kids life...Yes..and it makes more sense too as we are from Tamil Nadu where the pongal festival is the grand festival celebrated throught the state....As the weekend started, we planned to prepare pongal for festival and do pooja at home(as the weather is worsening day by day in chicago, its a very good idea to plan a day out...but still Adharsh kept on asking 'Where are we going for Pongalo Pongal...Kids are fun always...)..Though we made 4 pongals on that day, the one which came out very well is sweet pongal and heres the recipe...

Ingredients

1. Rice - 1 cup
2. Moong dal - 1/2 cup
3. Jaggery - 1 cup
4. Milk - 1 1/2 cup
5. Ghee - 4-5 tbsp
6. Nuts like Pista, Cashewnut, almonds, raisin - 4-5 tbsp

No of people - 4-5

Method

1. Boil rice with water in 1:2 ratio. you can boil the rice in a cooker with lid open
2. Once rice is cooked add milk to the rice and stir it well. Leave it in low flame and stir it once a while so that the rice doesnt stick to the bottom of the cooker
3. On the other stove, boil the jaggery till it melts down to liquid state(you can add some water for easy processing)
4. Add the jaggery to the rice milk mixture and stir it once a while to make it non stickable.
5. Heat ghee in a pan and add the chopped nuts to the mixture. When the added raisin pops out, remove it from the flame and add it to the rice mixture..

Thats it .its so ooo simple and sweety ...good to go...enjoy the treat...