I love this time of year. When the days get darker and the crisp Autumn air hits your face. The trees look so beautiful with its leaves transitioning from green to orange and red. It also means that Diwali is coming up and that means a celebration of delicious food, lights and music.

Diwali is the festival of light, so all over the world those who celebrate would prepare by lighting divas around the house and decorate their doorsteps with Rangoli. The colours and the lights really get you into the festive spirit.

We also prepare by making large batches of sweet and savoury snacks to enjoy over the festive period. I often remember helping my Mum in the kitchen for hours making all sorts of dishes. We would make chakris (a savoury swirl shaped snack enjoyed with a cup of tea) and I would be piping the dough out whilst my Mum would be frying them to perfection. Crisp, light and slightly spicy.

We would also make a long list of sweet and savoury snacks that I would find difficult to even describe. Its a sea of deliciousness. Once finished, we would make some chai and sit down with a mini buffet of all the things we spent hours making.

The best part of this festival was exchanging all this food with the family. We would package up the food we made and give it to our friends and family, and they would do the same. It was a beautiful trade of tasty snacks and sweets.

Below is an image of me making some Sev in my kitchen. Sev is a savoury snack shaped like noodles and made from chickpea flour and spices. Its very simple to make but you need one of these fancy gadgets that pushes the dough through a template to achieve the noodle shapes and into the hot oil to fry. I don’t even know what this gadget is called but every family I know owns one and they magically turn your dough into all sorts of shapes and sizes. They are the key to making Indian savoury snacks. I’m sure you can find them on Amazon nowadays! It’s great fun.

There’s something very nostalgic about all of this. Unfortunately Covid seems to have taken away a lot of the buzz around some festivals for everyone. Hopefully we can find it again and teach our children about the festival of Diwali, so they can enjoy it just the way we did as children.

Do you celebrate Diwali? How are you preparing for the festival of light? Leave me a comment below I would love to hear all about it 🙂