Kubbah, an Iraqi Jewish dish for the Sabbath

December 1, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Today’s piece was written by Maddee Sommers Kepes, who lives in West Bloomfield, Michigan, and dubs herself a “writer for all reasons.” Her articles have appeared in business periodicals, and her play, “Mean Girls,” has been seen by thousands of area middle schoolers.

Rimona Lieberman thinks of her grandmother whenever she makes kubbah, a Jewish Iraqi dish traditionally eaten on the Sabbath.

Rimona, who now lives in suburban Detroit, was born in Israel. But her mother’s family came from Iraq, a country they fled from in 1950 after the government instituted anti-Jewish policies.

A thriving community

The 2,700-year history of the Jews in the area now known as Iraq began when ancient Israelites were brought there as slaves by Assyrian and Babylonian conquerors.

By 500 C.E. the region had become a center of Jewish learning and home to the preeminent scholars who produced the Babylonian Talmud. During the Middle Ages the fate of the Jewish community bobbed on uncertain tides of tolerance and tyranny under the rule of a succession of conquerors: Persians, Mongols, Turks.

The British mandate over Iraq after World War I ushered in an era of modern nation building. Jews helped form the new nation’s judicial and postal systems and held government prominent positions. The first minister of finance, Sir Sassoon Eskell, was a Jew.

By 1932, when Iraq became an independent state, the “Israelite community” numbered upwards of 120,000, and Jews made up nearly one-third of Baghdad’s population.

It was about this time that Rimona’s maternal grandparents, Margalit and Jacob Abraham, left their family in Tehran and headed to Baghdad. Margalit had learned Hebrew at an early age and long dreamt of living in the Holy Land.

Hopeful that a Zionist organization in Baghdad would help them get to the Jewish homeland in what was then still called Palestine, they made the 430-mile journey through the mountains on foot. They narrowly survived kidnapping and the threat of death by forfeiting all their money and jewelry. They arrived in Baghdad broke and had to put their dream on hold.

One room, six children

They lived in the Jewish Quarter of Baghdad, in a single room with a dirt floor. There they raised their six children. Though poor, Margalit and Jacob both worked and saved for their journey to Palestine. The Jewish Quarter was a hive of communal life with Jewish schools, synagogues, kosher butchers and restaurants. Everyone knew each other. Business came to a halt every Sabbath and Jewish holiday as the entire community celebrated together.

Most Jewish families ate the same meals every week: kichree (lentils and rice) on Thursday, fried fish on Friday, kubbah on Saturday.

Kubbah are farina dough dumplings filled with meat. Rimona cooks them in a sweet and sour sauce made with beets and serves the dish over rice.

Kubbah can be made with fish, but  it was traditionally the once-a-week meat dish in the Iraqi Jewish diet.

The forgotten refugees

Life for Iraqi Jews deteriorated after the pro-Nazi coup of Rashid Ali, which sparked a pogrom in June 1941 during the Feast of Shavuot. Over two days armed mobs attacked Baghdad’s Jews, destroying homes, murdering hundreds and wounding nearly 1,000. Fortunately, Margalit’s family was not harmed.

A few years after the pogrom Jacob died leaving Margalit pregnant with their sixth child and alone to provide for her family.

The drive for a Jewish state triggered other incidents of anti-Jewish rioting. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, Zionism became a capital crime. Jews were imprisoned, tortured, dismissed from their jobs and stripped of their property. Some Iraqi Jews were evacuated and the rest fled. Today, fewer than 10 Jews remain in Iraq.

Margalit left Iraq with her six children in 1950 and made her way to Israel. She’s living there today at the age of 103.

She is just one of the 850,000 Jews who were expelled or forced to flee from Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa since 1948. Most of the rest of the world is unaware of their story.

The state of Israel has designated November 30 as an annual, national day of commemoration for these forgotten refugees. Learn more about Jews of Middle Eastern and North African ancestry.

The photo with the recipe is by Sarah Melamed, who writes a blog called Food Bridge: Bridging Cultures through Food.

This Thanksgiving, don’t potchke! (Make spinach kugel instead.)

November 23, 2014 by 1 Comment

Listen up, all you non-Ashkenazi Jews out there. I’m going to teach you a useful Yiddish word, just in time for Thanksgiving.

That word is “potchke,” which can also be spelled “patchke” or “potschke.” It is pronounced POTCH-kee.

It means to fuss or bother. Originally it meant “in an ineffectual or ineffective way” like when you say, “I spent all day potchke-ing around and didn’t get anything done,” or “Stop potche-ing, let’s go already.”

But lately it’s come to mean to make a big production out of something, or to do something that involves a lot of fuss and bother. I often dismiss difficult or involved recipes I come across because they’re “too much of a potchke.”

I bring this up now because I associate the word with a memorable Thanksgiving we spent with friends more than 35 years ago, before any of my children were born. It was at this Thanksgiving dinner where we first ate spinach kugel, the recipe I offer below. “Kugel” means “pudding”; it’s really a kind of firm casserole that you cut into squares to eat.

This is not a traditional Thanksgiving dish, and I don’t think I have eaten it at Thanksgiving dinner since then, but it is delicious and easy to make. It’s been in my repertoire since that day long ago, and I’ve shared it with many friends who also make it often. So if you’re looking for something a little different for Thanksgiving dinner this year, this could be it.

She knew how to potchke!

On that Thanksgiving many years ago we went to stay with friends who had recently moved from Detroit back to their original hometown of Chicago. I’ll call them Henry and Diane to protect the innocent.

Thanksgiving dinner was to be at the home of Henry’s brother and his wife, Richard and Donna–also not their real names. Henry and Richard’s parents were also there.

As Donna, who was about eight months pregnant, finished up the turkey and trimmings, she invited us into the basement rec room for hors d’oeuvres. They came in the form of a pu pu platter, something popular in Chinese and Polynesian restaurants in the 1960s and 1970s. It was a large tray of appetizers, like mini-eggrolls and wontons, complete with a volcano-shaped mini-charcoal grill that we could use to toast the tidbits. We were goggle-eyed with admiration.

Then Donna decided their dog, a huge, rambunctious German shepherd mix, deserved a holiday treat too. She took out a gigantic chargrilled bone that must have once been the thigh of some unfortunate steer. The overjoyed mutt dragged it around the gold-colored carpet of the living-dining room, spreading the char from the grilled bone all over the rug.

As we hovered around the table, preparing to take our seats, Donna got out the rug shampoo machine to clean the carpet.

The defining comment on the dinner came from Henry’s mother. “Boy,” she said, “Donna really potchkes.” Afraid that she might be insulting her daughter-in-law, our hostess, she added. “Diane potchkes too. But Donna POTCHKES!”

Although we haven’t seen Henry and Diane in more than 30 years, I think of that story every Thanksgiving.

I wish you all a happy holiday. Enjoy your family, enjoy your food–and don’t potchke!

(This recipe calls for Coffee Rich, a non-dairy creamer, so that people who observe the Jewish dietary laws can eat it with meat meals where no dairy foods are permitted. If you have no such concerns, you can use milk–or even half-and-half if you want a richer dish. I actually prefer to make it with water. You can also use butter instead of margarine.)

 

 

Challah, Take Two

November 17, 2014 by Leave a Comment

When I first started this column almost a year and a half ago, my first recipe was for challah, the braided egg bread used to welcome in the Jewish Sabbath.

I used the recipe my husband, Joe, uses almost every week and included a little video showing how to braid the challah. If you want to be really wowed by challah-braiding techniques, check out this video from Israel.

I don’t want to make a habit of repeating recipes – and indeed this week’s offering is a different recipe for challah – but I wanted to tell you about a something special that took place in Detroit on October 23.

A great big baking event

It was the Great Big Challah Bake, and it was the opening event of a worldwide event called the Shabbos Project.

Shabbos (SHAbiss) is the Yiddish word for Sabbath and many Jews of Eastern European descent still pronounce it that way, especially Orthodox Jews. In Hebrew it’s ShaBAHT.

The Shabbos Project was started last year by Dr. Warren Goldstein, the chief rabbi of South Africa, as a Jewish unity project. The idea was to have all Jews in the country, no matter what their usual level of religious practice, observe one Sabbath in October together.

The celebration included a challah bake on Thursday night, Sabbath dinners on Friday night (since Sabbath starts at sundown Friday), religious services and lunches on Saturday, and a huge outdoor concert after the Sabbath ended at nightfall.

People invited others to Sabbath meals in their homes, and several communities held large outdoor dinners that attracted hundreds. The final concert in Johannesburg attracted 50,000.

Celebrating the Sabbath together

This year Dr. Goldstein took the project global. More than 400 cities around the world set up Shabbos Project committees to try to replicate the South Africa experience October 23, 24 and 25.

I went to the Great Big Challah Bake as a reporter for the Detroit Jewish News. It was held in a large banquet hall. When I walked in I was amazed.

Oblong tables covered with blue plastic tablecloths fanned out across the hall. Each table held 14 large foil roasting pans; each pan contained everything needed to make a batch of challah: a 2-lb. sack of flour, a 16-oz. bottle of water, two eggs and small plastic containers of carefully measured-out yeast, sugar, salt, and oil.

Each pan also held rubber gloves, a mixing spoon, a large plastic mixing bowl, a recipe card and an apron emblazoned with the name of the event.

More than 300 women of all ages from across the religious spectrum – from very Orthodox to non-observant – participated in the Great Big Challah Bake. Some bake challah regularly for their families. Some had never baked bread before.

Together they mixed and shaped loaves of challah, which they took home to bake.

The event was free. Materials were provided by anonymous donors.

Mixing and kneading

We dumped our yeast and sugar into the mixing bowl and added the water. We let the mixture sit until it bubbled. Then we added the eggs, oil and salt, and finally the flour, mixing with our hands when the dough got too stiff to mix with the spoon.

I enjoyed mixing up challah dough while chatting with the half-dozen women around me and learning a little bit about the history and meaning of challah.

The term “challah” actually refers to a portion of the dough that was taken out and burned, a commandment that dates to the time of the Temple in Jerusalem, said Henna Millburn, one of the event coordinators. Today instead of burning it’s acceptable to take a small portion of the dough, wrap it twice and throw it away.

Baking challah is a “labor of love” that brings women together, said Millburn. “What binds us is not the ingredients, it is the Torah we share as Jews,” she said.

I offer this story because other religious or social groups may want to do something similar. Cooking with others can be great fun and it’s a good inter-generational activity.

You don’t have to make challah or even bread. Pick a food that has meaning for your group and a recipe that can be assembled in one place, transported somewhere else and cooked there a little later. This would certainly work for making cookie dough.

Get a group of volunteers together and set things up to make the process easy. Use disposable everything to minimize cleanup. If it’s something wet, like soup, provide a large, covered plastic container so participants can take the uncooked dish home.

If the recipe involves a waiting period – like the 30 minutes for the challah dough to rise before shaping it – plan to share some stories or use the time to hold a brief prayer service.

My challah wasn’t as beautiful as my husband’s – I never did get the hang of braiding it, and it turned out rather blob-like. But it tasted wonderful, and so I’m happy to pass on this easy recipe.

(And you don’t have to braid it. The bread would be equally delicious baked in a loaf pan, or you can make round loaves by making balls of dough – a larger ball in the center and six smaller balls around it, all touching.)

The elusive Baumann’s butter cake

November 10, 2014 by 14 Comments

Every year when my birthday rolls around, as it did last week, I find myself pining for the bake shop of my youth: Baumann’s Bakery in the Burholme section of Northeast Philadelphia.

Baumann’s was an old-fashioned German bakery in an old-fashioned, largely German neighborhood. The green-sided shop with big plate windows was on the corner of Tabor and Cottman, with the entrance right at the corner. For my entire childhood it was our go-to bakery.

Whenever anyone in the family – my parents or the three children – had a birthday, my mom would order a Baumann’s birthday cake, even if we weren’t having a party and there were only the five of us to eat it.

The 10-inch layer cakes were decorated with colorful swirls and flowers – and our name, written in loopy icing!

Our name in print (or icing)

I passed Baumann’s several times a day on my way to and from school (we also went home at lunchtime). It was always a thrill to see my cake on display in the window, with “Happy Birthday Barbara” embossed on it in pink icing (I wasn’t Bobbie until my teens).

After my mother discovered the cakes could be customized with more than just a name, my sister, whose birthday is right before Halloween, would often get a chocolate-iced cake decorated with pumpkins and ghosts. My dad’s cake sometimes had icing tennis rackets to reflect his favorite pastime.

Baumann’s is gone now, but its memory lingers on. The bake shop made wonderful cinnamon bread, raisin tea cakes, tasty Linzer torte cookies, and killer cinnamon sticky buns loaded with pecans. The filling in their custard and whipped cream doughnuts was so fresh they kept them in a refrigerated case.

Our favorite dessert of all was Baumann’s butter cake.

Buttery nirvana

Imagine a thin, yeasty base topped with a layer of buttery, melt-in-your mouth, vanilla-scented custard. The top was slightly browned, letting you see the luscious yellow, moist filling. It was baked in a sheet pan, and you ordered a hunk of a certain size, which was cut off, weighed so you could pay by the pound, and packed up in a square cardboard box tied with string.

I have never found anything like Baumann’s butter cake anywhere else.

Determined to recreate it myself, if necessary, I searched for a “German butter cake” recipe. Most of the recipes sounded like ordinary cakes made with butter – not a custard-topped yeast cake.

One recipe called “St. Louis-Style GooeyButter Cake,” sounded promising, but it used cream cheese in addition to the butter, something I knew Baumann’s hadn’t done. And it was based on yellow cake mix, not yeast dough. I tried it, and it was delicious – but it wasn’t Baumann’s butter cake.

“Philadelphia” is the key

Then inspiration struck. I did a Web search for “Philadelphia butter cake.” Success!

Sort of. Again, it was a delicious cake, and it was pretty darn close to the Baumann’s version. I thought it was too thick. I made it in a 9 x 13-inch pan as the recipe directs.  Using two 8 x 8-inch pans would probably make it a little thinner, which I will probably do next time.

I’m not sure when “next time” will be. This is an extremely rich dessert, and the recipe makes a large cake. (If you make two smaller cakes you can probably freeze one.) But if you’re planning a special meal and want to impress your guests – or if you want to wow someone who grew up in Philadelphia – give this yummy confection a try.

Coffee talk—and a great biscotti recipe

November 3, 2014 by Leave a Comment

 

“God cries and an angel loses its wings” is not some Bizarro version of It’s a Wonderful Life. Rather it’s what Frank Lanzkron-Tamarazo says will happen if you drink his coffee with cream (or anything white) and sugar.

Frank is an unabashed coffee snob, but he’s entitled. His suburban Detroit coffee roasterie and café, Chazzano Coffee Roasters, regularly wins “Best Coffee Shop” awards in local media contests, even though he doesn’t serve cakes, cookies or bagels. Chazzano offers nothing but fine coffees and teas.

Coffee has at least 1,500 different flavors, says Frank, depending on the type of beans, where they come from and how they’re roasted. (Pay attention, wine snobs: wine has only 750 flavors.) What, you can’t taste the notes of blueberry, cherry, pipe tobacco with a red wine finish in that cup of joe? Neither can I, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there.

To taste coffee properly, you have to drink it black, without sugar. If you have to add anything, says Frank, it means you just don’t like the flavor of the coffee (along with a gentle insinuation that it can’t possibly be his coffee, and is therefore inferior).

There are some notable exceptions to Frank’s requirement—I had the best cappucino I’ve ever had at Chazzano!

How to build businesses and congregations

God Cries and an Angel Loses Its Wings is also the title of Frank’s 72-page monograph, which shows how the customer service techniques Frank learned in his coffee business can help other businesses and religious congregations.

Frank was in music school in New York training to be an operatic tenor when he changed career paths. He moved to St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, for an undergraduate degree and then enrolled in cantorial school at the Jewish Theological Seminary, earning a master’s in sacred music.

After working as a cantor leading religious services at several synagogues for 15 years, Frank made another about-face. Finding himself jobless thanks to congregational politics, he turned to his avocation, coffee roasting, which he had started doing in his garage. The hobby became a full-time business with the establishment of Chazzano Coffee Roasters in 2006. The name is a play on chazzan, the Hebrew word for cantor, and the logo features a dancing cantor. (The “ch” is guttural, like in the German “ach.”) The company’s motto: “Good coffee makes you sing.”

Give customers ownership

When Frank tells a new customer to taste the coffee before adding cream and sugar, he says, the customer gains some sense of ownership in the business. Now when his stalwarts bring friends to the cafe for the first time, they’re the ones who announce the rule. They’ll tell how they always used cream and sugar until they started coming to Chazzano. They feel like part of a family. By educating his customers, Frank builds loyalty.

One of Frank’s fans has even developed a video game based on his rules. It’s called Coffee Defenders, and the villains are cream and sugar. (The game is in the final stages of development.)

Here are a few other tips from Frank’s book that can help houses of worship as well as businesses to build community:

First impressions are crucially important when meeting a new customer or prospective congregant. But so is the last impression. If you promise something and don’t deliver, you’ll kill the relationship you’ve just established.

Interview customers (or congregants). It’s all about networking! Find out what they do and what they like. Once you know something about them, you can make connections by introducing them to others. Through Frank’s shop, homeowners have found a good plumber and a family law attorney has reached prospective clients. Frank makes the same kinds of connections at the suburban Detroit synagogue where he now works part-time as a cantor. “Talk to everyone. Learn from everyone,” he says.

Encourage educated customers (or congregants) to recruit others. Frank was thrilled to hear that a customer who was dissatisfied with the coffee at a restaurant told the manager he should be buying from Chazzano instead.

Be kind to everyone. Put some love into your voice when you talk to people. It’s an extension of the Golden Rule: when you are kind to others, it will lead them to find ways to help you.

Do some introspection to see what’s lacking in your business or house of worship. Common lacks, all interrelated, are enthusiasm, new visitors, follow through and integrity, says Frank. Take care of what’s missing, and you’ll bring people into your community, whether it’s a business or a church, synagogue, mosque or temple.

The wisdom of Hillel

Frank likes to quote the great Jewish sage, Hillel, who famously said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” In other words, look out for yourself, he says, but don’t think of yourself alone. And start now! A good first step is to try smiling more.

Here are Frank’s instructions for making a great cup of coffee using a French press. But that’s not really a recipe, so I’m also offering directions for making tasty biscotti to go with that great cup of coffee.

1. Use a burr grinder to grind your coffee at a coarse grind.

2. Using a standard scoop, scoop your freshly ground Chazzano Coffee (two scooops for a 2-cup press, four scoops for a 4-cup press).

3. Pour water that is between 195° and 205° F into the press pot. Cover the pot with the plunger, but do not press down. If you boil the water, wait about 30 seconds for the boiling water to drop a few degrees.

4. After 90 seconds, press down the plunger slowly and serve the freshest and most fragrant coffee that you have ever had.

Tea time, with scones

October 27, 2014 by 1 Comment

Barb Gulley loves tea, especially English tea, the type served at ever-so-proper afternoon gatherings, poured from beautiful silver or china pots into delicate china teacups.

Her company, Barb’s Tea Shop, is not a restaurant or store but a source of education about tea. She offers seminars–complete with tea tastings–at parties, corporate events, club meetings, libraries and museum. A former college marketing and management instructor, Barb now devotes her life to tea. She’s traveled widely to sample her favorite beverage, including trips to China, Japan, Ireland and of course England. She is qualified by the Protocol School of Washington, D.C. to teach tea etiquette to diplomats and businesspeople working in other countries. Her daughter, Rachel, is her marketing and operations manager.

My synagogue’s Sisterhood brought Barb in for a recent fundraiser. Her presentation was delightful.

A long history

Tea was discovered nearly 5,000 years ago, by the Chinese emperor Shen Nong, when a leaf from a tea plant (camellia sinensis) fell into a cup of hot water he was planning to drink. The first written reference to tea is from China in 600 BCE. There are four types of tea, defined by how oxidized (or fermented) the tea leaves become after picking and before brewing. The most oxidized is black tea, followed by oolong, green and white tea. Black and oolong are the only teas strong enough to be taken with milk. How long to steep the tea in hot water (it should be almost, but not quite, boiling) is a matter of personal taste.

In general, Barb says black tea should steep for three to five minutes, oolong and green teas for two to four minutes, and white teas from two to seven minutes. Herbal teas are not, strictly speaking, teas because they aren’t made with leaves from the tea plant. If you want to be quite proper, call them tissanes.

Barb prefers loose tea to teabags, but acknowledges that it can be a nuisance to clean a pot after brewing loose tea. Most tea balls and infusers don’t give the leaves enough room to move in the pot. You can buy paper tea filters to contain the loose tea that give the leaves more room to move and expand.

Afternoon delight

Tea came to England around 1600 through the work of the East India Company. And around 1840, Anna, the Duchess of Bedford, started inviting her friends over in the late afternoon for a little pick-me-up between lunch and dinner, which was served quite late. Thus was born the afternoon tea. Most afternoon teas are served with scones, dainty sandwiches and cakes or cookies.

You can make it as fancy as you like, but don’t call it “high tea” to impress those you invite. After the English aristocracy made a habit of taking tea in the afternoon, the hoi polloi wanted in on the act too. Unfortunately, most working people didn’t get home until 5 or 6 p.m. or later. When the working stiffs had their tea in the evening, they needed some real food with it, and so they ate at the high table – the kitchen or dining room table where food was normally served – rather than at the lower tea (aka coffee) table. So “high tea” is a light evening meal, served with tea. The refreshment served to refined ladies is properly called “afternoon tea.”

Tea etiquette

If you’re invited to an afternoon tea, here are some of Barb’s tips on tea etiquette. And be aware that if you are asked to pour you should consider it a great honor!

  • Don’t put milk in the cup first. First pour the tea, then add the milk, so you can see how much it needs. (And don’t use cream!)
  • Hold the teacup by hooking your index finger through the cup handle. There’s no need to stick out your pinky. If you’re taking tea at a low tea table, hold the saucer in your other hand.
  • If you use teabags it’s a good idea to offer guests a separate saucer to put the bag on. If you don’t have a separate saucer or one of those little teapot-shaped dishes made expressly for holding used teabags, put the used bag on your saucer next to the cup. Don’t squeeze it out by wrapping the string around your spoon; the metal spoon might affect the taste.

Dean Burnett, writing on the blog of The Guardian newspaper in England, disagrees with Barb on the milk question. He says there’s scientific evidence that you should put the milk in the cup first – maybe not when using teabags, but certainly when pouring from a pot. He reports that a Dr Stapley of Loughborough University found  that adding milk after the tea is poured causes the milk to heat unevenly, which causes the proteins in it to denature, affecting the taste and possibly causing a skin to form on the surface of the tea.  Brits and Anglophile tea lovers will probably disagree on this question forever.

In England, many restaurant menus will include “cream tea.” This means that with your pot of tea you’ll get scones, clotted cream and jam. I know “clotted cream” sounds disgusting, but it’s delicious, a little like whipped cream, but thicker and richer, sort of a cross between whipped cream and whipped butter.

Barb says it’s not classy to slice a scone in half, add cream and jam, and put the halves together again to eat it like a sandwich. Tsk! Better you should break off a small piece, spread it with a little cream, add a dollop of jam, and enjoy. And if you’re invited to a “royal tea”? That includes a flute a champagne!

Want to learn more? Check out Barb’s tea blog! Meanwhile, try this recipe for scones. It’s adapted from a recipe by Alton Brown on www.foodnetwork.com and makes about a dozen scones.

Come back next week for some Coffee Talk, and another great recipe to go with your favorite hot beverage.

Diwali—lights, fireworks and great snacks, too

October 19, 2014 by 3 Comments

 

Anjali Charankar-Vale, a GM engineer who lives in suburban Detroit, spends many hours in her kitchen getting ready for Diwali, a major festival in her Hindu faith as well as for Sikhs and Jains. A variety of narratives explain the meaning and significance of the Diwali practices; they differ by religious tradition as well as regionally.

Diwali is the happiest and most widely celebrated festival in India, with a message that so transcends religious boundaries that even some Buddhists and Christians celebrate: the triumph of good over evil, light over darkness, truth over falsehood, knowledge over ignorance, hope over despair.

In India many businesses close their books for the year and start the next year on Diwali, so it has the effect of a new year celebration.

In India, said Anjali, Diwali is traditionally a time to shop for new clothes and jewelry and to give gifts, especially gold. In America, where it’s easy to shop all the time, this tradition has become less important, but she agreed it’s always nice to have a good excuse to buy new duds!

A multi-day celebration

The festivities go on for four or five days starting before and continuing after the actual date of Diwali, which falls on the new moon of the Hindu month Kartik.

To celebrate the festival of light, houses, shops, temples and public spaces are decorated with earthenware oil lamps and bright electric lights.

Anjali and her husband Milind, an automotive consultant, come from Mumbai in Maharashra state; each state has unique Diwali traditions.

“Delicious food and firecrackers are the hallmarks of Diwali,” said Anjali. “We make a variety of sweet and spicy snack food items. Traditionally relatives and friends visit each other distributing sweets and wishing everyone best wishes for Diwali and the coming new year.”

In India, schools close for a week or more and most workplaces shut down for three or four days.

Deepak Sarma, writing for Huffington Post, says communal Diwali celebrations in America are fairly recent. When his parents came to the United States in 1968, he said, there were few Indian-Americans, and they celebrated Diwali quietly at home. Now, the population has grown enough, at least in major cities and on college campuses, that large, publicized communal gatherings are common.

Unique rituals for each day

Each day of Diwali has different rituals. On the second day, called Narak Chaturdashi, Anjali and her family get up early in the morning – around 4 or 5 a.m. –  to bathe with fragrant oil and a scented herbal powder. Children start setting off firecrackers and the adults go to the temple to pray.

The evening of the third day, the actual day of Diwali, is Laxmi Puja; the Vale family performs rituals at home honoring Laxmi, the goddess of wealth. In India, fireworks follow the home puja.

The final day of Diwali, Bhau-beej, celebrates sisters and brothers. Sisters make special foods for their brothers, who promise to care for and protect them. “It’s kind of a symbolic way to support each other and create a wonderful sibling relationship,” said Anjali.

Here is one of Anjali’s recipes for a Diwali snack, shankarpali.