Deepavali lehyam / legiyam

With deepavali / diwali festival fast approaching, many of you will be busy planning for the festivals, making sweets, shopping etc.

• Staying healthy before, during and after festival is very important to let the bliss continue for few more days following it. 

• Eating without any restriction and falling sick will kill all the fun that the festival had brought in.

• Eating moderately, slowly, enjoying what we eat, is more important.

• I prefer to include herbs from my kitchen into the daily menu. So among the goodies there will be some dish which is not only tasty but also aids in digestion. 

• Deepavali lehyam is one such dish which helps in digestion and calm down your stomach. You can google for the pictures if to know how the herb will look like so that you can procure them from the store selling the herb (naatu marundu kadai / jadi booti dhukan).  Let  us go to the recipe

Ingredients :-

• 1 tbsp - Kandan Thippili / dried long pepper
• 1 tbsp - Airisi thippili / pippali (small and looks like grains)
• 1 tbsp - Chukku / Dry ginger / Sunth
• 1 tbsp - milagu / Black peppercorns / kalai miri
• 1 tbsp - Jeeragam / Cumin seeds / Jeera
• 1 tbsp - Omam / ajwain / caraway or carom seeds
• 1 tbsp - pattai / Cinnamon / dalchini
• 1 tbsp - chitharathai / Thai ginger / alpinia galangal
• 7 Nos. - elakkai / cardamom / ilaichi
• 1 cup - Jaggery
• 2 tbsp - Ghee / nei / clarified butter

Procedure :-

1. Dry roast each ingredient separately except jaggery and ghee.
2. Powder them separately.
3. Dissolve jaggery in water and filter
4. Heat the jaggery water, when it comes to boil, add a tablespoon of each of the dry roasted & powdered items and keep stirring in a low flame
5. when it thickens, add 1 tbsp ghee / nei and keep stirring
6. when it becomes thick like a paste, remove from fire
7. Add the remaining 1 tbsp ghee and mix till ghee mix well
8. cool and store in a clean bottle.

You can add some sugar candys (kalkandu), if you want, to the above Lehyam.

The above lehyam aids digestion, fights food poisoning, cures gas trouble and lot more health benefits.

But eat moderately so that you can enjoy the festival and take precautions to prevent yourself from falling sick because of over eating (which kills all the happiness & fun you had during the celebration)

Wish you all a happy & safe deepavali.