As my youngest son Akash got engaged this weekend, we had a houseful of guests and there was much dhamal going on.  Celebrations in a Gujarati home is generally accompanied by food, lots and lots of  delicious food.

The guests from Kajal’s side of the family and ours all arrived on the Friday.  Everyone got together at the Jikoni for chai nashto around 5pm.  Chai nashto is basically tea and snacks. My sister in law who arrived from North Carolina  kindly offered brought some snacks with her and I made some biscuits (sugar cookies) at home from a recipe that belonged to Manu’s mom, my mother in law, or Ba as we called her.

Ba was a very good cook and the biscuits she made were a firm family favourite.  She would make as many as 5 kilos, filling up several containers that were emptied out just as quickly.  In Ba’s time, there were no electric ovens.  She baked the biscuits in a make shift, coal fired oven.  Her trick was to get the family involved.  Ba and my elder sister in law  would be the one who would be nearest to the oven, taking out the baked goods and putting in fresh batches.   The kids would sit nearby, cutting out the shapes and putting the biscuits on the baking tray.  Since we moved to Charleston, I had lost Ba’s recipe so when my niece Krupa called me once and mentioned the home made biscuits, I asked her to share the recipe.  Oh my, this is sheer nostalgia, taking us all back to Mwanza and our time at my in-law’s house where every meal was a feast and every family member a foodie.

Here is the recipe.  I urge you to try it out and taste for yourself.