Deepavali Thali Galore!

I am so stuffed from the Deepavali/Diwali feasting. Our friends took us out to a lovely lunch at Adda. We all chose to have the Deepavali thali, and we opted for either meat or vegetarian. I prefer vegetarian. For most of these festive meals, I always prefer the vegetarian courses.

Adda's thali was well-portioned. Nothing was too much. A basket of plain naan was also served for people to mop up the gravy with. The mixed vegetable curry and paneer khada masala in my set was delicious. The dessert held two items of rasmalai, which was oddly not achingly sweet, and a mithai of rose and gulkand. I took a bite and skipped the rest. Our friends also gifted us a box of 'less sweet / lower sugar' mithai from the restaurant. 

Then we were also invited over to the friends' homes for festive meals. Luckily for us, we didn't have to choose one or the other. They fixed it as a lunch and a dinner on different days, freeing up our stomach space and easing all digestive systems. Heh. I'm thankful to have friends who bother to host guests at their home, and really welcome us. I don't have such generosity or energy, really. I try to be as unobtrusive a guest as possible, and be ultra neat in the friends' homes.

The friends catered some dishes, and cooked a few. Of course they cooked basmati rice. That's least effort, and comforting to have warm rice. Some also cooked dal in different forms, and even idly, appam and dosai. A few gamely cooked curries like cauliflower kurma and bhindi masala. They were all really delicious. I just didn't have enough stomach space to eat all that rice and appam with the masala. Mmmm.