Diwali. The festival of lights. The new year. The day Amma cooks like she's feeding the entire pantheon of Hindu deities and also their extended families.
We celebrated at my parents' house — the traditional base of operations. Amma had been cooking for three days. The dining table was a landscape of steel containers filled with sweets and savories: murukku (mine, which Amma placed at the end of the table, which I'm choosing to interpret as a position of honor rather than exile), jangiri (those orange pretzel-shaped sweets soaked in sugar syrup), mysore pak (the ghee-and-gram-flour fudge that is basically edible gold), coconut laddu, and her signature badam halwa.
The savory side: masala vada, ribbon pakoda, thattai, and seedai — round puffed rice balls that Amma makes only for Diwali and that Appa eats with the single-minded devotion of a man who knows he won't see them for another year.
Raj wore a kurta that Pushpa sent over (cream with gold buttons — "very Gujarati," Amma noted, which was a compliment delivered as an observation). I wore a purple sari that Amma picked out, because Diwali is the one day I let her dress me without argument. Appa wore a crisp white veshti and looked like the dignified patriarch of a more organized family.
Arvind came from Trenton in jeans and a blazer — his version of dressing up. Amma looked at his jeans and said, "You couldn't wear a veshti?" Arvind said, "Amma, I don't own a veshti." Amma went to Appa's closet and came back with one. Arvind wore it for approximately forty-five minutes before switching back to jeans.
The puja was at 6 PM — lamps lit, prayers said, Amma's voice leading the mantras while the rest of us followed at varying levels of competence. Raj, who is Hindu but Gujarati-Hindu (different traditions, different songs, same gods), mouthed the words approximately. Arvind stood respectfully. Appa closed his eyes and was, for five minutes, fully present in a way he rarely allows himself to be.
After puja, we ate. Everything. All of it. The murukku disappeared in seven minutes. Appa ate four mysore pak and pretended he only had two. Raj discovered jangiri and ate six. Arvind went straight for the masala vada because some things never change.
And Amma — Amma sat at her table, surrounded by her food and her family, and smiled. Not the polite smile she gives the temple aunties. The real one. The one that says: I came to this country with nothing and look what I built. Look at this table. Look at these people. Look at this light.
Happy Diwali. Happy new year. The murukku spirals were, I'll admit, slightly too wide. But the color was good.
After a Diwali table that heavy with fried and sweet — the murukku, the mysore pak, the jangiri — I wanted something that captured that same celebration but felt lighter, something I could make the next day when the house was quiet and I was still riding the warmth of watching Amma’s real smile. Mango lassi has always been our family’s palate cleanser, the cool thing we reach for after richness, and turning it into frozen yogurt felt like the right way to extend the sweetness of that evening just a little longer. Here’s how I made it.
Mango Lassi Frozen Yogurt
Prep Time: 15 minutes | Freeze Time: 4 hours | Total Time: 4 hours 15 minutes | Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 2 cups full-fat Greek yogurt
- 2 cups ripe mango pulp (fresh Alphonso or canned Kesar)
- 1/3 cup sugar, or to taste
- 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
- 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 1/4 tsp rose water (optional)
- Small pinch of saffron threads, dissolved in 1 tsp warm milk (optional)
Instructions
- Blend the base. Combine the mango pulp, Greek yogurt, sugar, cardamom, lemon juice, and rose water (if using) in a blender. Blend on high for 30 seconds until completely smooth and no lumps remain. Taste and adjust sugar as needed — the mixture should be slightly sweeter than you want the final result, as freezing dulls sweetness.
- Add saffron. If using saffron, stir the dissolved saffron milk into the blended mixture and fold gently to create a subtle swirl of color.
- Freeze (ice cream maker method). Pour the mixture into your ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer’s instructions, typically 20–25 minutes, until thick and creamy. Transfer to a lidded freezer-safe container and freeze for at least 2 hours until firm.
- Freeze (no-churn method). If you don’t have an ice cream maker, pour the blended mixture into a shallow freezer-safe dish. Freeze for 1 hour, then stir vigorously with a fork, breaking up any ice crystals. Repeat every 45 minutes for 3–4 hours total until you reach a smooth, scoopable consistency.
- Serve. Remove from the freezer 5 minutes before serving to soften slightly. Scoop into bowls or kulfi-style glasses. Garnish with a pinch of cardamom, a few saffron threads, or crushed pistachios if desired.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 175 | Protein: 7g | Fat: 3g | Carbs: 32g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 40mg
About the cook who shared this
Priya Krishnamurthy
Week 35 of Priya’s 30-year story
· Edison, New Jersey
Priya is a pharmacist, wife, and mom of two in Edison, New Jersey — the town she grew up in, surrounded by the sights and smells of her mother's South Indian kitchen. These days, she splits her time between the hospital pharmacy, school pickups, and her own kitchen, where she cooks nearly every night. Her style is a blend of the Tamil recipes her mother taught her and the American comfort food her kids actually want to eat. She writes about the beautiful mess of balancing two cultures on one plate — and she wants you to know that ordering pizza is also an act of love.
