Rajasthani Sattu | Badi Teej Sattu

I have observed people from my Marwari community here in the US celebrate our Rajasthani festivals like Teej and Gangaur with so much zeal.  Last year for Badi Teej Sinjaara about 90 women had a get-together at an event hall, we had potluck menu that was pre-decided and selected from (I took Pav Bhaji), a henna artist was called to apply henna on hands, some of my friends planned a game for everyone to play together, they performed a group dance, and we all had so much fun in those 4 hours of our Teej Sinjaara event!

When we were in Dallas few years back, one person hosted the Badi Teej Puja potluck at their place, and since it was a weekend everyone was invited with their families (over a 100 people altogether!) to perform
the puja and have dinner.  Here is more info on this Rajasthani Badi Teej festival.

For the potluck, I chose to carry colorful kadhai ki poori using carrot puree for orange poori, beetroot for pink poori, and spinach puree for green poori.  We all carried our Teej Sattu there too so we could slice ("pinda paasna") and have dinner along with our husband.  Looking at everyone's creatively decorated sattu was interesting.  I remember one person made the doll cake version in sattu form for her daughter - inserting a doll in the center of a inverted cone shaped sattu and the sattu was decorated like a dress.  How nice!

Earlier, people mostly decorated Teej Sattu with only kuku (kumkum/vermillion) and supari (betel nut).  Later they started adding nuts like almonds, cashews, pistachios, and some cloves on sattu.  These days, people like to decorate sattu with a theme, with different edible colors, using various edibles like coconut flakes, sugar coated fennel seeds, M & M's and so on.  Here are some very creative Teej Sattu ideas.

I'm excited for Teej this year.  It's going to be my twin babies' first Teej!  After my daughter grows up I want to enjoy Teej Sinjaara with her by applying mehendi, cooking lots of good food, dressing up in pretty traditional clothes, preparing our creative sattu, and celebrating this festival together even though I'm not well-versed with all the customs.  (And oh well, I hope she's going to love all of this...who knows!?)

Anyway, these are our Teej Sattu for Badi Teej this year.  I made flowers for me, butterflies for my baby girl, and a maakhan matki (a pot of butter) with basuri (flute) for my baby boy.  Here is my recipe for dalia (split roasted gram dal) sattu.

To make the Krishna Theme Teej Sattu:
1) Basic idea is to rub cocoa powder with your dalia sattu until well blended into a brown color dough and roll into ball then poke with thumb to form matki.
2) I used randomly crushed almonds and put inside the matki flowing outward like makkhan in matki.
3) Roll sattu long like a mini log and use toothpicks to poke holes for flute...I used saunf (fennel seeds) that were handy for the little flute decor.

Happy Teej to all those who celebrate this festival.  Enjoy.
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