Festivals in India are too many to sit and count. The country is almost always bursting in celebration in different location housing different cultures. People get together, share sweets and gifts and enjoy much fanfare observing some aspect of their heritage/religion. One cannot even come to imagine the bewitching time children have. For them, its more about holidays, cousins/friends getting together and most importantly - the food. For them, the importance of any given festival is decided by the food prepared - the more they like the snacks/sweets prepared for a particular festival, more they like that festival. At least that was how it was for me. I loved festivals like Diwali (crackers, new clothes and abundant savories prepared ) and Krishna Jayanthi ( I loved drawing small feet in the floor of our house and of course seedai's and Thattais) - and oh Vinayaka Chaturthi for those absolutely heavenly Kozhukattai's.

One such savory prepared for Diwali and Krishna Jayanthi in our house by my mom used to be these Murukku. We used to love it to death and it used to get over even before one finished spelling the word Murukku. So much so that we pestered our mom to prepare it even otherwise, which she did in these huge air tight containers. Absolute bliss! I miss sitting around, having my mom prepare those as and when I craved for it. Times have changed - Now I am the one preparing this as and when my family craves for it!!!!! And thus during one such occasion, I prepared these and needless to say - they are over and I am being pestered to make some more.....I miss you mom :( I know what you went through :) All said and done - it can be prepared in a jiffy, if like me you don't have the time and patience to make it the traditional way. The traditional way dictates that you prepare the rice flour from scratch at home. The taste is beyond explanation. But instead of not doing it altogether, instead one can use Rice flour. I have always had the advantage of getting good quality rice flour from the stores and I use the same to make snacks which entail making some from scratch. These still come out extremely crunchy and yummy for me and lasts for at least a week in its crunchy taste ( I don't know after that since however many I make, they have never lasted more than that!) Lets go to the recipe shall we?