The Smile Stash: Sweet Sunshine

I love raisins! I eat them with my cereal. They are mandatory with my oatmeal. I need them in my cookies. Gilberto, the Bone Appetit chef at work, knows to add a handful of raisins when making me my standard tofu wrap- unprompted. I add them to my salad. I eat them with my nuts. It is ridiculous how addicted I am to raisins- I have a hard time walking past the large bowls of raisins in cafeteria without sampling some. I am basically a raisin junkie and the only sad part is that the other two in my family absolutely detest raisins. I am given strict instructions never to add raisins to kheer, halwa or any other such desserts that would normally contain raisins.

I made laddus recently for a get-together with the help of my cousin's mom. That time, I put my foot down. There was no way I would make boondi laddu for the first time and not have raisins in them. I duly added a ton of raisins to the point where each golf ball sized sweet had at least 2-3 raisins. My husband is a major laddu fan and has been gobbling down those laddus day and night. The way I know how many laddus he had eaten is by counting how many raisins are left abandoned in that container (and I polish them all promptly, of course).

I will spare you the details of my raisin gluttony but something really sweet happened today and I wanted to write it down before I forgot. Raaga and I went to the dollar store today to pick some random stuff up. Even before we entered the store, she negotiated a deal which lets her get any one thing from the store. She considered markers, post-its, nail polish, and other school supplies. The assortment of post-its ultimately won her dollar (she has a thing for color paper, the level of obsession for paper only seen in my dad). I was still walking around the store, amazed at the gazillion choices for things one can buy for a dollar. And then she came running to me from aisle 3 with a box of Sunmaid raisins! She said she wants me to get it because she knows I really like raisins! My heart just melted at the sight of her beaming smile (and at those raisins too). So much sweetness- I could hardly handle it!