For the final week of our unit, we read Meenal Patel’s book Priya Dreams of Marigolds and Masala about an American child who keeps her family’s cultural traditions alive across geography and generations. In the kitchen, we made rice kheer, a sweet pudding popular in the Indian subcontinent.
The first graders crushed spices in a mortar and pestle, then cooked them with basmati rice in ghee before adding soymilk and allowing the mixture to simmer and thicken. While we waited, we made mandalas using all sorts of colorful and interesting grains of rice glued to round pieces of wood.
The kheer was finished off with golden raisins, sugar, rose water, saffron, and rose petals. We’ve used some of these ingredients before in a dish originally from Iran, but they were transformed into something entirely new in a rice pudding. Check out the works of art below. We can’t wait to see everyone next year in second grade!
