00:00As everybody knows, this is a pickle season for us, for Indians, especially South Indians.
00:07This is a big festival for us in a way that it becomes a big family affair, a community
00:13affair, and we always try to get together, like if there's going to be a pickle process
00:19in your home, all your sisters, brothers, everybody would come along and they would
00:24help you.
00:25So the process starts from buying the mangoes, selection of the mangoes from the market,
00:31and then getting them chopped into very good size, which is something like this.
00:36And then you bring them home, you clean, now even small children would be participating
00:41in this process where they clean the peas, they remove the extra film over the pieces,
00:47and then someone elder in the family puts all the spices together and then mixes, and
00:53then once it is mixed, while it takes three days for the pickle to get its taste, the
01:01anticipated moment on the day of pickle is that in this bowl in which we mix pickle,
01:07once it is removed and put in the big porcelain containers, hot rice is cooked, it's put into
01:14this, and we put a lot of ghee, and we mix it nicely, and everybody in the family is
01:21dying to have one morsel of it, and we are fighting over it.
01:24The combination of these spices creates anti-inflammatory effect.
01:30Now, this is why our elders would make pickles during the summer, mostly in the month of
01:36May, and what would happen is that after the rains, after the monsoons, when the winter
01:41comes, there isn't much of a crop, there's not a lot of variety of vegetables.
01:46So this is a good substitute.
01:49I think in particular, the Telugu people, people of Andhra and Telangana, make pickles
01:55that go beautifully well with rice.
01:58I can claim that in entire India, no one else's pickles go with rice.
02:03As far as I know, this tradition of making pickles, this culture and this legacy of making
02:09pickles has been there for more than a thousand years.
02:13It is a part of our culture, it's not just important for our culture, it is part of our
02:17culture.
02:18When a family comes together for it, they look forward to this month of May where we
02:22get together, and anyone who's willing to try, I would be happy to give them this taste.
02:27Come to our homes, and we will treat you.
02:29Come to any Telugu person's home, and we will treat you with this kind of beautiful mango
02:32pickles.
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