A Glass o' Lassi on a Rainy Day

There will also be cookies in this post. Stay tuned.

As a little girl, I thought my sister (13 years older than me) was the coolest thing ever. She always took my family to the most exotic restaurants. Well, at least I thought they were, because I'm pretty sure I hadn't heard of Indian food yet. So we order some grub, finding ourselves questioning just how much we desired to taste some of the foods we'd ordered. Sometimes a long, bright pink sausage isn't the most tempting meal. But we went ahead and ate everything, unaccustomed to there being spice in food. And by spice I mean the hot kind. My sister was the only smart one, ordering a big glass of chilled mango lassi to calm her fiery taste buds. At the time, I blegh'd. I'm not sure why, because I liked yogurt, and i liked mango. Fortunately for you all, tastes change. So here you have it: mango lassi.


(based on this recipe)



What you need:

some means of blending (I used a cuisinart hand blender)
1 large ripe mango (yielding a cup of diced mango pulp)
1 c nonfat yogurt
1/4 tsp cardamom
4 or 5 ice cubes



Blend all of these things. Strain. Transfer to a glass. Drink.

I did not strain, and this was not a problem. I don't think it would have made much of a difference at all. Not a single mango hair found in my teeth!

You can add a few tablespoons of sugar before blending, but this was sweet enough for me.

I would also add a little less cardamom, because the flavor was a bit overwhelming. My roommate thought it tasted carroty. At some point I'll be adding some cinnamon to this.

I only read the wikipedia page on lassi after making this, but now I know to sprinkle some pistachio pieces on top of my lassi. And to get some Bhang Lassi next time I'm in India.



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Cardamom Cookies

Making these cookies was a disaster. I'm no good at making cookies. But I found some nice ducks in the rubble.

What you need:

1/2c unsalted butter
1c sugar
1tsp ground cardamom
2 eggs
1 c all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt


Preheat an oven to 325F.

Beat the butter, sugar, and cardamom together. Add eggs to this, one at a time. When well-combined, add the flour and salt and lightly mix with a spoon. Next, you can try dropping the dough onto a greased cookie sheet with a spoon, 1/2in apart. If you are like me, your cookies will form one unified cookie sheet. You will then watch this sheet til it is firm, remove it, and use a duck-shaped cookie cutter to shape the cookies, put them back in the oven til crispy and golden brown, and save the non-duck cookie bits for your mom.

I tried adding some more flour to remaining dough, but I needed to have flattened out the ploomped dough on the sheet. Edges too crispy. Tasted great though ! People really liked my ducks. I really liked my ducks


(based on this recipe, halved)

OH I almost forgot to mention something. Amanda and I made cardamom cookies at the exact same time. Without having planned this, or even bringing up cardamom cookies. That is how important these cookies are to the world.