Salad in the Grass

I wish these, the fruit, had grill marks.

This called for peaches, but some of my peaches are mushy so I used cheap mangoes from Jons.

Anna introduced me to Jons. It's a lovely adventure. They have rosewater and halvah and cheap mangoes and cheap lavash and cheap tahini.
Magic, except their spinach isn't bomb, but that's okay.

I roughly copied this except: mango instead of some of the peach and spinach instead of lettuce.

Good flavor party in your mouth. Be reserved with your feta use.
I think it's the grass.

-Amanda

Because we couldn't find frozen cranberries, but mango is better anyway.

So I visited my friend Noa last week and we decided to go on a mini baking spree that ended in some good things like this and some weird thing like the challah dough that got cooked when it was rising in a too hot oven (that's where baby yeast goes to die). But first we made this pie, yum! And very easy too, maybe use a bit more mango than we did and listen to this song. while eating it (chilled of course).



Honey Mango Pie from this site roughly

Graham Cracker Crust
About 1 1/2 c. of crushed graham cracker crumbs (if you're buying that graham cracker brand that I can't remember the name of right now this is about one of those three plastic containers of crackers in the box crushed up)
6 TBL butter or margarine, melted

1. Mix crumbs and butter together and push into a 9 or 10 inch round pie pan, then bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes.

In the meantime, you can make your filling:

3 c. frozen mango chunks (and then some I would say)
1/2 c. honey (I would actually lower this to 1/3 c., there is such thing as too much honey)
14 oz. can of sweetened condensed milk (sickeningly good)
3 eggs
1 TBS vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. cardamom (we didn't have any on hand so we left this out, I'm usually a big fan of cardamom, but for some reason I think this recipe would be better kept simple, I don't know though, try it out, see how it goes)

1. Noa put all the mango chunks in a bowl and microwaved them for a little and took this strange pulverize thing and mushed them. I would have just thawed them and put them in a blender, I guess since I was scared of the pulverizer or whatever it was.
2.Pour everything together in a bowl and mix. Pour into pre-baked graham cracker crust. Then bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about an hour.



-Amanda

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.



||
V



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.