Carrot Halwa and a crappy slapstick flick!

It had been ages since we did any sort of socializing and so last night we decided to make up for it. Since the man had to work, we couldn't go out anywhere. Had a few friends over for dinner. Jan cooked and brought along some yummy chicken curry. And I made ghee rice, chapatis and dessert.

I'll write about my easy version of ghee rice another day.(I don't use ghee!) :) Let's do the desserts today. I baked a cake and made carrot halwa. By baked a cake, I don't mean I measured flour, butter and the rest; instead, I used my ever loyal Betty Crocker cake mix. They're amazing, extremely delicious and comes in loads of flavors. And you never fail with Betty Crocker. Their brownies, cookies and cake mixes are to die for. I do bake from scratch once in a while to feel the pride but BC mixes are easy peasy.

Carrot Halwa is something I hadn't ever made till very recently. First, I checked online for a good recipe. That reminds me. www.pachakam.com has helped me a lot. They have tons of recipes and many of them are really good. I found a variety of methods for Gajar Halwa there. I combined a few and made my own version. A lucky gamble that paid off. The dish did turn out pretty well and the best part is it is really simple to do.

CARROT HALWA

Ingredients:

1. Carrots - 5 medium

2. Condensed milk - 150 grams

3. Milk - 1 cup

4. Sugar - 2 tbsp

5. Cardamom powder - 1/4 tsp

6. Oil - 2 tbsp

Method:

Before I begin, I have to let you know I use only non-stick pots/pans to cook in. Learnt it from my mom. Makes cooking easy and cleaning even easier. :)

1. Grate the carrots. Heat the oil in a pan, add the grated carrots and stir for 2 minutes.

2. Add the rest of the ingredients - condensed milk, milk, sugar and cardamom powder. I also added a dash of rose water just for the fragrance. It's lovely!

3. That's all. Keep stirring it every few minutes till done.

4. Garnish with sliced almonds.

That honestly was one of the simplest complicated-looking dishes I've ever prepared. The only hard job is grating the carrots. But if you have a food processor, even that is taken care of.

So last night, after quite a heavy dinner, we sat down to watch a movie. I don't know why fate made us choose De Dana Dan. Maybe it was to punish us for having good food while there are hungry children starving in other countries. Well, that pretty much sums up how the movie was. Priyadarshan, we all know, has his own genre of movies, the genre being 'confusion'. But this was way beyond anything I've ever seen till now. If you want to get back at somebody you hate, just make them sit through this pile of crap. Avoid it. That is all that can be said about the movie.

That said and done, it was a fun night. Looking forward to more of those.