Besan Halwa

Ever since we moved into this house baking is a bust because the oven is a mess (previous tenants must have used it as a mouse cage or something). Since I couldn't be bothered to get off my butt long enough to clean it, I decided to preserve it (sort of like a shrine) for a next tenants and stay away from anything that needs to be cooked in an oven.
My sweet tooth, however, is not easily silenced. And Mr.P doesn't seem to be faring much better. So, I got out the huge ghee container my mom left behind and got to work.
This is the result.

Besan (Chickpea flour) Halwa

1 cup besan, sifted and dry roasted in the microwave for 2 min
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup ghee
1/2 cup milk (I used 1% but I would think whole milk would be best)
1 tbsp cashew powder
3 green cardamom pods
pinch saffron
slivered almonds

Prepare ahead - Toast almond slivers in a dab of ghee. Set aside. Peel the cardamom pods, powder the seeds and set aside. Heat the milk, mix the saffron strands in it and set aside.

In a thick bottomed pan, melt the ghee. Add besan and mix well. Cook until the raw smell of besan is gone (about 7-8 min). Add the sugar, mix well.
When you no longer see the white of sugar, add the milk mixture, cashew powder and cardamom. Mix well and stir constantly for about 3-4 min. Pour the mixture out into a bowl and garnish with more saffron, and the toasted almonds. If you want to be fancy, thinly slice some pistachios and use it for garnish too.

Home sweet home!

After three attempts at buying a house, we've gotten farthest with this one (past the inspection items). Fingers crossed for the appraisal. We can't wait to move in and start making it our home.


And here's our sweet puppy dog with his most favorite toy in the world - squeaky Air Dog! He hardly ever lets it out of his mouth :)


This has been a good yarn month. Look what showed up the other day nestled with some sock yarn all the way from Seattle. They were so attached to each other it broke my heart to separate them and send one on its way north to my swappee.

Lane Borgosesia Baruffa Cashwool in Deepest Black. This yarn is ultra soft and a bit finer than lace weight, as I expected. I'm hoping to swatch for the Secret of the Stole KAL with this.


Stay tuned for the rest of the yarn pron and WIP pictures in the next post!

Memories from the summer of 2007

Captured for all eternity on a chip -

We went to the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo this year and it was a BLAST!
Some of those cowboys are so damn skillful. And not so hard to look at either :)


And here's an Indian folk dance show we saw. The costumes are stunning and the music is different from any other I've heard. There was a man playing the flute before the dance - the most beautiful, haunting music you've ever heard.


We drove into the mountains one day to a Buddhist place called Shambalaya. This is the Stupa which we hiked a couple of miles uphill to see.


Fantastic clouds photographed from the plane on our flight back to Denver from Phoenix.


A curious prairie dog outside Fudruckers in Thornton.


In knitting news, I've got yarn! Oh yeah, some beautiful silk for a lucky someone across the country (for you, swappee) and some lofty merino for me. The merino happens to be the discontinued Jaeger Extra Fine Merino Aran purchased from Cucumberpatch in Laurel. It is expected to morph into a Tubey in a couple of months. Again, the lack of a camera may prevent me from showing just how gorgeous this stuff is but take my word for it. It's soft, well-rounded and possibly machine wash (not that I'll ever throw one of my hand-knits into the machine). More on how it knits up when I begin.

Happy September!