Christmas week recap

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The week started on Christmas Eve. We had a lot of stuff to do and make the house ready for Santa's visit. It was just the daughter and me for lunch. So, I a quick lunch of Gakar, which is the quicker and less fatty version of baati (of the daal-baati fame). It is one of the daughter's favourite lunch. She crumbles it into milk mixed with sugar. I prefer daal but I did not make it that day so I had it with date palm jaggery and also with sweet milk. Later I had leftover poha from breakfast to get something salty after all that sweetness.
gakar with date palm jaggery and sweetened milk
In the afternoon we made gingerbread cutout cookies, which is our yearly Christmas tradition. I need to remember to cut down on the sugar in the recipe. Our sugar tolerance has reduced now.
Gingerbread cookies
For dinner, I quickly made mushroom palak along the lines of palak paneer. I had already cleaned and cooked the palak in the microwave the previous day.
mushroom palak with roti
After dinner, we watched a Christmas movie on Netflix and made popcorn and hotchocolate for the daughter. Before sleeping, we laid our milk and cookies for Santa and hung the stocking on our door.


popcorn and hot chocolate
milk, cookies and list for Santa

On Christmas morning, Santa had delivered a present.
Santa's gift
For lunch, we had leftover mushroom palak with rotis and salad. I also made a carrot raita. Although I did not like the mouthfeel of the raita.
mushroom palak, roti, carrot raita and salad
The next day, Wednesday, I made aloo matar with soya chunks. The husband, who is not usually a fan of soya chunks, also liked it.
aloo-matar with soya chunks, roti and daal-rice
On Thursday, I think we ordered out. The husband was working from home that day.

On Friday, I made ghevda bhaji for the first time. It is like a different version of papdi that is very famous in Gujarati undhiyo. I made it with onions, goda masala and finished it with peanut powder. It tasted great.
ghevda bhaji, fresh turmeric pickle, daal, curd, salad, roti and rice
We also made turtle cookies on Friday evening. They were extremely tasty and we pronounced them to be the best cookies ever. I followed this recipe, but halved it, skipped the egg, and added more milk in place of molasses.
turtle cookies - chocolate cookies coated in walnuts and chocolate chips and filled with caramel
On Saturday, we spent the whole day out of the house. We went to Nehru planetarium and Nehru science center in Worli and later went to High street phoenix mall for dinner. I will write a post about it this week.
On Sunday, we went out on Gujarat highway with my in-laws for a Kathiawadi lunch.

And that was a wrap on the happening Christmas week. :)

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