Happiness in a Box

Flowers make me happy. I've been giving myself a lot lately.

Not too long ago, I raved about one of Target's brand's, Archer Farms, risotto from a box. 

Well last weekend my loving Marmy brought me an Easter basket full of goodies, and one of those goods was an  Archer Farms boxed Indian meal. I was somewhat weary of it, but I decided if it was anything like the risotto then hopefully I would be pleasantly surprised. 

I shared this meal with a boy, Randy... And I got the bright idear (sometimes I get those) to make an entire Indian feast out of it. 

I made a cucumber yogurt salad with the 'cumbers, carrots, lime, yogurt, cumin, and mint. 

Then I mixed some mango, strawberries, and mint for deeeesert. 

Fiiiiinally I had the brilliant idear to make Mango/Strawberry Lassi- which turned out to be the star of the meal. 

For the Lassi, I simply mixed milk and yogurt (about a cup of Bulgarian yogurt to 1/3 cup whole milk) and then I mashed up about a cup of mango with one strawberry... I added a bit of cane sugar and then poured that mixture into the milk/yogurt mixture. It was amazingly yummy and complemented the spicy curry perfectly. I would drink it with every meal if I didn't mind growing a few pant sizes. 

The boxed meal also turned out amazingly good. You only have to cook the rice, everything else is in pouches that you microwave (not so aesthetically pleasing). We were a bit skeptical about the amount of rice they included in the box, but with our salad and Lassi, the meal turned out to be the perfect size for two hungry people, hoorah!

The curry was really pretty spicy but toned down nicely with the addition of the chutney. the box also included green lentil stew which was yum-me. 

the whole meal gets 4 stars from me.... pretty damn good considering it takes around 15 minutes to make. 

The Lassi gets 9.4 stars. Because I made it. And it was awesome. 

Now I'm really hankerin' to go to Target and see what other interesting boxed meals of the Archer Farms variety I can find.