Kai Murukku

Kai Murukku - This is something I have been wanting to do for a very long time. But for the past few years, I have stopped with just seedai, thattai and vella seedai. This time I wanted to try it out and I am very pleased with the results.

Kunukku | Crispy Lentil Fritters

Kunukku is another one of my mom's special dishes. Since she is here, I asked her to make it. I love to cook, but then nothing like coming into the kitchen now and then and popping couple of them in the mouth. Yes, it is a deep fried snack, but at least it is made of lentils unlike many other deep fried snacks. It is a good tea time snack. You can prepare the batter just to do the kunukku or you can prepare this with the adai batter too.  If there are kids at home, they will surely love them. Mine did. It tastes best when served hot.

Carrot Almond Kheer

We have had a series of special occassions in the month of august. Aadi velli, Aadi perrukku, Aavani avittam and not to forget gokulashtami that is fast approaching. Apart from the rituals festivals also mean lot of cooking and full course meal with vada and payasam. After a round of semiya and kuruvi payasam, today we decided to do carrot almond kheer. It is tasty, rich and loaded with the goodness of carrots and almonds

Oats Upma

For a long time I have been trying to include oats in our diet. The oats porridge has never worked out. I do have it a few times but it never made it to my usual breakfast item list. I find it just too bland. So to add some spice to the otherwise bland oats, I tried making an upma out of it and the results were very good. Everybody in my family liked it and I have decided that this is the best way to get oats into our diet.

I don't have to extol the goodness of oats. Regular intake of oats can help lower cholesterol levels. Oats is also supposed to be rich in protein. Read more about the health benefits of Oats here

After reading all this, we definitely have to find a way to include it in our diet. Isn't it? For us Oats upma is the way to do that. Give it a try and I am sure it will work out for your too.

The method to make this upma is not very different from how you make rava upma or kichidi.

Breton Biscuits

There are some recipes which you bookmark and forget about it and then there are some which you do end up making while browsing your bookmarked recipes and then there are some which you want to make it like NOW. This is one such recipe.

I wanted to bake it as soon as I saw it here. I always end up making biscuits/cookies more than cakes. This time I decided to make Breton biscuits, a french cookie. The recipe yielded around 2 dozen biscuits and my son loved it. What more do I need?

Iyengar bakery style sandwich| Open sandwich

The other day when we were eating pizza, my husband said he was reminded of Bangalore Iyengar bakery toast. Well, I had no idea how they tasted but  vaguely remembered reading about it in some food blog. My dear friend google instantly gave me what I was looking for. I saw that some of them had toasted the bread slices on the tawa, but I decided to follow Champa's version. I thought I could multi task and do the masala while the bread was in the oven. Plus, I need not toast the bread one by one. Also as Champa mentions, the bread cooks uniformly and also uses less oil.

Toast- ready to be served

Granola - A nutritious healthy breakfast

Granola is a nutritious healthy breakfast and a home made granola is even better since it is not loaded with sugar.  Off late one of the topics of argument between my husband and me is 'breakfast' - What do we eat for breakfast.

 His point is that idly and dosa have nothing in them and it is just carbohydrates and we should be having cereal for breakfast. On my defence, I say, breakfast is the most important meal and we do need carbohydrates to take us through the day, especially for growing children. We use par boiled rice and urad dal.  We supplement the lack of protein and vitamin in the side dish such as sambar. After all, idly is the first food we introduce to babies since it is easy on the stomach.