Fresh Juice - Water Melon + Lettuce Combo

For Green lovers, here is another one. Yes, if you dislike green leafy vegetables but under compulsion simply blend with fruits to make a juice.

Here is another post with Lettuce with Grapes

Try to remove seeds from the water melon chunks. In a blender Add 2 lettuce leaves, water melon chunks, little sugar and water. Blend to form a frothy juice. Strain and serve chilled or with ice.

Fresh Juice - Green Fantasy ! Grapes Lettuce Combo

Liking for colorful fresh juice yet nutritious - here is the one for you.

Cucumber, green grapes and lettuce. Be generous on using grapes and cucumber, reduce lettuce if you like more of fruit flavor. If you add more than 2 leaves, your juice might turn dark green, just to avoid that scary look :)

Blend all ingredients with little water and sugar to a frothy liquid. Strain and server chilled.

Home made Juice - Grapes Lettuce Combo

This summer has been great so far as I got to try my hands on various juice combination mixing fruits with vegetables. My favorite pick from vegetables so far are Cucumber, Lemon, Lettuce and Carrot.

Use seedless grapes. I have used black grapes, green grapes and couple of lettuce leaves for 2 large servings. You may use the grapes as it pleases you. Sugar to taste.

Blend everything and strain before refrigerating. You may server chilled or add ice cubes too if you may like.

Mango Apple Smoothie - a healthy breakfast

In addition to my earlier posts on smoothies, I am happy to present another combination I tried.
It;s quiet interesting with apples and mangoes.

Simply slice mango pulp, cut apple without skin in small pieces. Crush some almonds for topping up although it's optional I like to make my smoothie rich.

Add the fruits along with little milk, ice cubes and sugar to taste in a blender. Run slow to high until you get a frothy creamy smoothie. Stir intermittently if needed when you find fruit chunks inside.

Refrigerate and server chilled.

Aloo Methi - Potato & Fenugreek leaves

Aloo Methi is a popular north Indian Dish. This is tasty and nutritious too. Methi is Fenugreek leaves. Good for skin, stomach, heart etc. the list goes on and on.

It take less ingredients and cooks quickly too. People usually cook potato directly but I usually use boiled potato for this dish.

Ingredients:

1. Potato boiled and chopped - 2
2. Methi leaves - washed and chopped
3. Onion medium sized - sliced - 1
4. Cumin seeds - 1 t.spn
5. Asafoetida - 1/2 t/spn
6. Minched garlic little
7. Green chilies chopped - as required
8. Turmeric powder - 1/2 t/spn
9. Coriander powder - 1 tspn
10. Garam masala - 1/2 t.spn
11. Salt to taste
12. Oil for cooking (can use mustard oil, vegetable oil)

Preparation:

1. In a pan heat oil, add cumin seeds and asafoetida
2. Add onion, garlic and green chili saute until onion become translucent
3. Add turmeric, coriander, garam masala and salt mix well
4. Add potato and methi leaves. Mix well, sprinkle little water cover and cook for 2 - 3 minutes.
5. Check for seasoning, and add anything if required
6. Cook until done.
7. You can serve this with roti or rice.

Note:

• If you are giving to kids - add some salt and turmeric to the chopped fenugreek leaves, keep it for 15 minutes and squeeze out the water from it.
• Ensure you use couple of bunches of methi as one bunch would become few spoon full after  cooking.

Palak Cheese Paratha

Parathas are always yummy and excites me. I am sure it excites everyone, some cold yogurt melting butter on top of hot paratha, one bite oh my! Heavenly - I just roll it few bites one paratha is over, I can;t wait for curd or achar.

Palak / Spinach lovers go ahead and try this. Feed this to all who dislike eating palak as side dish. Nobody would complain.

This is slightly different from our regular stuffed paratha. As the main ingredient palak is mixed with the dough. Let's get into the recipe, it's not at all complicated like the other paratha.

Preparing the Palak paste:
Heat water in a large vessel. Blanch the Palak for no longer than a min. I did for around 30 sec. Remove and let it cool down a bit. We need to blend this to a nice fine paste. In a mixie jar add couple of green chilies or as needed, salt and the palak as whole and blend well with little water if required.

1. Add this paste to atta and make soft dough. Let is rest for 15 - 30 minutes.
2. Roll chapatis and grate cheese on top as shown in the picture. Sprinkle Ajwain (carom seeds). This is optional, good for stomach. I add ajwain in all my parathas.
3. Make folding as in picture, and roll them. You can make this and keep for as many parathas you need to prepare.
4. Roll out all these to thin parathas 
5. Cook it on hto tawa spreading oil or ghee on both sides till the brown spots form.

Enjoy these parathas with butter or achar or curd.

Mango Almond / Mango Badam Smoothie

This is my second addition to the smoothie catalog following Banana Ice Cream Smoothie. Mango is abundantly found during summers in India, and it's already available in the shops. So many varieties. Sorry I forgot the name of the mango I got, it was huge pulpy with pale yellow color. One mango made two large servings of smoothie.

To make this dish more interesting I added 50 gms of Almonds to this. No yogurt and no Ice cream here. My blender wouldn;t blend the almonds completely but it remains as it is atleast some of them. I cannot just throw in a handful of almonds. I tried to sliced them same result, with few were broken down. If you like to bite while drinking this would be good.

I blended whole almonds in a small jar, it all became nice coarse powder. I simply added this while making smoothie. Yummy and thick.

Ingredients:

Mango slices of your choice
Almonds - 50 gms.
Sugar to taste
Ice cubes and milk as needed

Blend well and serve chilled. Makes an excellent breakfast and you can even take to office and toss in the refrigerator. You can snack on them for a coffee ;)

More to add to this catalog, and explore. See you soon with another recipe.

Carrot and mixed vegetable juice - Beat the heat!

Summer is extreme this year throughout the country. You sweat profusely until you are in AC and body asks for water. There would be many out there like me, who hardly drinks water but we all know how essential drinking plenty of water is. I like to drink liquid in the form of juice. Is store brought juice like Tropicana, Real juices 100% fresh and pure Big No, also expensive.

I started blending my own fruit or veg juices each morning and lemonade to sip throughout the day. I was inspired by my school mate Premisha to explore variety of juices. This one is from her with a little change. Here is a link to her Recipe.

For two large servings of juice below are the ingredients I took.
Carrots - 2 small sliced
Cucumber - 1 deseeded and cut to pieces
Lemon - 1
Ginger - 1/2 inch piece sliced
Tomato - 1 sliced
Sugar and water as required
Chat Masala - optional
Few mint leaves - optional

Add all these in a blender, run on slow for the initial 30 secs then increase the speed. Blend until no veg pieces are found. Strain and refrigerate to serve chilled. If you veggies are cold you can serve immediately with ice cubes.

Cucumber Lemonade for this summer

We all would love to have something different each day to quench the thirst during summer. A change from regular lemonade called Nimboo Pani. Say good bye to expensive juices from store and power such as Tang and Rasna.

This is simple, fresh and nutritious.

All you need is a couple of cucumbers, 1 lemon, honey and sugar.

Deseed the cucumber or you can keep it if you prefer. Cut to small pieces
In the blender  add 1 lime juice and cucumber
Pour couple of tb.spoon honey or as per taste, little sugar as required.
Add 200 ml of water.
Blend well check the taste and add anything that's required. Strain, refrigerate and serve chilled.

You may add cold water if you need to serve immediately.
You may also toss in few mint leaves as whole or crushed. I like them.

How to Store Green Leafy Vegetables for Indian Weather

This has always been a pain. Truly a painstaking job too. Many of us would have tried to toss the washed leaves in a box and refrigerate only to discover the rotten leaves after few days.

The culprit is the moisture, all excess moisture should be removed from the leaves before refrigerating. I have tried all these and tried to describe with simple pictures. Hope it would be helpful for you ladies!

Cleaning and Storing Mint Leaves or Pudina

We use the leaves in lot of beverages and dishes seldom stem is used. The pudina bunch we get in Indian markets are mostly dirty with perished leaves in it. Simply remove the leaves and wash.Strain excess water using a colander. After this you would still have plenty of water in the leaves which should be wiped with cotton cloth or kitchen towel/tissues. Layer leaves over tissue so that the excess water is absorbed. The final product should have no or too little moisture in it.

Tada it's now ready to be stored. Try not to store right below the chiller. You may also toss in the freezer if you need to store it for a month longer.

Cleaning and Storing Palak / Spinach

Follow the same procedure as Mint leaves. Remove all spoiled leaves before washing and straining the water.

Cleaning and Storing Coriander Leaves / Dhaniya

Cleaning coriander leaves would be time consuming, but it's one time job. Remove dirt & Spoiled leaves, chop off root, Wash and strain water. Follow the above method to dry the leaves. 

You can store in 2 ways either in a container half filled with water to cover the stem or in a box.

Cleaning & Storing Lettuce

Follow the same procedure as above.

Please do post your suggestions and comments, it would be helpful for other readers.