Salad #3: Cucumber salad

we tried this salad over the week end, and turned out well.

Ingredients:
Cucumber – 2 (chopped)  (approx 63cents)
Tomatoes – 1 (chopped)  (~ 5 cents)
onion – (small to medium) – 1 chopped (~ 5cents)
Jalapeño chili – 1 (sliced)  (~2 cents)
bell pepper (green) – half  – chopped (~40cents)
bell pepper (other colors – yellow, orange, red) (optional, but adds better taste) we didn’t these in picture above
carrot – 1 (chopped/sliced) (~6 cents)
black pepper powder – 1 teaspoon
if you have any dressing (italian, ranch, …) according to your taste, it might add a good flavor and taste. 

Mix all the vegetables in a bowl. Add the dressing if you choose to and mix them well. Refrigerate if you like the salad to be cold or warm it up a little bit in microwave if you choose it to be a bit warm. I tried warm, and it was good. add some crushed ginger as well. Add a teaspoon of olive oil if you would like.

serve:
scoop the salad into a plate. sprinkle a tea spoon of black pepper powder across. garnish with sliced almonds, pitted dates, chopped coriander. place this plate (if microwave’ble) in a microwave for a minute to warm this up if you wanted it to be warm. Add tomato ketchup if you would like. Salt to taste. No we didn’t add salt on our plates

Turn out:
it turned out very tasty. I ate this for evening snack, dinner and a breakfast. Cost for ingredients above was below $1.50 and that served for 3 times.

snack: khara puri – spiced puffed rice

This is one of the snack items we used to munch on over the evening cup of coffee or after dinner. It also goes with some of the other dishes like rava upma, etc…

Ingredients:
puffed rice 3 cups
curry leaves – 10-15 leaves
split chick peas – half a cup
peanuts 2 teaspoons
mustard seeds – .5 (half) teaspoon
asafoetida (hing) – one pinch
salt – to taste
turmeric powder – .5 (half) teaspoon
red chilli powder = 1 teaspoon
dried red chillies – 5 chilies

place a skillet on a stove. pour a teaspoon of olive oil and heat. put peanuts for tadka and wait till it splitters up. put some jeera (if required) and add peanuts, red chillies and curry leaves. wait till curry leaves get a little crisp and not leave till the peanuts and red chillies to turn black. add a pinch of hing and turmeric. add split chick peas (dalia) (hurigadale in kannada), red chili powder and stir the content. Now add puffed rice and mix all the ingredients on a low flame. leave it for 5 to 10 minutes with occasional mix/stirring up and take it out of the stove (turn off the stove too )

you may also add sev if you choose to, it gives a better flavor and crispiness to eat.

Oats Cutlet? Oats Patty?

                No, we haven’t named it right yet. however, one morning we tried this for a breakfast. It turned out great and filling too.

Ingredients:
original oats – 1cup
mustard seeds – half teaspoon (not mandatory)
peanuts – one tablespoon (not mandatory)
Jeera – one teaspoon (not mandatory)
green chilies – 2 (chop it to size you like)
onions (if required) – 2 tablespoons (chopped)
red chili powder – 1 teaspoon
salt – for your taste (i mean, take a bit taste and put it away)
olive oil – 1 or 2 tablespoons

Preparation:
Heat a skillet / vessel on a stove with 1 tablespoon of olive oil in it. Add some mustard seeds and for few minutes. follow the usual tadka process. add jeera and peanuts along. after 2 to 3 minutes with peanuts add the chopped green chilies and chopped onions. let the onion fry in oil for most part. add salt according to your taste as mentioned above

now, add one cup of oats and mix well. you may have to sprinkle some water to it can be mixed well for about 8 to 10 minutes, till you see the oats getting softened. and turn off the stove.

use a cookie cutter or a lid of a metal box/bottle would help too. fill the prepared oats mix into the template and drop it to a microwave safe or an oven safe tray (as appropriate).

to options to bake:
either you may use the Microwave or the conventional oven. We used microwave this time. place the tray in microwave oven for about 2 to 4 minutes. keep a watch along the way so it doesn’t get too hard and not get charred.

serve hot / warm with ketchup. I don’t eat Ketchup and the plate in this picture doesn’t show it.

Salad#3: Orange salad

It was a little funny when I made this a few months ago. I have gotten into a habit of snacking something when I get back home in the evening. One evening, I noticed an orange on our dinner table and a bunch of grapes in the refrigerator. peeled off an orange and spread the slices on a plate. cut the Green seedless grapes into halves or several pieces. spread them around on top of oranges.

 

Now sprinkle some red chili powder, and black pepper powder. put some almond slices if you have. If you do, you may also add chopped coriander leaves.

If you don’t like cold tangy orange, keep the plate in microwave for a minute or so, so it warms up a little bit.

It was a great to snack on some cut fruits, and since I mostly like chili spice, this tasted great.

Salad#2: Baked vegetable salad

We had tried this a few years ago and not that often since then.  A few days ago, we thought of going for a salad for dinner – this we considered this a main course. 

a packet of lettuce/carrots combo – Garden Fresh salad packet
2 cups of french cut beans
1 onion   (slice into spirals/rings)
2 Jalapeño chilies (slice)
1 cup of corn
1 cup of green peas
1 Lemon  (slice one lemon )
handful of green grapes, cherries
1 tomato (slice one tomato)
1 cucumber (slice one cucumber)
1/2 yam, 1/2 potato (slice yam, and potato)
pepper powder, chili powder
ketchup

arrange Lettuce, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, potato,yam slices in an oven safe tray. top up with cut beans, peas, corn, Jalapeño chilies, and any remaining vegetables from our list. pour some ketchup around. A bit of salt to taste (note: salt to taste, so take a bit taste the salt and put the salt bottle away, salad does not really need salt)

We also added some chili powder, pepper powder, dhaniya powder and other spices. you may add any other spices you would like. Add a spoon of Olive Oil, if you would like.

Pre-Heat the oven for 350 or 400 deg. place the tray in the oven for about 20 to 25 minutes. keep a watch after 20th minute for several times, just in case.  If you notice the content turning into a bit brown turn off the oven, and keep the tray there for few more minutes.

after oven heated, the outcome looked like this:

and this was another version without ketchup and salt

overall – it was yummy!!!

salad#1: Quick vegetable Salad

 

The other night when it was a bit late for both L’ and I to get home, it was hard to decide what to eat. We had some panipuri and bread that L’ and V’ were able to manage. For me, especially I don’t prefer to eat rice that late and not eat anything heavy late at nights either, looked at the refrigerator and found number of vegetables.

We thought, the besting thing is to try something vegetable.. so here it is:

Cut Onions into spirals, spread it across the plate.
heat up any frozen vegetables, we used frozen french cut beans, frozen peas (salt free),  frozen corn, trozen brocolli,
cut bell pepper (capsicum) into long pieces,
cut Tomato length wise,
Pitted Dates – cut into thin slices
carrots – slice into 2-3” lengths
1 teaspoon of cut ginger
Lemon or lime concentrate
Powdered black pepper
salt – to taste (note: it is only to taste – so taste a bit of salt and put it way, you don’t need to use it on salad )
butter/cheese – cut few into little cubes (if you would like)

spread all the above vegetables on a plate into several layers. squeeze half a lemon on vegetables, sprinkle powdered black pepper a little, place those little butter/cheese cubes around, a teaspoon of olive oil, if you would like. and finally put spread a spoon of chopped coriander leaves (we didn’t have coriander that night), it gives some garnishing flavor.

In a way, it turned out great and I felt so good and was glad we didn’t go for rice that night.

$200 burger ?

wow! noticed what money can buy section on Time magazine – one of those was that surprised me was a burger at a Burger King fast foods costing $200/-

picture from the time.com : http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1825241_1739915,00.html 

see the above link for the ingredients that go into this burger …

Pizza Toppings…

Set of vegetables that goes to our home made pizza usually…

It is good to eat all the colors on our plate. I remember once my wife’s nutritionist had recommended several years ago – “Eat colors in your food” – arrange all colored vegetables and fruits for daily vegetable and fruit servings and not set to one vegetable or fruit. Wow! sounds really great, if we could manage to eat all these colors on a daily basis..

Variety of Chaat items…

Here is what RjL and L had prepared couple few weeks ago, it was so yummy and I must have eaten so much. At the end of the eating session, I literally had to drag myself out of the dining table.

• Tomato chaat
• Cucumber chaat
• Pani puri
• masala puri
• chole
• dhahi puri
• and various other things – yumm yumm yumm…
• 

thank you L & L

Cucumber Soup

We had tried a Cucumber soup a couple of years ago (posted here), and had almost forgotten about it. Looked at the post last night and coincidentally, we had all required ingredients at home as mentioned in that recipe. There – we tried it again. turned out great.

Ingredients:
. Cucumber – 1 medium size
. Yogurt/butter milk – 1 cup
. Onions – 2 small ones
. black pepper – powdered – half teaspoon
. Salt – for taste
. Bread slices – 2
. coriander leaves – chopped – 1 tbl spoon
. ginger – 1 tsp

Preparation Steps:
Peel off the cucumber, cut into slices. Cut Onions to smaller size. Mix cucumber, onions, powdered black pepper and salt in a blender and grind them to the paste. Now add yogurt (or buttermilk) and mix well. If you prefer to this to be chilled, place it in refrigerator for few minutes/hours as appropriate

Toast the bread slices either in a bread toaster or on a skillet. Break the bread slices into small pieces. Take out the mix bowl from the refrigerator and add the chopped coriander leaves.

Pour the soup into the smaller bowls and top it off with the bread crumbs.

yum yum!

Technorati Tags: Vegetarian Recipe