Cooking&more

My family loves eating baked treats such as cookies, muffins, pizzas and so on. But ever since we have pledged to go gluten free, we have found it difficult to indulge ourselves. The gluten free products that we buy outside, do not taste as good, and sometimes I get skeptical about what goes into them. I was looking for options to make gluten free baked goods at home, so when my friend from USA was visiting us, I asked her to get a packs of Bob’s Red Mill gluten free flour for us. I used the flour to make a batch of apples muffins that came out really fluffy and moist, with a yummy apple flavor running through it. I got the recipe from the official site for Bob’s Red Mill, and tweaked it a bit to suit our taste. The kids loved it and the muffins disappeared in no time. I would definitely keep making this recipe again and again. Recipe for gluten free Apple muffins Prep time – 15 min Baking time – 20 min 1 cup gluten free flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill All purpose gluten free

0.5 cup moong beans (unsoaked) 0.5 cup brown rice 2 carrots peeled and diced 1 sweet corn shelled 1 onion diced Cinnamon 0.5 inch stick Cardomom 2-3 Clove 1-2 Peppercorns 3-4 Coriander seeds 0.5 teaspoon Fenugreek seeds 0.75 teaspoon Fennel seeds 0.5 teaspoon Dry roast all Ingredients for spice mix, let it cool and grind into a powder. Keep aside. In a pressure cooker cook rice, moong beans, carrots and corn together with 4 cups of water. After four whistles take the cooked mixture out and mash it together with the spice mix. Shape into patties and shallow fry on a hot griddle. Place on a burger bun and top with sliced onions, tomatoes, lettuce leaves, and eggless mayyonaise.   

A picture is worth a thousand words they say..so for this post.. I have no   very few words...just a bunch of  pics and instructions. The perfect pictorial! Grate one large Mooli (horse radish) and two medium size carrots in a bowl  chop the leaves of the Radish finely and add them along with some chopped cilantro to the grated mixture  Eyeball the grated mixture and add an approximately equal amount of wheat flour to the bowl  Add salt, ajwain and pepper powder and keep covered for 15 minutes to allow the vegetables to release their moisture and then mix it together to form a dough  Roll out into Chappatis Fry on  a hot tava until brown flecks appear on both sides. serve hot garnished with ghee and accompanied by some mango pickle Get the ingredients wheat flour salt ajwain or oregano seeds pepper powder

My children are absolute fans of tomato ketchup, and I am a bigger fan than them. we love it with everything - French Fries, Toast, Paranthas, dosas, upma, poha. Everything in our home is jazzed up with a bit of tomato ketchup. Normally we buy our ketchup at the store, but I stumbled upon this recipe for tomato ketchup and decided to try it out. I stuck to the recipe mostly, but reduced the amount of red chillies and left out the sodium benzoate as I did not want to add any preservatives  to something I making at home. I do not have a blanket ban on all artificial food as in I do allow my kids to have sweets, candies, sodas, maggi within reason, but if I am taking the trouble of making something from scratch then I want to make something that is healthier for them. Ingredients 2.5 kg Tomatoes 12 cloves garlic 4 dry red chillies deseeded 1/2 cup vinegar 2 inch ginger 1 tbsp salt 6 tbsp sugar Dice tomatoes finely and add them to a heavy bottomed and

Some mornings are rushed and some are super-rushed! you know those mornings, when you miss hearing the alarm clock ring, and are already an hour behind in your day, and still feel like you need to sleep an hour more, but you drag yourself out of your bed like a zombie and head over into the kitchen to make your son's lunch box because his ride to school is going to be here in 15 minutes??? I am talking about bed-freshen up- head to kitchen mornings, Not the usual tea-yoga-pilates-meditation-kitchen mornings. so what do I do on such mornings? Being the self-proclaimed lazy innovator that I am, I came up with a salad that I can put together in 5 minutes flat. watch the video below for instructions Disclaimer : I cannot guarantee that this salad is original, it did come out of my extremely sleepy mind one rushed and stressful morning, but it's obviously based on scores of salads I have eaten at restaurants until now (sure tastes like one!). Also as great minds think a

sugar cookies The other day I decided to bake some cookies at home and my two sweet kids walked into the kitchen as I was getting out the flour and decided to join me. What happened next was an impromptu math lesson right there on the kitchen floor with my 9 year old son and me as the teachers and my 4 year old daughter as the student. She learned how to measure and level scoops of flour, got introduced to fractions as she measured 1/2 cup of sugar and got out her  shapes from the toy box to cut out numbers from the dough and reinforced the concept of big and small by baking two swans - 1 big and 1 small. Learning is not restricted to the classrooms or even a schoolroom at home. Learning can happen anywhere and anytime.  Sugar cookies recipe 1 cup all purpose flour 1/8th  teaspoon salt 1/4 cup powdered sugar 1/4 cup butter Water as needed A pinch of baking soda Combine flour, salt, baking soda and sugar and sieve them three times. Add butter and water to form a stif