A post full of Hope

First I saw it on Meeta’s blog. Then it was on Nupur’s blog and I can’t resist cooking it. This simple and healthy dish is are testy too , which made me its fan in just first cooking.

Though I Couldn’t get pearl couscous and cranberries too :(, so I tried it with broken one and added some soaked golden Raisins in place of Cranberries. Added some red chili and 2-3 cloves to make it little spicy and it turn out to be perfect to my taste.

Tawa Vegetables, clicking Beans n lentils & Mango Manthram :D

I loved "Tawa vegetables" in restaurants , and we had enough of that in Pune at a restaurant names"Atithya"( which literally mean the warm way to welcome guests). I loved the name ,service, cleanliness and food of that restaurant. Now ever since I moved out of NJ , I try those restaurant styled curries at home mainly. It is not easy to rush to nearest Indian restaurant now, as the nearest one is also not so near :)). But I must accept that it prompts me to try many innovative thing in my kitchen now. And over all my mind is working much on how to make such curries... and likely thoughts... to make it perfect with colors and tastes too. Here is something which I tried recently.
Tawa vegetable means vegetables cooked on flat styled pan (Tawa) adding some spices to it. They normally fry (shallow/deep ) each veggies and paneer.Then together cook it for a while adding all the spices and paneer cubes for a while. Tastes always too good, and who count the amount of fat you deposit when you eat out :)).

Click-Confusions : ( !!!

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all natural Oops .. its .... Au netural :( .... NO ..... ahhh........ Au Naturel (from where do they choose name like this :D ).
When Jai and Bee announced it on Jugalbandi for this month I had this in my mind immediately . Can you help me decide which one to send it for Click-Au Naturel this month .

If you wonder - what are these pictures ? Here is the answer .

Please suggest your views, may be that will help me to qualify for the first 25 entries to be voted at least ha ha ha ....
Check out round up of "VoW-Bitter Gourd " here. Don't forget to vote.

I appreciate you patience and love for this blog :) .
Hugs to all of you . Have a good day :) .

My Valentine's Day Entries, with some cute hearts, click click click..... :D

About two weeks ago , while recalling some nice memories of India, suddenly hubby remembered something ,and that brought smile to his face …

He : You know , when we were kids , in summer vacation when we used to travel back from south India to our home, Nani used to pack a lot of food stuffs with us, and along with that without missing one kind of Khatta chawal .
Me : Khatta chawal ??? I never heard of it .
He: It’s a south Indian dish. I like it a lot.
Me: Is that something made up with Lemon…………
He : Yes, it is. It has also lots of peanuts in it , and some more things , I don’t remember it now .But that tastes I still remember….

(Ahhhhhh, here I am- I was thinking, it must be the more seen on blogworld lemon rice ,which usually south Indian bloggers make often ).

Me: I think it is called Lemon rice.
He : Yes, perhaps, and he spoke some name which was a Tamil word for that dish I think.

And then , that day we continued our talk of summer vacations and literally we lost ourselves in the childhood memories of traveling in summer days , visiting cousins and all that masti and everything, The card games we used to play , eating ice Gola in noon times, teasing each others , playing cricket and braking neighbor’s window glass n and then running away and finally for the simplest one from all players is supposed to caught by them to speak all the truth in from of neighbor’s family, and then elders all time ready to scold us ,and then rushing to mom and hide under her pallu, mom being unaware of such things sometimes protects us so well…. both os us spend those days in almost opposite part of India , still memories were so similar... I think childhood is all like that ,no matter in which part of world you spent it. We shared many memories and laughed a lot, also missed those days very much …

Above all these talks, one thing that clicked to my mind that day, is surprising hubby with his favorite dish going to be easier this year. With many blogs around I find a nice recipe for it, and finally made it the way Indira makes : ) . Easy to make and quick too , Surprising Deepak was really easy ;) .

On one evening time , last week , when he was back to home….

Me : I made something special for you , guess what ?
He : Dhokla ?
Me : nope….
He: Pizza ?
Me : not this time ,

( He kept on guessing his much loved dishes which I make sometimes as a surprise to him…. )

Me :(trying to giving him some hint for guessing…. ) why don’t you guess something you like, but I didn’t made before ?
He : (tired of guessing , and eager to see what the surprise is…) Why don’t you tell me then ?
And then I presented on Table the dish filled with lemon rice. Pointless to say he was more than happy to see it.

Did I tell you ever ? He is little more color conscious for the color of the dish . For him there is a perfect color impression of each dish. And for this dish he find the one I made similar to that was in his mind since his days a kid, so that was another reason for me to be happy and for him too : ) My first take for making this was a grand success and so was for him .

Thank you Indira for your perfect recipe, you really made our day . Thank you many other bloggers too ,who posted this on their blog , as I went through many blogs around and that helped me to made my mind about how the dish should be .

Having this dish for the first time in our menu , I was little skeptical about if it will appease our hunger fully or not. So I made this not so light soup to accompany this nice lemony dish.

I named it tomato –beans soup. Yet searching for some nice name , all suggestions are welcome :D.

Ingredients :

1 Cup sprouts, any sprout will taste good, I used Green gram sprouts .
1 cup tomato pulp,
1 tsp black pepper powder,
Salt to taste
Coriander leaves for flavor.

Recipe :

Mix in tomato pulp, with 1.5 cup of water and place it on stove , let it boil till it is little thick OR boil it until it reaches the consistency you like , add sprouts and salt in it cook for 2-3 mins, add black pepper powder and washed and chopped coriander leaves. Turn off the heat and serve it hot.

Quick and healthy soup is ready in minutes to serve.
(Note : if no tomato pulp is ready, boil 2-3 the tomatoes , then remove skin and crush it to fine paste .) this goes now to Lisa for her event No croûtons required this month . Thank you Lisa for hosting lovely event.

Along with this ,Kuchh mitha ho jaye…. This was our dessert dish I gave tt a little twist making it with saffron flavored water and without using milk at all .

Here is the recipe for Kesar flavored Suji ka halwa (Kesari suji no shiro) .

Ingredients :
½ cup Semolina (suji ) ,
½ cup sugar ( I used little less ) ,
1 tsp cardamom powder
2 tsp ghee
Pinch of saffron treads soaked in 1.5 cup hot water for 1-2 hours.

Method:
Take a flat bottomed pan , heat ghee in it , add Semolina to it , parallely in a vessel heat the saffron flavored water without removing saffron from it.Roast semolina until it spread nice aroma of it and until it is little brown in color.

Now to this add sugar and mix well keep on stirring continuously
Add hot saffron water to it , keep on stirring continuously and stir it until it reach desired thickness for sheera.
Add cardamom powder to it and mix well, turn off the flame.

Serve it hot or cold.I love it when Hot.
To make this suitable to our theme of the week I made it in heart shapes . for that, let it cool and then use mold it in any desired shape. I used cookie cutter for heart shapes. You can cut it into diamond shapes and refrigerate any left over .

All the above goes to Theme of the week –Valentine’s day .

Along with this , these lovely hearts goes to Zorra’s Heart for your Valentine.

Unlike me hubby is a sweet lover , and loved this too. So finally this story of our third Valentine’s day together ended very well , just like a fairy tale :D,no more fights now, we already had enough ;) with many surprises hidden for him .

This two lovely hearts now reaching to Bee and Jai with lots of love for their Click -Flour this month. I hope this is suitable to the theme this month Bee ! :) .