Sprouts Salad

I have become tired of making the excuses again and again that I'm busy and that my kid is sick and all that. What to do? That's what is going on and on like a cycle. Anyway, I just wanted to be a part of a few events going around in the blogsphere. So, please bear with me gals for posting everything just like that without organizing it.

Our fellow blogger "Easy Crafts" who owns a great blog "Simple Indian Cooking" has launced a new event called "Powerless cooking". I glad that came up with this, as I have also wondered what would happen if there is a total power shutdown for a few days and what we would be cooking during those times. Anyway, my contribution to this event is Mungbean sprouts salad. Nothing fancy just simple and easy to make.

I wish to send the same to "Vegan Ventures" hosted by Suganya of Tasty Palettes. I'm not that familiar with this vegan cooking yet, so here goes my entry.

Ingredients:
Green moong dal- 1 cup (sprouted)
carrot- grated
green chillies- 1 1 /2 (minced)

red onions- 1 tbsp (fine pieces)
corriander leaves- 2 tbsp
peanuts- 1 tbsp (broken)
salt- as reqd
lemon juice- 1 tbsp

The other ingredients you can add to this are:
Finely chopped boiled potatoes, cucumber, corn, tomatoes, yogurt, corriander-mint chutney, sweet tamarind sauce, sev. Keep your mind open and try out anything else listed above.

Procedure:
Soak mung beans overnight. Drain the water and keep it wrapped in a wet towel. Then close it with a vessel and leave it aside for one full day. The next day the mung beans would sprout beautifully. I do not like to eat it raw, so I partially steam it. You can skip this step if you want to. Anyhow, this is the way I make it.I add steamed sprouts to the rest of the ingredients and mix well. You can add yogurt too but I'm skipping that as I going to send the same to the 'Vegan' event too.

Pongal

Pongal is a very important festival for the south Indians. You can learn all about pongal here. Actually, I made this in eleventh hour for the RCI event: Festival foods hosted by Viji who is the owner of a great blog Vcuisine.

I have posted 2 types of pongal here. Sakkarai pongal and ven pongal.
My sakkarai pongal does not have that deep color as I used the light colored jaggery . Usually, I get the dark brown jaggery but I couldn't find it in the store this time.

















Sakkarai Pongal:

Ingredients:
Raw rice- 1/2 cupsplit
moong dal- 1/4 cup
water- 2 cups
milk- 1/2 cup
jaggery- 3/4th cup
elachi- 2 (crushed)
cashews- 4 (broken)
raisins- 7 or 8
coconut scrapings- 1 tbsp
ghee- 1 tbsp

Procedure:
Wash rice and dal together. Add water,milk and pressure cook for 1 whistle. Meanwhile, melt jaggery with little water and allow to cool. When the pressure is off, open cooker and mash the pongal. Add jaggery syrup to pongal according to your taste level. Heat ghee in a pan and fry elachi, cashews, raisins and coconut scrapings. Fry them and add to pongal. Steaming hot sweet pongal is ready.

















Ven Pongal:

Ingredients:
Raw rice- 1 cup
split moong dal- 1/2 cup
water- 3 1/2
milk- 1 cup
salt - as reqd
cashews- 5 (broken)
jeera seeds- 1 tsp
peppercorns- 1 tsp
ginger- 2 " (crushed a little)
curry leaves- few

Procedure:
Wash rice and dal together and pressure cook it for 1 whistle with milk, salt and water. When the pressure goes off, mash the pongal. Heat ghee in a pan and fry cashews, jeera-pepper mixture, ginger and curry leaves. Add this to pongal and mix well. Serve it with sambar and coconut chutney.See you gals. Have a great weekend!!!

Aayutha Pooja Celebrations

This is a very popular festival celebrated in India. You can learn about this pooja here. This pooja is celebrated a little different in the North and South India. I do not know much about the North. But this is how we celebrate it in our house.

On the day of aayutha pooja we wash & clean everything from home to vehicles. Dress up all the doors, appliances and vehicles with sacred ash (viboothi), turmeric and kukumam. Then each person in the house keeps their work related thing in front of God.

When I was little , my sister and me would keep our books(now I keep my cookbooks), dad & mom their stethescopes (both are doctors) and my grandparents would keep their property documents. Then we would offer our neivedyam and will be off in a flash to watch the special programs on TV.

The next day is Saraswathi pooja. This used to be my favorite pooja during my childhood days as we needn't study on that day b'coz all the books will be in front of god.After that, it's vijayadasami. On this day, we take our books from the pooja and start studying.

Parents teach the little kiddos to write "aana aavana" on a thaambalam filled with rice. The pooja ends on this day. This is how we celebrate it in our home. Usually for any festival we can do vadai, payasam and sundal. On aayutha pooja usually they give a mixture of puffed rice, jaggery, peanuts and pottu kadalai. I didn't do it as I couldn't get puffed rice.

Here is my contribution for RCI: festival foods hosted by our dear Viji who is the proud owner of a great blog Vcuisine . I thought I won't make it this time. But I managed to participate in it atlast. Thanks Vijika for hosting this event.

The menu I prepared this time:
Channa Dal Vada, Pasi paruppu payasam, chick pea sundal, Black channa sundal, Rice with toor dal and ghee, Sambar, vatha kuzhambu, rasam, appalam, mango pachidi, curd and pickle.


I couldn't get everything in the pic. So, I've taken only a few here.
Also, I have already blogged the recipe for vadais here .
So, I'll go to the pasi parrupu payasam(split moong dal payasam).

Pasi Parrupu Payasam:

Ingredients:
Spit moong dal - 1 cup
raw rice- 1 tsp
jaggery - 2 cups(I like mine very sweet. You can reduce the quantity if you want)
water- 1/2 cup
cardamom- 3
cashews- 6(broken)
raisins- 1 tbsp
coconut- grated- 1 tbsp
milk- 1/2 cup


Procedure:
Dry roast dal and rice together until the color starts to change. Then, cook dal and rice in pressure cooker with 2 cups water for 3 whistles. The dal should be fully cooked. Mash it slightly. Meanwhile, melt jaggery with water. You need not boil it. Just melt it and allow it to cool. Filter all the impurities and add this to mashed dal. You can add more or less according to your taste. Then put crushed cardamom and milk. Boil for 5 mins. Finally, fry cashews, raisins and coconut in 1 tbsp ghee and add it to the payasam. Mix well and serve it hot or cold. I prefer mine hot. But chiiled one is great too.

Sundals:

Ingredients:
Black channa/ white channa- 1 cup
onion- 1/4 (chopped fine)
coconut- 1 tbsp (grated)
hing- 1/2 tsp (optional)
curry leaves- few
red chillies- 2 (broken)
mustard seeds- 1/4 tsp
urad dal- 1 tsp
channa dal- 1 tsp

Procedure:
Pressure cook channa with 2 cups water and required salt for 3 whistles. (cook according to your cooker. The count for whistles differs from one cooker to the other). Drain all the water and set channa aside. Heat oil in kadai and fry mustard seeds, urad and channa dal. Then fry onion, red chillies and curry leaves. Now add cooked channa and mix well. Finally add coconut and hing and roast for 5 mins.

I come to an end with this. I'm sorry guys for missing some of your post in the last three days and also not responding to your precious comments. Will go thru them soon. I was a little busy with my son. Some of my sweet friends had enquired about kavin as he was sick. Thank you so much dears. He is doing a lot better now. Had a tough weekend though!See you guys soon. Have a nice day.