Healthy Mexican inspired dinner :)

Ingredients:

cooked quinoa and millet

any veggies in season (in this one I have added shredded butternut squash, carrot, collard greens, corn, and onions.)

taco seasoning from trader joes

coconut oil

avocado

sauerkraut

parsley

Instructions:

Sautee all the veggies with some oil, and when cooked add taco seasoning towards the end.  Add cooked quinoa and millet.  Top with avocado, sauerkraut, and parsely.  Enjoy!!!

Gluten-free ginger molasses muffins

These were quite a success! Super fluffy, moist and perfectly sweet.  It can do very well with some cashew icing on top as well.  Enjoy!  Thanks Lakshmi for the recipe.  I adapted it and loved how it turned out!

Ingredients:

80g fresh ginger, peeled
2/3 cup organic unsulphured molasses
1 cup jaggery sugar
1 cup ev coconut oil
1 1/2 cups buckwheat flour

1 cup millet flour

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup water
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 chia eggs (2 tablespoons of ground chia seed with 6 tablespoons of water)

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 350 F.  
• Chop the ginger finely. Or you can use a food processor/grinder to shred it finely.
• Combine the shredded ginger, molasses, jaggery and melted coconut oil in a large bowl.
• Mix the buckwheat and millet flour, cinnamon, and cloves in another bowl.
• Bring the water to boil in a saucepan, add baking soda. Stir the water into the molasses mixture.
• Incorporate the dry ingredients in to the molasses mixture.
• Add the chia eggs to the batter. Mix well until combined thoroughly.
• Pour the batter into the muffin pan. Bake for 15 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.  Let cool for a 15-30 minutes.

Vegan and Gluten free thumbprint cookies

My friend Liz shared her recipe and it was so yummy, that I had to make it except I have replaced the wheat flour w/ buckwheat flour and it turned out just as delicious!  

makes 24 cookies

1 c raw almonds (1c almond flour)

1 c gluten free oats

1 c buckwheat

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp cardamon

1/2 c coconut oil, melted

1/2 c maple syrup

your favorite jam

-preheat oven to 350

-in a blender, separately grind the almonds until you get a medium-grain meal, then grind oats until you get a fine meal. 

-combine all ingredients in large mix bowl

-form small balls (about 1 tbsp batter)

-press thumb into center, creating a small indentation

-fill center with jam (about 1 tsp each)

-bake 10-12 minutes

Cream of Asparagus soup

Ingredients:

asparagus

onion

garlic

ghee

soaked cashews or regluar cashews are fine

salt and pepper

water

In a pot, sautéed the onion and garlic with ghee.  Cook until the onions are browned.  Add in Asparagus and water and bring to a boil.  Boil for just a few minutes.  Transfer ingredients to a blender and add the cashews, and salt to taste.  Blend until smooth and creamy.  Top w/ pepper or basil as garnish.  Enjoy!

Millet Dosa

Millet dosa is a wonderful alternative to regular dosa which is made of rice and urad dahl.  It is very tasty and has this wonderful sourdough flavor to it that you get in dosas.  It's also very soft, fluffy, and crispy as well!  You won't feel sleepy after eating this dosa because millet is not acidic and the least mucous-forming grain out there.  Plus enjoy the huge benefits of fermenting grains like vit. B and complete protein.  Fermenting the batter can take a couple tries to get it right so don't get discouraged if it doesn't rise!  It took me a couple attempts to perfect my batter and dosa making.  

Ingredients (can get all these ingredients at an indian store):

1 part urad dahl 

3 parts bajra flour (millet flour)  You can try whole millet (american kind)...I haven't tried it but I would imagine it would work just fine.  If you have whole millet, try soaking it over night as well, and blend in the blender until fine.  Let me know if it worked out for you!  I still have yet to try it.

1 teaspoon of fenugreek seeds

salt

water

Directions:

Rinse the urad dahl just 1-2 times with water and soak the dahl in drinking water for 4-8 hours.  Add the fenugreek seeds w/ the dahl.  Once soaked, grind well in a blender using the soaked water until you make a paste, not too thin or thick.  Pour out the blended dahl and put it in a large bowl.  In the same blender ( you don't have to clean in) add the millet flour and water and blend well.  The consistency should be like a crepe batter, more watery than the blended urad dahl.  Add the millet batter to the bowl and mix the 2 batters well until incorporated adding salt as needed.  

Here's the trick to get it to ferment.   After mixing very well, place it in the oven and keep the oven light on to maintain a warm environment.  Cover the bowl and leave it alone to ferment overnight or even longer.  8-15 hours. If its a hot summer day you don't need to ferment that long.  It should double in size or a little less than that.  It should be nice and foamy.

When making the dosa crepe, pour a scoop of dosa batter onto a hot pan, and starting from the center make a circular motion and spread the batter outwards.  Once it bubbles and starts cooking drizzle oil ( I use coconut oil) and cook until bottom is brown and flip to cook a little more on the other side.

Enjoy this wonderful dosa!  I made peanut chutney with this dosa and it was delectable!  

Batter after it has fermented for 8-15 hours

Foamy fermented yumminess!

Pour a spoonful in the center of the pan, and make a circular motion.

Here's what it looked like when I flipped it.

Hearty Amaranth porridge for breakfast!

It's been rainy and cloudy today, so for breakfast a warm amaranth porridge is what I made and what hits the spot!  In here is amaranth cooked in with sunflower seeds.  For the topping I have made a mixture in a food processor of raisins, dates, coconut flakes, hemp seeds, sesame seeds, flax seed and blended it together.  You don't have to do this step, this was just leftover from a dessert I made the previous night.  I also added walnuts.  You can just put any toppings you'd like!  Then you can add your sesame milk or any milk you like.  This is filling and so very nourishing and yummy!

Savory Pakoras!

This is definitely not the most healthiest, since it's fried, but once in awhile is fine for us :-)  I'm sure you can experience baking these yummies!   

Ingredients:

1 shredded potato (big)

1/2 thinly sliced onion and into 1/4 to 1/2 pieces

chopped green chili 

red chili powder

coriander powder

cumin powder

asafoetida (optional) you can get this at any indian store

salt

chopped cilantro

besan (chick pea flour) -- can get at indian store

sunflower oil or any other frying oil

a pinch of baking soda

In a bowl, combine the potato and onion together and stir in some salt to taste.  Massage the salt well into the mixture, and let sit for a couple minutes.  You'll find that the mixture will become soft and water will come out, which is what we want.  Once it's softer, add all the spices, and cilantro in and mix well and let sit for a couple more minutes.  Add the besan and baking soda by sprinkling it in until the mixture becomes kind of thick but not too thick.   For the spices, you can experiment w/ quantity...again :)

Fry in hot oil until golden brown....and enjoy with ketchup, some yummy tamarind sweet chutney or green cilantro chutney!