Health for life

Am trying to reduce adding rice in most of my dishes especially when it comes to our dinner dishes like dosas or pongal. Yep nowadays am making pongal or non fermentation dosas with healthy grains like different millets,oats and cracked wheat. Trust me, we dont miss the rice in our dishes. Few days back, i tried making an interesting dumpling with super healthy foxtail millet aka thinai with mixed dals. This dumplings are just amazing with many nutritional value, serve simply with a shallot chutney makes a wonderful dinner too.

This dumpling batter goes for easy preparation and no fermentation is needed. Just leave the batter in room temperature for an hour and make your dumplings with your paniyaram pan. You can have them either for snacks or for dinner if you dont feel like making your dinner with other stuffs. You can feed easily everyone at home with millets without their knowledge as some wont like to have foods prepared with millets.Sending to my own event CWS-Urad Dal guest hosted by Sowmya of Nivedhanam and to my event Healthy Diet-Diabetic Friendly Recipes.


1cup Foxtail Millet/Thinai arisi
1/2cup Channadal
1/2cup Toor dal
1/2cup Yellow moongdal
1/2cup Urad dal
4nos Dry red chillies
1tsp Fennel seeds
3nos Garlic cloves
Salt

Soak the foxtail millet along with all dals for atleast 3 hours.

Grind thesoaked millet and dal with dry red chillies, fennel seeds, garlic cloves with enough water and salt as bit coarse paste.

Keep aside the batter for an hour or two hours in room temperature.

Heat the kuzhi paniyaram pan in medium heat, pour few drops of oil n pour a ladle of the batter.

Put the flame in simmer n cook slowly, turn on both sides until they get well cooked.

Dont cook them in high flame.

Serve hot with spicy coconut chutney or onion chutney..

I always keep on searching how to add wholegrains in our diet, and most of the time my culinary experiments turns simply awesome. One among those trial is this ragi aka finger millet omapodi. These sev are seriously very addictive and crunchy munchy as like the usual gramflour sev. I simply prepared this sev by adding roasted ragi flour along with gram flour and rice flour, flavoured with ajwain water. Such an easy omapodi na, yep they came out extremely pect as much as like our usual omapodi.

Once i started experimenting with foxtail millet, i realized that they are versatile and you can dish out many variety foods with them from starters to sweets. One of my recent trial with foxtail millet is this incredible,nutty sesame laddoos. Trust me, these balls are seriously addictive, both foxtail millet and sesame together works out wonder and these balls are definitely guilt free snacks to enjoy anytime of the day.Roasted sesame seeds and roasted millet when grounded together with jaggery,makes these cuties,dont even need any ghee or milk to shape them.

A nutritious laddoos aka balls to munch whenever you feel like having something sweet, a pect balls to satisfy your sweet tooth as well. These guilt free vegan balls takes hardly less than 20minutes to get ready and believe me they will get vanished very much quickly too.Sending to Paris Only Food for Pregnancy.


1/2cup Foxtail millet
1cup White sesame seeds
3/4cup Grated jaggery

Dry roast the foxtail millet until a nice aroma comes from,keep aside and let it cool completely.

Continue the same process with sesame seeds, dry roast it and let it cool.

Take the roasted foxtail millet, roasted sesame seeds and jaggery in a mixie jar, grind until everything turns as smooth powder.

Transfer it to a plate,make out balls from it, the oil from the sesame seeds itself is enough to roll the balls.

Store it in an air tightened box.

Stays pect for a week.

Foxtail millet is one of the forgotten grains cooked earlier in some part of Tamilnadu and this is called as Thinai in tamil, its offered to Lord Muruga as prasadam. Millet flour mixed with honey is often offered to this god. There is a wonderful story behind this offerings and its a custom to give this millet flour mixed with honey as prasadhams to the devotees.

Been born and brought up in South India, pongal is one of the my most favourite breakfast before few years,but i cant eat this food now for my breakfast coz i completely lost the habit of having South Indian breakfast dishes. Blame the Pariss weather or my laziness, watever its been ages i stopped making pongal for our breakfast.If we crave for this beautiful dish, ill definitely make it for our dinner, obviously most of the South Indian breakfast dishes are now turned as our evening dinner.

Kodo millet is well known as varagu arusi in Tamilnadu, this tiny grains are an ancient grains. I can also say that this grain is one among the forgotten grains. Actually i have already tasted this cooked millet at my grandmas home,she usually serve this cooked millet with fingerlicking fish gravy. I still remember the taste but somehow after then i never had a chance to buy or taste this healthy millet.

During my moms last trip to India, i asked her to bring me a packet of this millet and she got me from the organic shop. Back home, i cleaned it and stored it in an air tightened box. As Pongal is tomorrow, i really wanted to share this healthy sweet pongal i prepared with this incredible tiny millet and rock candy. Rock candy are crystallized form of sugar and well as know as Kalkandu in my mother tongue, try this pongal and am sure you guys will definitely love this healthy and tasty pongal.

Pongal with sambar makes a wonderful breakfast, if its made with whole grains without ghee, just think about how this healthy pongal will tastes. Recently i tried making the usual ven pongal with a healthy twist, yep i combined both foxtail millet and wheat rava pongal for our dinner few days back. Trust me this healthy and wholesome pongal served along with spicy coconut chutney makes a super filling,guilt free breakfast or dinner. Both foxtail millet and wheat rava makes an incredible pair for making this healthy pongal.

I have already tried my hands making wheat rava and foxtail millet in pongal separately,actually this combo was in my mind since a long, but finally i prepared making them for our dinner.Everyone at home enjoyed thoroughly this healthy and wholesome pongal.Sending this pongal to my own event Healthy Diet-Cooking with Wholegrains and to my own event CWS-Yellow moongdal hosted by Manju.


1cup Foxtail Millet
1/2cup Wheat rava
1/2cup Yellow Moongdal
1/4tsp Asafoetida powder
1tsp Grated Ginger
1/4cup Oil
1/2tsp Cumins seeds
10-15nos Peppercorns
10nos Cashew nuts
Salt
Few Curry leaves

Wash  the foxtail mille,wheat rava and yellow moongdal together.

Take them in pressure cooker with four cups of water, ginger,asafoetida powder and salt, cook upto 3 hisses.

Meanwhile heat the ghee oil, fry the cumin seeds, peppercorns,cashew nuts and curry leaves until they turn brown.

Once the pressure is released, add the tempered spices, cashews directly to the pressure cooker, toss them well until everything get well mixed.

Serve hot with sambar or coconut chutney.