Brazilian Lemonade

Brazilian Lemonade
Originally uploaded by priyasnowserving...

Brazilian Lemonade

Want to try a new drink this Super Bowl weekend? Of course there will be the beer, but how about some Brazilian lemonade for those who want to a non-alcoholic something? I was seriously skeptical of this one until I made it and got some whopping raves from the family - I googles Brazilian recipes and this one jumped out at me from Food. com! This is a once in a while treat since it can get pretty high in calories, but as I said, on Super Bowl Sunday, who's counting calories!!!!

Ingredients 

I used

1 1/2 tablespoons of Green Lime juice from bottle

6 cups of cold water

1 can of Carnation condensed milk (substituting it for the recommended 12 spoons of sugar)

NO SUGAR - The condensed milk makes it sweet enough

But feel free to add some if your taste buds require it

1 tray of ice cubes to float over the drink

Some cut lemon wedges for decoration

Preparation

Blend the water, juice and condensed milk together

Pour into a pitcher

Add the ice and the lime wedges

Serve immediately and cold and I have to add - GO PACKERS (since we used to live in Packer land)

Triple C Salad - Cucumber Cottage Cheese Salad

My daughter has this habit of walking in to through the door from school and the first declaration she makes is “I’m starving, what can I eat” and I am usually figuring out what to make/suggest to her in anticipation of that question, everyday, which is also healthy!!… you know how you can sometimes run out of ideas and you just open the fridge and voila something strikes you – Hey let’s try these together –

So out came the cukes – had my son peel and slice them while I got to season the cottage cheese and in less than 5 minutes, we had a, if I may say so myself, “deliciously" wholesome and healthy snack which was devoured in literally 2 minutes by my hungry teenagers (not before I took pictures, though J– Can there be anything more satisfying than that? And I think this is a pretty decent dish to serve as an appetizer or snack at a party!

Well here it is in less than 5 minutes

Ingredients

2 cucumbers, peeled and sliced

1 cup of cottage cheese

2 tsp of Melange de France herbs (you can use other herbs as well)

½ tsp of herb de Provence

Pepper, salt

Preparation

Get a decorative plate and place the cucumbers in a domino circle around the edge.

Mix the herbs into the cottage cheese in a bowl and then scoop a few tablespoons into the center of the plate

Add some freshly ground pepper and a dash of salt (optional) over the cucumber

For purely decorative and picture purposes, I cut the head of a red bell pepper and placed it in the centre.

Serve this easy breezy, absolutely healthy treat anytime, with no stress

AWARD: 

Thank you Malli of Mallis Mint and Mimosas and her wonderful comments and for sharing her FIRST lovely blog with me. Means a lot to be recognized - Thanks Malli!

Malli has left a new comment on your post "Pink Princess Layered Cake": 

Awesome cake and beautiful layers.
You have such an amazing blog with great photo posts and yummy recipes so here's an award I would like to pass on to you for a job Well Done!!Please pick it up from my site....ThnX 

Thai Green Curry

It's a beautiful Saturday morning as I blog this - the kids are still in bed and my hubby just made me a winner cuppa coffee and the sun is just beginning to rise dispersing an array of beautiful red and pink light ... Got to think of the Maker, at this point, y'all, with the white out blizzard of yesterday morning and the spectacular dawn of this morn...
Getting back to job at hand, I find that other than some of the spices that is used in Thai food, they do bear a strong resemblance to Indian food, in that lots of veggies can be used to make a stew type preparation. My understanding of Thai curry is like our Indian avial, without the onions and other strong spices, or even like kuruma. We wanted to go to our fav restaurant "BANG" last night, but it was cold and the kids had their strings classes and it was too late and did I mention too cold to go downtown! But I made the dish that we normally order there...and I want to blog it before I forget the littler additions I made to it.

Here goes:

Ingredients:

1 cup of grated coconut
A medley of veggies - I used
1/2 each of Red and yellow peppers (bell or capsicum)
1/2 cup mushrooms
1 yellow squash
1 Zucchini
1 cup of extra firm tofu (or half a block)
2 stems of spring onions
1/2 red onion
3 -4 green chillies
1/2 cup of  crushed cilantro
1 tsp of tamarind pulp
1 tablespoon of crushed peanuts
! tsp each of
Galangal powder
Asian spice mix
2 tsp of sesame oil

Preparation:

Grind the coconut, cilantro, green chillies, tamarind  (like you would for coconut chutney:), except blend it completely into a milky liquid
Cut your veggies (this is getting easier to do each time:)
In a wok, add sesame oil - this gets hot very quickly
Add the veggies and the spices and stir for a moment on high heat
Add the tofu in and stir for another moment
Now pour the coconut blend in a deep wide pan
Allow it to cook on its own for 3 minutes
Then add the contents of the wok to the gravy
Allow them to simmer for about 3 -5 minutes
Towards the end, add the crushed peanuts and mix it in
Garnish with cilantro

Serve with rice and pappad as they do in Bang -- Bon appetit!

Pink Princess Layered Cake

What Barney and Baby Bop do to my daughter and me!!! I cannot be too critical, because it was one of the Barney shows that kindled her interest in macavoni and cheese and bokklee ... so I will take the good with the bad - although I don't think too many people will agree that cake is bad ...
I had bookmarked this one at the time of her 2nd birthday but she was rather fixated on Barney and Elmo so I decided to shelve this project ... I am not into making desserts, but as a blogger, i require to be versatile, so I have been visiting a lot of websites to get some dessert and cake recipes. I found this one at Allrecipes.com - I have a changed a few things to suit availability and taste.

Ingredients:

1 box of Pillsbury Strawberry Cake mix
1 carton of Sara Lee's butter cream
1 box of fresh Strawberries

Preparation
Set oven to 350 degrees
Grease two 8 inch square pans and keep ready
Follow cake baking instructions on the Cake mix box
Bake for about 35 minutes

For the iciing
Wash and cut the strawberries
(set aside a few -3 or 4- for decorating your cake)
Grind with 1 tsp of milk
Whip this into the butter cream
Put the butter cream in the fridge to allow it to thicken a bit

When the cakes are ready, remove the first one from the pan and place on a flat baking plate
smear a thick layer of icing on the top of it
Place the second cake carefully and gently press down so that it will sit firmly
Then I simply dribbled the icling uniformly all over the cake, allow it to drip down the sides
Be creative about how you want to arrange the strawberries on top of the cake - I am sure you can come up with something better than my simple design :)
Did I remember to tell you to whip in a lot of love into the batter?
There you have it and trust me, if I can make it, you certainly can!
Cheers for now :)
For more pics, please visit my Flickr site in a few days...I promise to have it going soon

Kick-starting my Best Western Desserts Event with this entry and sending this to Mharo Rajasthan's Bookmarked recipes event

Guest EVENT coming to Now Serving

Let’s greet VALENTINE MONTH with some SWEET Love!

Announcing the BEST ‘WESTERN’ DESSERT EVENT

Feb 1- Feb 28, 2011
IMPORTANT : PLEASE USE LINKY BELOW TO SEND IN YOUR ENTIRES

 Jan Silverman, a good friend, makes some of the best desserts I’ve ever tasted. It just seems to come naturally to her. And for people who have read my blog or my comments on your desserts, you’ll know that this is the one food area that I am still a fledgling. And then it struck me who better than Jan to come and present and where better than my blog J  I decided to learn a few tips from the master. And I get to blog the recipes I learn on my blog. Fancy that. However, I will not be entering these for the awards.

So I decided to make this a Dessert event and would like to invite you all to participate…  Jan has kindly accepted to judge the top 3 entries who will receive a “Best Western Dessert” award, while all the other participants will receive an award for the excellent contributions. This will be both interesting and tough, since I know the immense creative capacity of my fellow bloggers – Not kidding!

I hope you will all join me in welcoming Jan to Now Serving and also be privy to her outta-sight dessert-making talent J

Look for JAN IN MY KITCHEN coming soon...

RULES:

For those who are already following this blog, Please feel free to send in your entries with a maximum of which 3 and at least 1 should be new.

For those who are new, please sign in to follow and RSVP the event – Same blogging rules apply to all entries

NON-bloggers welcome 

Please link your entries with the linky tool at the bottom of the post - 
If you have any questions, please email me at

priyamahadevan@hotmail.com

One more thing - no Indian sweets entries at this event- sorry :( 

All entries must be linked back to this event. with the logo. Please take the logo from my blog and display on yours along with dessert you have entered for the event.

Luv ya!

Uber healthy Sindhi Kokis

All right y'all, it is officially pelting down ice and I am waiting anxiously for my older kids to come home - early dismissal - I am unable to pick them up because the little one is down for a siesta and would panic if I was not here when she awoke - Murphy's law - just when you think you can sneak out for a few minutes is when the little one's antenna perk up and pick up mom leaving signals (sigh)
But rather than pace around the house, I decided that I will treat my kiddos when they come home wet and cold to a delicious lunch/snack, call it what you will.

And for those onion lovers, you know it makes any dish taste better - well, mostly. Kokis came to mind. These are decadently delicious chappatis that the Sindhis make for breakfast and serve with dahi and wheat halwa. I dispensed with the halwa part right away... Kokis are made with pure ghee where the atta or dough is kneaded in ghee. A family friend who is Sindhi told us that their day started off with a good dollop of wholesome ghee... well, those days are long gone, I think?

I have enjoyed these plentifully during my Delhi days and I have tried to make it a few times in the past, but I think this healthier version turned out best. So here we go

 Prepares in 15-20 minutes
Ingredients
2 cups of multigrain atta (available at the India store -
1 big red onion
1/2 cup of cut or crushed cilantro
4-5 green chillies
4 tsp of olive oil
salt
a dash of herb de provence and a little thyme

Preparation

I don't like my onions raw mostly, so i sauteed slightly in a tsp of olive oil

Add the oil, salt, herbs and chillies & the lightly fried onions to the batter 

Knead the dough like you would for I want to say pakodas a little loose or oodhiri - this means use very little water and keep checking to see if you can make a ball...

Once this is done, go ahead and roll the balls out like you would chappatis - 

Cook both sides on the pan and serve hot with yogurt 

A couple of tips: Serve these up with dark brown sugar or jaggery and yogurt - THey are to die for since the three combined satisfy your tastebud's requirement for sweet, salty, hot, and sour 

Tip 2 is just to keep the fun of decadence and not feel guilty at all, I crushed about 10 cashews and kneaded it into the dough -

Presented to you with love!