Refreshing lemon, mint, ginger, and cucumber infused water

Why You Should Try Infused Water?

Infused water, is blended with various fruits and herbs that have enormous health benefits, in addition to just keeping you hydrated. Infused water is not only aesthetically appealing but also allows you to naturally consume more vitamins and nutrients along with increasing your water consumption. Water helps to speed up your body’s metabolism, boost energy levels, prevent cramping, and has many other important benefits. People who normally doesn’t like drinking water and prefer a soda or juice over water now have a much healthy and tasty option.

There’s nothing more refreshing than an ice-cold glass of flavorful infused water with all the goodness of lemon, mint, ginger, and cucumber.

First, simply slice the ginger, cucumber, and lemon into thin slices, roughly chop the fresh mint leaves and put them in your infuser bottle or any jug or pitcher. Finally, fill it with fresh filtered water and store it in fridge for minimum 1 hour so that the flavors and nutrients can infuse in the water. Your infused water is ready to refresh you, flush out the toxins in your system and keep you hydrated.

There are dozens of tasty and healthy ways to flavor your water. Some popular combinations are;

• Strawberry and mint
• Mango and ginger
• Blueberry and lemon
• Lemon and lavender
• Orange and basil
• Orange and Ginger
• Cucumber and Mint
• Apple and Cinnamon
• Blackberry and Orange

 You can mix and match your favorite fruits and herbs. What is your favorite combination??

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Pink Perch or Rani fish fry - healthy and yummy

This Diwali, we went to our friend’s house to celebrate a green Diwali, no crackers or fireworks, only lights, diyas, good food, and lots and lots of adda… simple fun, food, and masti 😊

Dinner was simple rice and mutton gravy.... we had lots of starters, roasted peanut masala and grilled charcoal chicken. Of course, the kids had ice cream too 😊

Next day, lunch was even simpler, rice, dal, chicken liver curry, and Pink perch or Rani fish fry. It was really yumm…this was the first time we ate pink perch, and instantly fell in love with it. I had seen this fish a lot of time in fish shop, but I was not sure about the taste, so never tried it. Thanks to Remya for introducing us to this fish and thanks to her wonderful cooking.

Pink Perch or Rani is a common freshwater fish in India. It is high in protein and low on mercury, moderate in terms of Omega 3 supply. You can definitely have Rani fish at least twice to thrice a week. If you are on a weight loss journey this can be a good companion as it is a very lean fish with less fat.

Ingredients:

• 6 medium-sized pink perch or rani fish, cleaned and sliced on both sides
• Oil as needed to fry, you can shallow fry in non-stick pan (I air fried, so I needed only 2 tbsp oil just to brush them on both sides)

For marination

• 2 tbsp onion paste
• 2 tbsp ginger, garlic, and green chili paste
• 2 tbsp turmeric powder
• 1 tbsp red chili powder
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• Black pepper powder 1 tbsp
• Salt as per taste

Method

• Marinade the fishes with all the ingredients and keep aside for minimum of 1 hour, I left them overnight in fridge
• Next day, before lunch I air-fried them. You can shallow fry them in a non-stick pan or deep fry them in a heavy bottom pan, just be little careful while flipping the fishes as the skin is very soft it sticks to the pan very easily
• Fry both sides till golden brown

Take them out in serving plate and sprinkle some lemon juice and serve hot with warm rice…

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Dalia khichdi - delicious one-pot meal and ultimate comfort food

Daliya or broken wheat is considered to be a good choice as a good choice for reducing refined grains. We can make khichdi, upma, pongal with Daliya and all of them tastes equally delicious. Daliya is mostly consumed during winter or monsoon as wheat helps to keep the body warm; however, for my family this is anytime favorite breakfast.

Health benefits of Daliya:

• Rich in dietary fiber, aids in managing diabetes and constipation
• Iron helps in overcoming fatigue and anemia
• Magnesium helps maintaining normal heartbeat
• Potassium is beneficial for controlling hypertension
• Low fat and high fiber content assists in healthy weight management
• Minerals helps building strong bones
• Protein helps growing kids and gives strength to the body
• Vitamins supports energy metabolism

Daliya khichdi is a delicious one pot meal made from broken wheat, moong dal and lots of veggies. It’s incredible light and healthy and is one of the simplest recipes to make, consistency of this khichdi is so soft that it is easy for kids to swallow and is also a perfect comfort food, more so during winters.

Ingredients

• 1 cup daliya
• ½ cup moong dal
• 1 cup of cubed veggies of your choice (potato, carrot, beans, cauliflower, peas)
• 1 sliced green chilli
• 1 tbsp cumin seeds
• Whole garam masala (2 cloves, 2 green cardamoms, 1 cinnamon stick)
• 1 tsp turmeric powder
• 1 tsp cumin powder
• 1 tsp ginger paste
• ½ tsp garam masala powder
• ½ tsp red chilli powder (optional)
• Salt as per taste
• 2 tbsp ghee (I used my homemade ghee)
• 2 tbsp of freshly chopped coriander leaves

Method

• Heat a heavy bottom pan or pressure cooker and put 1 tbsp ghee in it
• Add the whole garam masala, cumin seeds, and sliced green chili in it
• Once the cumin seeds splutters add all the veggies and sauté a little bit
• Add the ginger paste, turmeric powder, cumin powder, and red chili powder in it
• Fry them for a while
• Add washed daliya and moong dal and mix well
• Add salt and then add 5 cups of water
• Cook for 2 whistles and let the steam release on its own

Once the pressure is down, open and serve hot with 1 tbsp of homemade gee and garnish with freshly chopped coriander leaves

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Banana fritters – tasty chai time snacks on a lazy weekend evening

It was Diwali season, visiting friends and family, lots of celebration and festive eating; naturally, healthy eating took a backseat, especially the fruits. The fruit basket on my dining table kept waiting for visitors, but only got some fruit flies 😊. Finally, I could not let them suffer anymore, the poor bananas were turning black and were almost about to be thrown away.

So, I thought of making something with overripe bananas…why not some banana fritters, a special Bengali delicacy; we were still in festive mood, a little fried food would not harm much 😊.

So here are the banana fritters to go with evening tea or coffee, crispy from outside and soft from inside.

Ingredients

• 2 overripe bananas
• 1 cup rice flour
• 2 tbsp whole wheat flour
• 2 tbsp grated coconut (you can use dried ones also, but fresh ones tastes good)
• ½ tsp fennel seeds
• 2 tbsp sugar (you can add more as per your taste, but as ripe bananas are naturally sweet, I didn’t add much)
• 3 tbsp milk (I used 2 tbsp of milk cream)
• A pinch of salt
• A pinch of baking soda (optional)
• A pinch of cardamom powder
• Oil as needed for frying

Method

• Mash the bananas well in a bowl with a fork
• Add the rice and whole wheat flour and mix well, make sure that there is no lump
• Add the milk or milk cream and mix well again
• Add the coconut, fennel seeds, sugar, salt, baking soda, and cardamom powder
• Give it a good mix and keep the mixture in fridge for 15 minutes
• After 15 minutes, heat oil in a heavy bottom pain, keep the flame on medium
• Drop the mixture with the help of a spoon and deep fry the fritters till they turn golden brown from all side
• Take them out in a paper towel to soak excess oil

Serve hot with your favorite tea or coffee 😊

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Diwali DIY - Diya painting

This year during Diwali, my lil kiddo got a DIY project during her vacation, Diya painting or Diya decoration….wow, it was one of my favorite activity when I was a kid. It brought back all my childhood memories….I remembered that I had also put up Diwali stalls in one of my previous organizations along with all my hand painted T-shirts, Diya candles, some DIY crafts etc. 😊….so, when I saw her holiday homework, I got so excited that I bought a dozen of clay diyas to be painted and decorated by my lil one and of course I would also try my hand on a few of them. Kiddo was also super excited 😆. So, first day of her vacation, in the morning, after breakfast, she was all decked up with diyas, paints, decorative items, glitter and what not 😁😁.

We took two diyas each, and got into action;

• First we applied white paint on all of them as a base coat, we used Fevicryl acrylic colors 
• Then we chose one color each, kiddo chose light blue and I picked up yellow, all Fevicryl acrylic colors 
• Kiddo decorated with some golden glittery pain, she used Fevicryl metallic colors
• I chose to decorate with red.

All of them came out really nice, we were quite happy with the outcome.

Kiddo in action

Kiddo decided to gift the blue ones painted by her to her friends as we were visiting their house during Diwali.

The yellow ones, are still with us and we decorated our house with them. We had a wonderful and safe Diwali amidst the pandemic with lots of diyas and lights.

Hope you had a wonderful Diwali too, what was your Diwali DIY??

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