Soya, wheat chapathis

So the last time I wrote about chapathis, I mentioned that my daughter refuses to eat them. My cook recently made some soya + wheat chapathis, which my little girl loved. I think it had something to do with the softer than usual texture of the chapathis. I am keeping my fingers crossed for the soya+wheat chapathi run to be sustained as it is a great source of proteins and carbohydrates. Here's the recipe.
The measure is 3 tablespoons of soya flour for 1 cup of wheat flour. Knead it like regular roti dough with oil, water and salt. Viola, the soya chapathis are ready to be rolled out for the griddle.

Tulsi and honey mix

I am totally against cold and cough medicines and usually offer it to my daughter with great reluctance. The recent bout of cold that attacked me and my kids made dig out some old home-made recipes to ward off colds. FYI, most cold medicines are quite useless and sometimes, dangerous (usually because of the chances of an overdose), for kids under 3 years of age.

Tulsi, honey mix

Ingredients:
10 leaves of tulsi
1 teaspoon honey
some warm warm
a small piece of muslin cloth

Method:
Wet the tulsi leaves in warm water and tie it together in the muslin cloth. Pound the leaves with a pestle and extract the juice of the tulsi. Mix it with the honey and your home-made cough and cold remedy is ready.

The goodness of wheat

I always like to give a variety of cereals to my daughter. Usually, it is oatmeal with a fruit or dry fruits (see my second post) in the morning, rice and dal (with vegetables) in the afternoon and wheat in the evenings. Unfortunately, my daughter is not interested in chapathis at all. I keep hoping she begin to like it some day but so far, my plan has always derailed. Whenever I offer her a piece of chapathi, she opens her mouth, tastes it religiously spits out every morsel, making me all nervous about what else I should give her for dinner.
Finally, I decided to give broken wheat (also known as dalia or semba) a try and thankfully, she loved it. Broken wheat has a wholesome taste and really goes well with all kinds of vegetables. My little one hates ghee but doesn't notice it when included in the semba pongal.

Broken Wheat Pongal

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons of broken wheat (dalia or semba)
1 teaspoon moong dal
A small piece of finely diced ginger
A few curry leaves
Salt to taste
1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon ghee
Any vegetables your child likes or you want to include (best in grated form).

Method:
Dry roast the broken wheat and moong dal. Then in a small vessel add the dry-roasted mixture, the cumin seeds, salt, ghee, curry leaves and ginger (and the vegetables). Pour adequate water to cook and place in pressure cooker. I usually let it cook for at least 4 whistles.
Tada, the pongal is ready. Now, my daughter always likes to add a twist to ruin my plans. I usually start with the plain pongal and if she gets a little fussy during the meal, I add some rasam to the pongal and she usually cooperates for a couple of more spoons. When she gets tired of this mix too, I throw in my truimph card -- yoghurt -- she loves yoghurt and usually gulps down a couple of more spoons before she figures out my gameplan :). Viel Glueck!

Koff, Koff, AAchooo

Kids and I am down with a cold. Have some yummy broken wheat recipes to share with you. Will post that soon as I am done with blowing my nose.

A dry-fruit variation of Egglicious post an allergic reaction

My daughter loved the strawberry ice cream but it triggered an allergic cold for her. So am a little upset with my experiment. But a dry-fruit version suited her. What this variation requires is a puree of dried figs, apricots and pistachio, almonds and cashew (instead of strawberries for the ice-cream recipe). You can soak the dry fruits overnight in room-temperature water or in warm water for half an hour. Grind them with one or two tablespoons of milk and a few grains of cardamom. (This mix can also be added to oatmeal or a glass of milk to up the nutrition quotient of breakfast-- the dried figs and apricots give the required sweetness to the oatmeal so you can avoid adding sugar.)
The rest of the ice cream recipe remains the same. Instead of adding strawberry puree add this yummy dry fruit puree to the mix.

Egglicious

I have tried and tried and tried but am yet to succeed in getting my daughter to eat an egg. Boiled, scrambled, fried, poached....I've tried it all, unsuccessfully. So here's my idea to get her to gulp down an egg yolk (, which contains most of the nutrients in an egg), hidden in a concoction of milk and strawberries. Show me a kid who doesn't like ice cream! (Okay, okay there are always exceptions.)

Strawberry Ice Cream:

Ingredients:
1 cup milk
1 egg yolk (make a nice omelette for yourself with the white)
2 tablespoons of sugar
A drop of vanilla essence
7-8 medium sized strawberries

Method:
Grind the strawberries and strain the seeds away. Warm the milk and drop the whisked egg yolk in it and mix well. (Don't overheat the milk, else the egg yolk will cook.) Transfer egg-milk mixture to a saucepan and add the pureed strawberries, sugar and vanilla essence. Cook on low flame and keep stirring until it thickens (about 5 minutes.) Let it cool and tranfer it into a container to keep in the freezer. Once in the freezer, keep stirring the mixture every half an hour, so that it does not become one mass of ice that cannot be bit into. After a few hours of stirring the frozen mixture repeatedly, viola! your ice cream is ready.
Mine is still in the refrigerator. Will post pictures and relay the results of my experiment soon after my daughter takes a lick. Ciao!