Healthy Oat Carrot Bars

Wishing all of you a Happy New 2014!

Have you made those lists yet? You know the ones, called resolutions. Yeah. I've been there a few times too. And sometimes I've been successful to cross January with it. But of late. I've come to realize until I make something a habit, they don't last. Fitness, healthy eating, good rest, etc are all best done if they are converted from resolutions to long lasting habits. Good luck to you with your plans for the new year. Make them habits and then it won't be too difficult to maintain them.

Starting off this year with a healthy breakfast bar recipe. Even though I call this a breakfast bar, this can really be had at any time of the day when you need a good boost of energy. With all healthy ingredients and no unnecessary fat or fillers, this is just what our bodies need for a good pick me up.

I tweaked the recipe a little bit from this Whole Foods recipe mainly because of the ingredients I had on hand. The end product is delicious. Each bite feels whole and hearty. The sweetness is just right. Not dessert sweet, but just sweet enough. A lot of sweetness comes from the carrots and raisins themselves. Not to mention this is an eggless recipe. So rejoice, all you eggless loving people.

Start off with pulsing some oats and nuts in a food processor. I used 1 cup of cook quicking oats and 1 cup of almonds and walnuts mixed. Don't fine grind it as little bites of almonds only increase the deliciousness of the bars.

Move the dry oat and nut mix to a bowl. Add 1 cup of whole wheat pastry flour. Then add 2 tsps of baking powder and 1 tsp of baking soda. Add 1/2 tsp of salt.

Also add about 1 tsp each of ground cinnamon and ground ginger. You can also add fresh grated ginger for better taste. Mix everything together and set aside.

In another small bowl, add 2 cups of grated carrot. You can make this 1 cup of carrot and 1 cup of grated apples too. Add 1/2 cup of raisins or dried currants to this. Cranberries would also be a good substitute here.

Add 1 cup of maple syrup to the carrots. I reduced the maple a little bit and added agave nectar along it, both together equaling 1 cup. Add about 1/2 cup fresh grated or frozen coconut. (not the dried sweetened coconut). Finally add 1 tsp of vanilla essence. Mix everything well.

Add this moist carrot mixture to the oat and flour mix. Mix everything well until well incorporated.

Move to a greased pan and spread it flat. I topped off with some pecans before sending it off to the oven.

Bake at 350F for about 45 mins or so. If you do a toothpick test at about 25 or 30 mins, it will still come out clean but the batter would still be light. Let it go on for about 45 mins until you see the bars turn golden brown. That would be a good time to take them out.

Let them cool down a bit. Cut into squares and then, all you have left to do is eat.

Or you can just stare at your creation like I'm doing right now.

Who says healthy is boring. Live it up, you health nuts!

Ingredient List:

Dry Ingredients:
1 cup Quick cooking or Steel Cut Oats
1 cup whole nuts- almonds, walnuts, or any other nuts. Total quantity of nuts is 1 cup.
1 cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ginger powder

Moist Ingredients:
2 cups grated carrots (or a mix of carrots or apples)
1/2 cup of raisins, or dried cranberries or currants.
1/4 cup fresh grated coconut
1 cup maple syrup (you can even do 1/2 maple +1/2 agave nectar)
1 tsp vanilla essence

Prepare as explained above.



Enjoy. Peace Out.

Missi Roti and Gatte Ki Sabji

Its been a whole week plus some more after my last post. I know giving excuses is not good - but you'd probably do so too if  you had a computer that turned south on you and decided that it will push the limits so much that you might want to strangle it with its own wire and throw it out of the window.

This has been in my drafts for a while now. This is a traditional rajasthani dish but with my own touches added. It is quite a heavy meal and I don't really get why they would have both the rotis and the sabji made with besan. But, hey I'm just following what was told to be the best combo. 

Starting off with the Missi Rotis, this is a spiced up roti and is made with a combination on wheat flour and besan. Usually, the propotion would be 2 cups of besan to 1 cup of atta. But, I just added equal quantities of both. 

So take about 1 cup of wheat flour (atta) and 1 cup of Chick Pea flour (besan). Sieve em together. Add salt to taste. Add about 1 tsp of red chilli powder. Then add 1 tsp of jeera and 1 tsp of ajwain to the flours.

Add about a couple of spoons of ghee into this and then adding water a little at a time, mix into a dough.

Like this.

Take small balls out of it and roll it into a thin chappathi. I've had missi rotis that are thick and heavy - if you want that kind.

And yes - did you like my roller? Loved it and its such an ease to roll stuff!

Cook the rotis on a tawa and add some ghee if you want to - I skipped that part..you know why.

And now for the side kick to go with the rotis. Gatte ki Sabji. If you are a Rajasthani, you'd probably never add onions to the traditional dish. But, I just wanted to kind of get the punjabi kadi thing going with the rajasthani gatte thing. Talk about mixing up cuisines. It was real good indeed and I think I'm going to be doing it this way from now on.

For the gattes, sieve about 11/2 cups of besan. Add salt to taste and red chilli powder too.  I also added some jeera and dhaniya powder.

Again, add about 1 tsp of ghee to the flour mix.

Adding a little water at a time - make a thick dough out of the flour.

Then take small portions of the dough and roll into thin long pieces. And then cut the thin ones into little pieces.

Here are the small gattes. Some people cook the long strips and then cut it into small pieces. Either way is fine, I guess.

Boil water in a wide pan and when the water is bubbling, add these gattes in there. Cook for about 5 mins or until they all rise up and start swelling up a bit.

You can skip this step - but I give them a quick rinse with cold water when they are done so that they don't stick with each other and become a big ball.

Now in a pan, add a couple of spoons of oil and when hot, add mustard seeds to splutter. And then add some fresh curry leaves and a generous spray of asofoetida powder from the box - trust me, this is helpful!
Then, add the long cut onions and saute for a couple of mins.

Add turmeric powder, red chilli powder and a little of jeera-dhaniya powder.

When the onions turn translucent, add the cooked gattes in here.

Blend about 2 cups of yogurt with a little water and make into a semi-thick consistency. Add the yogurt to the gattes and turn the flame down to low.

Cook the sabji in low flame until a lot of the moisture evaporates and the sauce thickens.

And when done, add fresh cut cilantro and mix well.

Serve hot with warm missi rotis.

I also made a quick green beans dry sabji with some coconut for a little green addition to the mostly yellow meal.

So Missy, enjoy those missis and get.a.lot of the gattes!

Enjoy. Peace out!



Eggless Strawberry Chocolate Almond Bread

When it’s a good day, even bread feels like cake!

I totally just made this up and I’m impressed at my own proverbial skills! It’s easier to make up stuff when food is involved! Don’t you all agree?

It’s just been a real hectic October and in all my chaos, my poor little blog baby is not getting my attention as it should. I’m hoping to come back to full form soon. Maybe in a couple of more weeks once Diwali is over.

Today’s blog post is actually a really easy recipe I baked a couple of weekends back. This was actually our Sunday morning fresh baked breakfast. And when I sat down and ate this, I just wanted time to stand still and let me enjoy this forever. This is a classic example how many of your little favorite things can come together and give you one big favorite thing. Who says that’s not possible? I have proof that it is both possible and enjoyable!

The recipe is adapted from Madhuram’s Eggless Cooking blog and her recipe on Eggless Chocolate chip Zucchini Bread. Anytime I need an eggless recipe, her site is the first one I stop by. Thank You Madhuram and please keep your wonderful recipes coming.

Start off with mixing the dry ingredients –
All purpose flour – 1 ½ cups (you can substitute with whole wheat bread flour for a more fibrous bread)
Baking powder – ¼ tsp
Baking soda – ½ tsp
A pinch of salt

Mix all ingredients well – you can actually sieve them all together for a clean and smooth mix.

Then, add a whole cup of fresh cut strawberries in here.

Followed by another ½ cup of semi sweet or dark chocolate chips.

Now for the wet ingredients. This is basically where the butter and eggs would be added in a normal cake. However, in this eggless version, we're going to be adding some other basic ingredients.

Vegetable oil - 1/2 cup
Sugar - 3/4 cup (personally, I though this bread was too sweet. I'm thinking of cutting this down to 1/2 or even 1/4 cup for more of a bread taste)
Bananas - 2 ripe
Vanilla essence 1/2 tsp (Optional - I did not add this - no culinary reasons...just laziness!)

Just add all the ingredients to a blender or mixer and blend into a smooth wet mixture.

Pour this over the dry ingredients and mix well.

Gently incorporate the dry and wet ingredients together.

Here's the bite - add about 1/4 - 1/2 cup of sliced/silvered almonds. This adds excellent texture to the bread.

Pour into a well greased loaf pan. Run a toothpick over the batter so that any big bubbles are broken up - that way you won't have a big hole in the middle of your slice!

Top off with some more silvered almonds.

Bake in a preheated oven at 350F for about 50 mins. Yeah - this does take time. So, plan accordingly. If you want to make this for breakfast - don't start at 10:00 clock Sunday moring like me. We all almost felt like we had brunch after we ate this at 11:15!! If its a sunday, you are forgiven in my books for being a lazy mom and letting your family starve and just smell the fresh baking bread with growling stomachs!

Here it is - takes only about 5 mins to prepare but about an hr to bake. Once that is done, we are back at about 5 mins to eat it all up.

Slice yourself a big one...shhhh..

Here's a cross view - the softness of the strawberries and the crunchiness of the almonds and the sweetness from the semi sweet chips all just come along beautifully to give you a perfect bite.

Feel free to use your own favorite fruits or nuts to bake this. Like I said, this can pass off for cake easily if you bake it a square or round pan. But it taste great as little slices of bread too.

Enjoy. Peace Out!