Black beans, Corn & Rice Salad

I am thrilled to kick start the Light Lunches event here with one of our favorite rice salads; South west inspired corn, black bean rice salad. We eat this regularly at Chipotle (chain of fast casual restaurant) and its enticing taste has prompted me to try this at home. With stuff like corn, black beans, peppers, cilantro and lime it is not only eye catching but bursting with flavors as well. It is light on the stomach but delicious and pleases the taste palette easily.  The quantity mentioned in the ingredients is for reference. You may change the quantity as…

Carrot Kosambari/ Carrot Lentil Salad

Kosambari is a traditional salad in Karnataka. It is prepared during major festivals, auspicious occasions, and marriages and even offered as ‘prasada’ in temples. This is also called as Koshimbir in Konkani and Maharashtra and is very easy to prepare. Kosambari does not involve any cooking, it is basically a mix of soaked lentils and vegetable of choice (cucumber or carrot or both) with right seasoning.  It is healthy, high in protein and also has a cooling effect on the body. This is one salad, we love to have during summers. I have already posted the Cucumber Kosambari recipe here.…

Spicy Pepper Jeera Rasam

  Winter is upon us and along with it comes the essential cold, cough sneezing sniffling etc. So at home, I try avoiding medicines as far as possible and look for some easy home made remedies. So far we have had good success with black pepper (Kali Mirchi in Hindi) and so I use it in different ways and among them one is this Pepper Jeera Rasam. As I understand this is referred to as Milagu Rasam in TamilNadu. Milagu means pepper in Tamil. This Black Pepper Jeera rasam is a medicated rasam and because of black pepper in it…

Aloo Raita Recipe

The wonderful folks at CSN Stores have contacted me again and requested me to do a product review from one of their online stores. If you have not already visited CSN Stores then I strongly recommend doing so. They have about 200 online stores and over 1 Million products! They have it all from stylish handbags, to counter height stools, and of course great cookware etc! Do check them out and be prepared to be amazed. Raita is a yogurt based condiment. It is simple yet nutritious; different vegetables like tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, onion can be used. Usually all these vegetables are…

Kid’s Lunch; Simple Bell Pepper, Peas Pasta

The kiddo loves pasta as far as I can remember.  We have been to many a long trips, functions, picnics etc carrying a bowl of pasta knowing a fall back option in case he does not eat anything else. But the caveat has been that eats the boiled pasta as is without any flavorings like tomato sauce, cheese or any vegetables in it. My worry had been more about the later than the former; hence I was on lookout for adding veggies that would appeal to him and also be nutritious. That is when the idea of adding onion and…

Mango Salsa

  I know I am on a mango spree, with back to back recipes on mangoes; but if you are a mango lover like me, then there is no such thing as too much mangoes, right? I had made this Mango Salsa along with Yogurt Rice for a picnic that we had last weekend with some family friends.  Few of our family friends and us decided to meet last week and decided to have a picnic by meeting up at a park. Some park names were thrown in and finally a name was selected that was ok’ed by everybody. Now…

Vegetarian Black Bean Soup

Let me start off this post, by asking you all dear readers about Canned Food. How often do you buy canned food? Do you use it in your cooking often? What do you think about its nutrition value?  Recently at work, some of our colleagues were discussing about canned food, fresh food, frozen food its benefits its ease of use of each of them etc. It was not a heated argument or anything like that, just casual conversation with exchanging information. Turns out many of them use it frequently and that too on a day to day basis in their…