Quinoa Black Bean Salad

                          

Quinoa Black Bean Salad is a quick, easy and healthy dish to prepare. This salad has a wonderful taste, nice aroma of garlic, olive oil and lime flavor. The brightness and color of the salad is best for parties. We love the quinoa salad at Costco and was eager to try this salad at home. Basically my husband is a soup and salad lover. I prefer making chickpeas cranberry pomegranate salad or black eyed pea salad or apple salad but wanted to give this a shot for a change and it worked wonders. Quinoa lovers, please refer our quinoa pulao posted earlier. Here's my version of the Costco's quinoa salad...

Ingredients 

• Quinoa - 1 cup (soak for 30 mins in water and wash well before use)
• Water - 1 1/2 cups
• Green bell pepper (finely chopped) - 1/2 cup 
• Red bell pepper (finely chopped) - 1/2 cup 
• Jalapeno (finely chopped) - 1
• Onion (finely chopped) - 1/2 cup
• Black olives - 1/3 cup 
• Black beans (I used tin) - 1/2 cup

For dressing 

• Garlic (finely chopped) - 3 cloves 
• Lime - 2
• Olive oil - 1/4 cup 
• Lime zest - 2 tsp
• Salt as needed 
• Pepper as needed 

Method 

• In a kadai, cook the quinoa with 1 1/2 cups of water. Once quinoa cooked, allow it to rest for sometime and fluff it with a fork. Keep it separately.
• Take a wide mixing bowl -  add onions, green & red bell pepper, jalapeno, black olives. 
• Drain water from black beans in the tin and wash it several times to remove the preservative smell.  
• Then add black beans to the bowl along with cooked quinoa.

                            

• Now start preparing the dressing for the salad in another bowl by adding the ingredients mentioned under " for dressing" one by one. Mix well. 
• Add the dressing to the bowl. Toss well with the quinoa.
• Quinoa black bean salad is ready to be served. 

                             

Tip 

• You can replace black bean with chickpeas or  black eye peas.
• You can add tomatoes without seeds. Its optional.
• You can add all colors of bell pepper to make it colorful.

     

Apple Salad

Hey Lovelies,

Remember me? I know it's been 5ever since I blogged, not sure if anyone missed me or even noticed but I feel I'm such a bad blogger. I've been busy lately, mostly due to packing,moving, all such boring stuff  and partly due to shopping. It was a smooth move, our friends helped us with abundant supply of yummy food, moving, unpacking and what not? Totally blessed with awesome friends.

 I was not in a mood to cook elaborate meals for  a month or so I guess..hence the 'easy&quick meals' board on my Pinterest happened and found this Apple salad recipe somewhere but I din't pin it then cos I dozed off.. With whatever I remembered, I recreated this salad for brunch. AND I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT! I know I say that very often but I'm a foodie like that! The crunch of apple with the sweet-tart flavor of honey-lime dressing is just out of the world..
 Don't like apple? Try this!
 Big fan of apple?*hi5* Try this now, like right now!!
 Okay Okay off to the recipe now.. 

Ingredients

• Apple- 1 (chopped into chunks)
• Spinach- handful 
• Walnuts(optional)- 1/2 cup(lightly crushed)
• Salt- to taste
• Pepper- to taste

For dressing 

• Honey- 1 tbsp
• Lemon juice- 2 tbsp
• Canola Oil- 1 tsp
• Sugar- a pinch

Method

• Mix all the ingredients under 'dressing' and shake well.
• Combine all the ingredients and pour the dressing over and shake well.
• Enjoy!

Chickpeas Cranberry Pomegranate Salad

                             

Looking for an easy & quick salad recipe? Here I come with a simple salad recipe that I hope you all will like :).

This is a healthy and colorful salad. The crunchiness of veggies, sweetness of cranberry and  pomegranate fruit with dressing of lemon juice will be awesome in taste for salad lovers . Enjoy!!

Quick tips for making a good salad, 

• Salad must have the correct level of salt and pepper. 
• Always toss the salad in a big wide bowl.

Ingredients 

• Channa/Chickpeas - 1 1/2 cup
• Pomegranate - 1 
• Colored bell pepper - 1 1/2 ( I used green, red, yellow & orange)
• Dry cranberry - 2-3tbsp 
• Lemon - 1 (squeezed)
• Onion - 1/3 cup (finely chopped)
• Cilantro chopped - 2tbsp (finely chopped)
• Salt as needed
• Pepper as needed

Method

                         

• Soak chana over night and pressure cook for 3 whistles.
• Toss all the ingredients together in a wide bowl along with salt, pepper and lemon juice. Mix well.

                              

 Tips

• You can also add green mango. 
• You can also add one slit green chilli to make it little spicy.   

Kondakadalai Sundal/Channa Sundal

Navratri means "nava"- nine, "ratri"- night, worshiped for nine forms of Devi. It's a festival dedicated to Hindu goddess Durga Devi. The tenth day is commonly celebrated as Vijayadashami or Dasara. This festival is an important one which is celebrated all over India. Kondakalai Sundal is a traditional savory snack for vinayagar chathurthi and navratri. It's very healthy and guilt free sundal. This recipe is easy and flavorful one. Here you go with the recipe :)
                      

Ingredients 

• Kondakadalai / Channa - 1 cup
• Coconut grated - 2 tbsp 
• Salt - as needed 
• Oil - as needed 
• Mustard - 1 tsp 
• Urad dhal - 1/4 tsp
• Red chillies - 3 
• Asafoetida - pinch 
• Curry leaves- 1 spring 

Method

• Soak channa overnight and pressure cook with salt and water for 3-4 whistles.
• Heat a skillet with oil and temper with mustard, urad dhal, curry leaves, asafoetida and red chillies. Fry until it splutter and turns to golden brown. 
• Add cooked channa and stir for 2 minutes until moisture evaporates. 
• Now add grated coconut and fry for a minute. Transfer the sundal to serving bowl.

Tips 

• You can replace red chillies with green chillies.
• Instead of adding coconut as such you can grind coconut and green chillies together and add as a coarse paste at the last. 
• If your soaking the channa overnight you can pressure cook along with salt or the soaking time for channa is less, then you have to add salt at the time of cooking only. 

Try our other sundal recipe peanut sundal  

Linking parties hearth-soul-blog-hop|totally-talented-tuesdays

Verkadalai Sundal/ Peanut Salad

It is that time of the year again. The festivals are here. The place I belong (India) and the place I now call home (US) are both exuberant with lights, music, festivities and joy during this season (Sep to Dec)! The holiday mood is already set with all the fabulous decors in the stores and my Pinterest feed!

As I was looking at all the amazing ideas for Halloween, I just can’t help but notice how much similar Halloween is to Dussehra/Navaratri that we celebrate back home. It left me with so much surprise how different cultures in different parts of the world share a lot in common, despite the many contrasts that may exist.

Kids in India dress up in costumes for Navaratri just like how kids in US dress up for Halloween. However, Halloween is about scary costumes while Navaratri is all about costumes from Hindu epics and mythologies

PC: shutterstock.com and post.jagran.com

While Halloween is decorating the house with pumpkins, lanterns and haystacks,Navaratri is decorating the house with dolls and toys arranged on steps. 

PC: shutterstock.com and india4u.com

Trick-or-treating here is singing devotional songs there. And candies here are SUNDAL (salads) there! See, I told ya! So much in common.

Ah, did I just say SUNDAL … I want to make one right away and happily relive my childhood memories! And hey, we celebrate navaratri for 9 nights! Yes, we Indians take festivals bit too serious!! So, it means different types of sundals on each day. As Navaratri starts Sep 25 this year, it is going to be ‘Sundal Time’ on our blog. 

Roasted Peanut Salad

Yippee!! I ll be traveling to India soon and I am thrilled to bits, so SO excited  There are lot of things I miss about India.

  Family and friends of course are at top of the list (Oh! Skype, what would we do without you)

My favorite food- Though we get Indian food and groceries here there are certain few things I am not contented with.One such thing is peanut salad. 

During my college days my friends & I used to go to this restaurant like once a week just to eat this. It was so funny that the waiters stopped giving us the menu card after few days and happily served us the salad. I made my version of this salad and although it wasn't really close to the one I love, my husband loved it :)

So what exactly is this roasted peanut salad ?

It's simply a salad which is protein rich, scrumptious and refreshing since it is made of fresh ingredients & super easy to whip up.

INGREDIENTS

• roasted peanuts - 2 cups
•  chopped onion - 1 cup
• chopped tomatoes - 1 cup
• chopped cucumber - 1 cup
• finely chopped green chilli - 1 or 2
• juice of lemon - 1 tbsp
• chaat masala - to taste(optional)
• salt - to taste
• finely chopped cilantro - to garnish 

METHOD 

Add the roasted peanuts in a bowl.

Add onions & green chillies

 some tomatoes

and some cucumber

add salt, lime juice & chaat masala

 Toss well and garnish with finely chopped cilantro.

Serve it as tea time or mid night snack with some drinks

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