Tag: breakfast

Blackberry Parfait

7 Comments

BM# 100: Week 2, Day 2
Theme : 3 ingredient Dishes

Breakfast is not an elaborate meal at my place. It’s almost always a bowl of cereal or oatmeal. I like something with a bit of liquid in it than having to chew before you are completely awake (even if it’s 10 in the morning). The idea is I will close my eyes, drink it down and then wake up later when I have to deal with the day.

You can see why a yogurt based parfait would work well here. It ticks off all the boxes for me. There is smoothness from the yogurt, a bit of crunch from muesli or granola, bit of sweetness from the berries, there is color, there is contrast and most importantly, it is ridiculously easy to make. Any jam would work instead of real fruit too. A spoon of sugar or salt is allowed for this theme, so I decided to add it to the berries. It’s optional and if you are using a jam, you won’t need it anyway.

Scroll down for the recipe.

Ingredients:

    1/2 cup yogurt*
    3 tablespoons granola/muesli
    8-10 blackberries
    1 teaspoon sugar, optional

Method:

  1. Mix sugar with the berries and microwave for 20-30 seconds. Cool slightly and mash it down with the back of a spoon.
  2. Spoon some of this on the bottom of a glass. Top with a tablespoon of muesli or granola. Add some of the yogurt. Repeat the layers until it reaches the top. Mine was a small glass so it took only two layers of each.
  3. Top with muesli and serve cold.

Note:

*You can sweeten the yogurt as well with a spoon or two of sugar. I didn’t do it.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM#100

Advertisements

Mango smoothie bowl

6 Comments

1mango-smoothie-bowl

BM # 72; Week 4, Day 1
Theme : So many smoothies, so little time
Dish: Mango smoothie bowl

If smoothies were the rage a while back, smoothie bowls are the rage now. The minute I saw smoothie bowls, I stopped pouring smoothies into glasses. Why? Because smoothies are thick and I don’t like having to suck them in through a straw. Its almost like my mouth and cheeks are getting a work out to get that smoothie from the glass to my throat!

I hate it even more drinking directly from the glass. The same reason again, smoothies are thick. You drink it one small sip at a time and an entire morning passes by the time the you work your way through a big glass. So when I saw this brilliant pictures of serving smoothies in a bowl with some beautiful toppings, I was smitten. Smitten bad.

It also makes it easy with my kid. He has a heavy traditional Indian meal when he comes home from school. In other words, I feed him a heavy dinner at 4:30 PM. So a couple of hours later, when he is hungry, but not too hungry, I give him a salad or a smoothie bowl. Like this one here. Since its made of ready made mango puree served with a good dose of chocolate chips, I can’t tell you that its exactly healthy. But I can tell you this…it sure was tasty. Oh, yeah!

Read on for this simple recipe.

2mango-smoothie-bowl

Ingredients:

  • 3/4 cup ready made mango puree
  • 1 cup ready made flavored yogurt
  • milk/ water to bring it to the right consistency
  • Toppings of your choice.

Method:

  1. Blend the puree with yogurt. If you prefer a runnier consistency, add some milk or water as needed and blend again.
  2. Pour into a bowl and decorate with toppings of your choice. Here it is clementines, chocolate chips, chia seeds, canned cherries, cashews.

3mango-smoothie-bowl

BMLogo

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM#72

Tortilla egg wrap

3 Comments

tortilla wrap2

The best way to start a day is to start it simple. Especially if you are like me and not a morning person at all, you need to keep things at an elementary level till you get out of the zombie mode. So on some weekends, instead of doing something elaborate, I take out the tawa, some eggs, a pack of tortillas or ready-made chapatis and get to work. It sometimes makes its way into my son’s lunch box as well.

The good thing about my family is that they are with me when I keep breakfast minimal. A roll with a dash of sriracha is preferred over an idli-sambar-chutney combo. Since my husband has never read a single post in this place, he cannot contradict me :D.

This recipe is an improvisation of bread omelette. It’s from a friend and made it directly to my cookbook. I call it  my ‘try these recipes to keep your life lazy’ book.

Enjoy the recipe as it goes to the Cooking from Cookbook Challenge. Please check out this page for more details about the event.

tortilla wrap4

IMG_5603

Break an egg and let it cook until set. Season with salt and pepper.

IMG_5604

Add a tortilla on top. I press a little bit so that the egg yolks break. Let it cook for a few moments.

IMG_5607

Flip over and cook the other side of the tortilla as well.

IMG_5614

Add some sriracha sauce or hot sauce of your choice. Fold the sides to the middle. Serve with ketchup.

tortilla wrap3

Yogurt smoothie

5 Comments

2smoothiebowl

This post is a part of  the mega Blogging Marathon and A-Z challenge. I have chosen ‘popular American dishes’ as my theme.

We are at the last leg of the alphabetical journey through popular American dishes and the last week has been more difficult than the rest of the month put together. The alphabets get tougher and the time frame gets tighter. My talk about scheduling flew off the window the minute I said it. That was fine, because I had this recipe ready a long time back. All I had to do was upload the photos and publish it. But nah, it didn’t happen. Not because I was out with my family the whole day, but the laptop went on strike.

Right now my laptop is going through a multi organ failure. The touch pad is gone and is replaced by an external mouse. The machine is extremely slow which makes my man crazy, but I am fine with it. Its sole purpose is for editing pictures and browsing. Now that’s where the second hit came. It’s not connecting to the net. That does make things difficult. To get a post up, now I have to edit using the old laptop. Use a thumb drive to copy. Then connect to our chromebook and upload the pictures and post from there.  Chromebook is wonderful, but hardly useful for my purpose. I am sure that day is around the corner when I have to shed some tears for my laptop. I am getting the handkerchief ready and waiting patiently for it to happen.

Coming to the recipe here, I went for yogurt based recipe for Y.

  • Why? Y wasn’t easy.
  • Why? There were hardly any choices. I had yam, yellow cake and yogurt to choose from. I chose yogurt.
  • Why? Its healthy, easy to make and quite popular.
  • Why? It has probiotic which makes it more nutritional than milk.

So have I answered all the question for my choice? Smoothies are popular all over the world as a healthy breakfast choice. Smoothie bowls are more of a recent trend, but its really filling and nutritious.  Smoothies started appearing in US as early as 1930. That information was new for me, I didn’t expect it to date so back. In the 70s, “Smoothie King” opened and soon had branches all over the country. So in short, smoothies are popular here and there are dedicated stores just for that!

Read on for this highly versatile recipe. You can adjust it according to what you have in your fridge.

4smoothiebowl

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup yogurt
  • fruits of your choice (I used a handful of strawberries & blueberries, one banana and one kiwi)
  • 2 teaspoonful of peanut butter
  • 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder
  • 2 teaspoons sugar/ honey
  • Banana slices, strawberry slices, chocolate chips,pistachios

Method:

  1. Blend everything together. Taste test and add sugar to adjust the taste or yogurt to get the right consistency.
  2. Pour into a bowl, decorate with fruit pieces, nuts and chocolate chips. Enjoy!

smoothiebowl

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 63

3smoothiebowl