Raagi porridge

This post is specifically for a friend who requested this most common and predominant baby food prepared in the southern part of India.

The credit for the recipe goes to my maid who helped me six months ago when I was confused while starting solids for my baby. Though there are a lot of options in the market these days, I wanted something which is not milk based and of course which is homemade.

Traditionally raagi is used in south India and as north Indians, the benefits of raagi are lesser known to us primarily because raagi was unavailable up north earlier. But now things have changed and the benefits of raagi are out for all to experience.

Raagi is a very good source of calcium and your baby will need it in abundance once he/she starts to crawl and starts teething. Traditionally this porridge is made only with raagi but I have decided to include other grains and pulses like moong daal, wheat, barley etc.. These are optional and you need not add these if you don't like. So without much ado here goes the recipe:

Ingredients:
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500gms Raagi millet
250gms wheat
250gms Green Gram (moong daal)
125gms barley
125gms brown rice
2 tbsp cumin seeds (jeera)
2tbsp carom seeds (ajwain)

Procedure
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1. Wash all except jeera and ajwain. Raagi needs much more time while washing since it has a lot of impurities. You will need to keep washing it till raagi looks clear to you in water. This will take about 4-5 washes.

2. Soak the washed grains accordingly:
Raagi - 8hrs
Wheat - 8hrs
Moong daal - 8hrs
Barley and brown rice - 2hrs
3. Drain barley and the rice and let them dry completely.
4. Drain the rest of the grains and tie them up separately in a clean muslin cloth. You will need to keep this until they start to sprout.

5. Once they have sprouted untie them and spread it on a neat surface or on a plate and dry them completely. Ensure that there's no moisture left in them.

6. Dry roast each of the ingredients. I do this for at least 5min each or till you start getting a pleasant aroma from them. You also do this to the cumin and ajwain seeds.

7. Finally you collect them all and grind them into a fine powder. If you are doing this at home then care should be taken that the powder yielded should be really fine, you may also need to sieve it till you get the perfect consistency. I prefer to do this in a flour mill rather than at home as the former involves less sieving.

Store in a air-tight container.

OPTIONAL:- I also add around 50-60 roasted and powdered almonds into the mixture above. But you can exclude this if you are concerned about nut allergy.

Cooking before feeding:-
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I take about three spoonfuls of this, mix it in sufficient water, add a pinch of salt along with a few drops of ghee and finally cook this on a small flame. Keep stirring this till the paste thickens to about the consistency of a porridge.

Cool and serve... Or rather feed ;)

You can feed this porridge more than once a day but I generally do this once in the afternoon. Since this porridge contains many ingredients its quite filling in nature and the baby is likely to sleep for over 2-3hrs after consuming the same.

Apart from this I also feed my son oats for breakfast, wheat in the evening and rice & daal at night apart from about 20oz of milk everyday.

Quinoa Salad

What started as solid food for my baby turned out to be an action packed bollywoody food for the both of us. Bollywood I say, because there is so much masala and lots of things to make it zingy!

Quinoa (prononced kinwaa) needs no introduction. It's one of the healthiest grain in the entire world, an all-rounder in nutrition. It's a good source of calcium, iron, magnesium and more importantly, it's gluten free. In layman terms it's a yummy tummy treat.

I included this as a part of my son's diet mainly because it's gluten free and it's packed with all the necessary nutritional quotient that it instantly ticked all my check boxes!

The only drawback is that it's not readily available in your regular departmental store and hence you will need to source this from an upscale high end supermarket. However I found this online at "zansaar.com" which has thankfully eliminated my travel time by bringing this to me to my doorstep. I use Roland white quinoa and a packet (340 gms) is priced at Rs.430 (quite expensive I must say). But considering everything that I have written above I've decided to ignore the price.

There are a lot of recipes to try out but today I am sharing this very simple salad. It's so simple, yummy and at the same time very healthy. So I am not complaining.

Ingredients:

Cooking quinoa:
Quinoa - 1cup
Water - 2cups
Salt - 1/4tsp

Add salt to the two cups of water and put it on boil. Once it starts to boil, add 1 cup of quinoa and stir in. Cook it till the entire water is evaporated which takes about 15 - 18 mins. Once done, keep this aside. 1 cup of quinoa yields 2 - 3 cups when cooked.

For the salad:
3 cups quinoa (procedure above)
Olive oil - 2 tbsp
Peanuts - 1tbsp
Onion - 1 finely chopped
Tomato - 1 finely chopped

Parboil the below:
Carrot - 2 finely diced
Potato - 1 finely diced
Pumpkin - small piece finely diced
Celery - 1 finely chopped
Dill leaves - a bunch chopped finely
Coriander leaves - a bunch
Green chillies - 1tsp
Ginger - 1tsp
Chickpeas or any other legumes (rajma, moth-gram etc) - 1 cup cooked
Salt to taste
Turmeric - 1tsp
Red Chilli powder - 1tsp
Chat masala - 1tsp
Juice of one lemon

Procedure:
1. In a wok heat up olive oil, add in peanuts and ginger, sauté a bit and then add onions and celery. Sauté this till onions become translucent. Now add tomatoes and green chillies and sauté till it blends in.

2. Add in the parboiled vegetables, sauté for a minute and then add the legumes.

3. Now add in the quinoa and all the masalas and give it a fine stir. Finally add in the dill leaves and lemon juice and give it a quick mix.

4. Finally garnish with coriander and serve.

This will guarantee you a guilt-free and a yummy indulgence!

On poop duty!

And loving every stinky bit of it. Motherhood, I have realized, is something that's got to be experienced to understand what it exactly means!

Right now my life totally revolves only around my baby boy... Mushki! He is, as the cliche goes, the apple of my eye! There is not one moment that goes by without him in my thoughts, it's like he is sitting in my brain all the time... Not that I am complaining. For me any moment without him around is a moment in my life being wasted.

Like any other normal mother, I do have pouts of anger and frustration running in my blood every time he cries or the constant attention he craves for... But that's the part and package of the deal :).

A lot of mothers/people as such advice on how to bring up my child or how to hold him or blah blah blah.... To all those... Thanks so much, I do appreciate it but I am the person who held him inside me for 9 months and so, I am very well aware of so many things myself.. Maternal instinct is just not a word, it means something too...

Parenthood is a learning process involving lots of trials and errors but its definitely fun, we enjoy his company and he has brought us all together in every true sense. And the patience levels that I have developed, thanks to him, is to be seen to be believed... Phew!

Oh well, I can just go on and on about how things are going along but oops.. poop duty calls... :)