Sprouts Salad, Dates Milkshake & Ginger Tea

I have become tired of making the excuses again and again that I'm busy and that my kid is sick and all that. What to do? That's what is going on and on like a cycle. Anyway, I just wanted to be a part of a few events going around in the blogsphere. So, please bear with me gals for posting everything just like that without organizing it.

Our fellow blogger "Easy Crafts" who owns a great blog "Simple Indian Cooking" has launced a new event called "Powerless cooking". I glad that came up with this, as I have also wondered what would happen if there is a total power shutdown for a few days and what we would be cooking during those times. Anyway, my contribution to this event is Mungbean sprouts salad. Nothing fancy just simple and easy to make.

I wish to send the same to "Vegan Ventures" hosted by Suganya of Tasty Palettes. I'm not that familiar with this vegan cooking yet, so here goes my entry.

Sprouts Salad:

Ingredients:
Green moong dal- 1 cup (sprouted)
carrot- grated
green chillies- 1 1 /2 (minced)
red onions- 1 tbsp (fine pieces)
corriander leaves- 2 tbsp
peanuts- 1 tbsp (broken)
salt- as reqd
lemon juice- 1 tbsp

The other ingredients you can add to this are: Finely chopped boiled potatoes, cucumber, corn, tomatoes, yogurt, corriander-mint chutney, sweet tamarind sauce. Keep your mind open and try out anything else listed above.

Procedure:
Soak mung beans overnight. Drain the water and keep it wrapped in a wet towel. Then close it with a vessel and leave it aside for one full day. The next day the mung beans would sprout beautifully. I do not like to eat it raw, so I partially steam it. You can skip this step if you want to. Anyhow, this is the way I make it.

I add steamed sprouts to the rest of the ingredients and mix well. You can add yogurt too but I'm skipping that as I going to send the same to the 'Vegan' event too.

Date's Milk Shake:

I'm going to send this to Chandrika of Akshyapatra who is hosting AFAM: Dates. Milkshakes are always my favorite especially this one which my mom used to prepare during my school and college days. I would devour this in a flash b'coz my mom would say that helps in hair growth due to the iron content in it. But I don't think it helped me at all. You should see my head now (almost bald). Anyway, the taste is really good. Try it for yourself and you'll see.

Ingredients:
Chopped Dates- 1 cup
sugar- as per taste
chopped pistachios- 2 tbsp
milk- 3 cups

Procedure:
Boil milk and after sometime bring to a simmer, add dates and cook till soft (5 to 8 mins) in a low flame. Cool this and reserve a few tbsp of pulp aside. Blend the rest with milk and sugar. You can make it thinner or thicker depending upon the amount of milk you use. Finally mix in the pulp and nuts. Give a good stir and serve it chilled .



Finally, it is GINGER TEA:

This is for the the "Think spice... Think... Ginger" event hosted by Sunita of Sunita's World. Initially, I was wondering if this would be apt to send it for the event but, after seeing the same at Nags's blog I decided to post the same . So, here is a refreshing cup of ginger tea with some Banana bread.

Ingredients:
Milk- 1 cup
taj mahal tea leaves- 1 1/4 tsp
water- 1/4 cup
ginger- 1 1/2 " (grated)
cardamom- 1 (broken)
sugar- as reqd

Procedure:
Boil water with tea leaves. cardamom and ginger for 5 minutes. Then add milk and bring it to another boil. Add required sugar and mix well. Filter this and serve this steaming cup of hot ginger tea for a refreshing morning.

(This is B's fav cup ,but this is the quantity he drinks. So, I couldn't get a good pic at all. Sorry guys, bear with me.)