Health Fitness Food

 Monsoon is the best time to grow your kitchen garden. If you can find tulsi seeds, then growing basil from seeds is fairly easy. In this short video, I show how to do so.

  Summer is the season for pickling for a majority of Indian elderly women. Ravneet Bhalla has seen her dadi and Nani, mom and mother in law choosing to preserve some fruits and vegetables for the harsh weather ahead. Pickles are healthy in the sense that they make you salivate. Guilty indulgence is of course not recommended. Last year, mom inspired me to make karele ka achaar. This time I chose to take the initiative to make bitter gourd pickle as well as mango pickle for ma. Here are my favorites posing in this frame. Karele ka achaar Aaam ka sukha achaar Aam ka gila achaar Karele ka achar is easy to make at home. I love indian pickles as they remind us of our rich culinary heritage. remember, your dadis and nanis making big batches of pickles of seasonal vegetables. that was a way to preserve food for tough times. hey did you know pickles are healthy too? yes, they make you salivate and give you an extra reason to enjoy food. now think of bitter gourd pickle and you might say who ma

 

Bread is very much a part of our dining tables. It has invaded our breakfast and snack times. but when you BUY bread, you are not actually buying a pav roti, but a potpourri of unhealthy ingredients. so why not bake a healthy bread at home with our homegrown yeast. Ravneet Bhalla loves her sourdough starter, which is almost 2.5 years old. Let's learn how to bake a healthy whole wheat bread at home, which gets 9/10 for being a healthier alternative to store-bought junk. join ravneet bhalla in this healthy hamesha journey. you will need a fresh sourdough starter - about 1/4 cup of it. if you want to learn how to make your own yeast at home, ask me in comments. add 1/4 cup of water and mix both starter and water. i love to add methi or fenugreek powder along with flaxmeal to my chapatis, parathas, and bread dough because they keep a check on your blood sugar levels post-meal.  if you don't want to add both ingredients, that wont make any difference to the taste or texture of our i

 

  How to make gluten free sourdough starter with rice flour? Let's start by mixing 2 tbsp of rice atta with 2 tbsp of water. It will look gooey. Mix until no dry flour is visible. Keep covered at room temperature with a loose lid. After 24 hours, you can see a few bubbles. That's the right start for our gluten free sourdough starter recipes. Now you will need a new glass container and stir in 2 tbsp of rice flour along with 2 tbsp of water. You will need 1 tsp of the starter from day 1. Now you might ask what to do with the rest of the discard. Well, since it is fermented rice, I choose to apply it on my hair as well as face as a mask. But mind you, dilute it with water else it might stick badly with your skin and hair. Mix the starter again until everything is blended well and rest it at room temperature again for 24 hours. The 3rd day, the starter should smell sour. It's a welcome sign. Again, each time you feed your starter, don't forget to stir it fairly well and t

 Water wastage is a cardinal sin. If you own an RO, you too are contributing to water wastage unintentionally unless you take steps to save water, which is a scarce resource. I have been using RO waste water for: washing clothes watering plants mopping floors But keeping a bucket ready and carrying it to the washroom, balcony, and terrace was a hassle. So we decided to save every single drop of RO waste water by connecting it with a storage tank. We bought a new 100-liter storage bucket that keeps the waste water. It is connected with two pipes -  one that carries the waste water from RO one that brings out the water from the storage tank into the tap, which is used for washing utensils

 There are two-three types of dried apricots available on the market: Orange Light brown Dark brown Which dried apricot is better? What colour should dried apricots be? Why are some apricots brown? Is it normal for dried apricots to be brown? Why are organic apricots brown?  Why are some dried apricots brown and some orange? What is the actual color of apricot? What is the natural color of apricots? Is it safe to eat apricots with brown spots? Is it OK to eat dried apricots? Should we soak dried apricots before eating? True, orange looks more vivid and beautiful. But is is chemically treated during preservation to preserve the fruit color. The ones that look tad darker or light brown are healthier options than orange colored dried fruit. They are naturally dried under the sun without any chemical preservatives. The healthier ones are also sweeter than the one treated with sulphur.

Can you make homemade nutella with hazelnuts? yes, hazelnuts are quite expensive but they have a dense nutrient profile. but kids may not be as willing to eat nuts as much as they love to indulge in nutella. so let's make a small batch of healthy nutella with jaggery and eliminate all preservatives, chemicals, and refined sugar from the easy nutella recipe. there are two types of hazelnuts available on the market - one with skin  other without peel I got a batch of skinless hazelnuts. so that cuts short one step in the process of making nutella.  How to make nutella at home without sugar/oil? The process begins with dry roasting 1 cup of vitamin E rich nuts for 8-10 min @ 160 deg c. if you want to toast nuts in kadahi, please do so. but do not brown them. the process will be fairly quick in an open vessel. if yours is a hazelnut batch with skin, peel off the skin after toasting. then proceed to the next step. the peel should come off easily once the nuts are roasted. pulse hazelnu