Garam Masala Tuesdays: Punjabi Rajma

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Punjabi rajma | The Novice Housewife

 

Happy New Year everyone. Hope 2016 is treating you well so far.

I am not making any resolutions this year. They are always about weight loss- and clearly if I keep making them the beginning of every year, I am not doing a good job at keeping them.

The only thing I am resolving to do this year is to try and be more regular with blogging, and with GMT. And even though I am not posting a new recipe today for GMT, I have updated the punjabi rajma/ red kidney bean recipe that I posted the first year I started the blog.

Over the years, I made a few modifications to the original rajma recipe, and thought an update was required. I have noted the changes in the original post. I have updated the post with newer photographs and also added a printable version of the recipe. I have included a slow cooker variant to the recipe as well. Its not a throw everything in the slow cooker recipe like my dal makhani recipe– but it does solve my problem of not using the pressure cooker. You still need to cook the masala, but you can freeze it. You can make the masala on a weekend and freeze it. For a weeknight meal, just throw the 10 minute boiled kidney beans and the masala in the slow cooker and let it cook on low while you attend work during the day. By dinner you will have the rajma ready.

It is fun revisiting old posts and I loved reading about what I had written about my relationship with my best friend B. She celebrated her birthday few days back and now has a kid who just started pre-school. I don’t think she has ever been that nervous about anything. I still can’t believe she is a mother now.

You can find more about B and all the changes in the original post here.

Happy cooking!

Warm Goat Cheese Salad and the Top 5 posts in 2015

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Warm Goat Cheese Salad with walnuts and pear

The last post of 2015 and I am ending it with a recipe for this warm goat cheese salad. The warm breaded goat cheese is perfect for the cold weather and the salad leaves with the homemade dressing make the dish light and a perfect way to get your greens in.

2015 was pretty uneventful with respect to blogging. I posted only 17 times, out of which 8 posts were on Tuesdays (mostly, GMTs).

Though the blog was inactive, I was busy with my new baking venture The Pink CakeBox in Chandigarh, India. TPC was one of my best experiences, but it did come with its share of stressful moments. Each cake, each request, each delivery taught me something new and despite the struggles, I am glad I took a step towards my dream. I had to leave it mid-way but I hope to revive it again in some form or the other soon. Till then, and even after I do, I plan to keep this blog as one of my top priorities.

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The Novice Housewife gave me an identity and it helped me gain the confidence to tap into my passion for baking and open TPC. So even though 2015 saw me absent for the most time from the blogging scene, I will make sure in 2016 I am more present and dedicated to this space.

As a goodbye to 2015, I thought of sharing the top 5 posts that were most visited in 2015

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Book Review: Green Smoothies By Fern Green and my seven day detox

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green smoothies

Posting about a green smoothies book or a detox just before Christmas might not seem right, but you would surely appreciate this information post all the holiday binging and while making your 2016 new year resolutions that revolve on healthier eating.

The first thing you notice when you look at the Green Smoothies book is how clean it is- in its photography, recipe writing and overall look. Given that it is for someone who aims for clean eating, its a good first impression.

Before receiving this book, V and I had invested in a Vitamix (we narrowed on this one and love it) and had been drinking a green smoothie everyday. We had the WholeFood book that came with the Vitamix, and I had been trying the recipes in that book alternating with a glowing green smoothie recipe that V had given me. While the WholeFood smoothie book has a great variety of smoothie recipes, all of them are not green or vegan or necessarily good if weight loss is your prime concern.

Seven Day Detox | The Novice Housewife

The recipes in Green Smoothies by Fern Green are all raw and full of vitamins and minerals. After each recipe the author highlights the benefits of the smoothie. I really liked the notes on the benefits, so when I drank a particular smoothie I knew whether it was immunizing, skin enhancing, detoxifying, blood nourishing, fat flushing or muscle and bone building. There are a total of 66 recipes in the book.

Impressed with all that the author had to say and the nutrients each smoothie of the 7-day detox would bring to my diet, I decided to give the detox try and tried 14 different recipes in the book over a span of a week. Some were less palatable, but not too bad that I had to struggle with them. Most of them tasted nice. And I liked the fact that I knew what each juice or smoothie was doing to my body.

If your goal is to include more smoothies in your life, or to strive for cleaner eating, or to include more nutrients in your diet I would highly recommend this book. The book releases on December 29th, 2015 and you can order it through Amazon by following this link.

I am sharing one of my favorite recipes from the book and the detox. The Beetroot Beauty. This was my breakfast on Day 6, and has half the recommended daily intake of vitamin C, while being fat flushing, detoxifying and skin cleansing.

Beetroot Beauty
 
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A fat flushing, detoxifying and skin cleansing juice.
Author:
Recipe type: Juice, raw, vegan
Serves: 1
Ingredients
  • 1 pomegranate
  • 2 beets
  • a bunch of red grapes
  • a squeeze of lemon
Instructions
  1. Cut and deseed the pomegranate and juice it. Juice the rest of the ingredients except the lemon.
  2. Squeeze in the lemon and stir. our juice is ready.
  1. If you do not have a juicer, blend all the ingredients except the lemon juice in a blender. Once blended strain the mixture into a glass using either a very fine tea stainer or using nut milk bags. Add the juice to the strained juice. And drink
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Seven Day Detox | The Novice Housewife

So what’s my take on the detox?

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