Cooking from other blogs #8

It's been so long since I posted a round-up of recipes that I've tried and loved from other blogs.... Whenever I am running low on ideas or have a craving for something new, all I need to do is do a quick rundown of my bookmarked recipes or browse around to either get inspiration from or even better - get tried and trusted recipes that are sure to please my family...   So, a big thank you to all for giving me these fabulous recipes.

1) First, this is something I tried from Sailu's food blog which has some pretty amazing recipes. This Broken Wheat Spinach Pongal is very satisfying and also great to serve kids since it's a one pot complete meal... as you can see, I've added quite a bit of spinach when I made this... great with yogurt or even pickle.

2) This Bok Choy Kootu from Priya's blog is now something of a regular at our home and from me being the only one who eats bok choy (as a stir-fry), it has now become something that the entire family eats and is quick and easy to prepare for weeknight dinners as well. The only modification I make is to substitute the flax seeds with almonds since that's what I usually have in my pantry...

3) For a tasty appetizer made of soy that even my chicken loving husband liked, I'd recommend Vegan Popcorn Chicken from Soma's blog. I pretty much followed the recipe except for increasing the spices and baked them instead of deep frying... They had a lovely crunch coating and this is definitely something I'll make often.

4) I bought black cardamom from India just to try out Anita's famous Punjabi Chhole recipe and it didn't disappoint... the fresh masala powder was great and i added some jaggery too to tone down the spices a bit.... definitely a keeper of a recipe.

5) Onto the sweeter things, I tried a batch of Nandita's heathiest cookies which are made with oats, nuts, chocolate chips, bananas and coconut.... Initially I thought that only I would enjoy them (since they were the healthy kind)  but the entire family loved it and the ripe banana taste combined with coconut and the chewy texture of oats with a generous dose of chocolate chips was such a winning combination.

6) I tried these milk powder burfis from Aarthi's blog since i had pack of milk powder that I wanted to use up and it seemed really simple and easy... I just went a bit easy on the sugar (than what the recipe called for) since the milk powder was already sweet and the resulting fudge was very tasty, especially when warm and had great texture and my friends and kids loved it.

7) Also, these tasty Eggless Nutella Cookies from Treat and Trick's blog, a simple fuss free recipe using Nutella which can be whipped up in no time and results in irresistible crunchy, cookies...

8) These healthy Oats Adais from Lata akka's blog which was such a tasty twist on usual adai and the evening I made them, I had a surprise visit from friends and they loved the adai too and they weren't even big on oats - so a definite winner even if you have someone who doesn't like oats.

9) Also, Quinoa Mung dosai from Usha's veg inspirations.... a great way to get everybody to eat quinoa - even those who don't particularly have a taste for it. Unfortunately no pictures for these 2 items... will update this post when I make these next. 

I'd like to also post the picture of the breakfast I had a few days ago... it was absolutely delicious and had an avocado-tomato salad (with lemon juice, salt and pepper) and a curried hardboiled egg (no mayo) made with onions and carrots and to scoop these up, some fresh, crisp lettuce leaves and half an apple to finish off the meal.