VIRUNDHOMBAL

Cauliflower fry is a favorite evening snack for my son Siva. This cauliflower fry is a deep fried snack, which many of us will order as a starter in restaurants. This cauliflower fry is an easy dish to prepare, but it requires some little attention to get perfect results. The ready made mix for snacks are slowly entering in many of our kitchens for cooking easily without much effort. But it's not healthy as it includes artificial colour, preservatives and monosodium glutamate. Actually, preparing homemade snacks is very easy and healthy too.

Sambar powder - perfect homemade sambar powder with few basic ingredients in your kitchen. My mom is an expert in preparing homemade spice powders for kuzhambu varieties. This is also my mom's recipe. My mom taught me that fresh ingredients are all you need to make a good sambar powder. Plus, roasting the spices right before powdering gives the sambar powder more flavour. So  always try to use fresh spices for sambar powder.

Kuzhi Paniyaram is an easy and healthy tiffin prepared with a few basic ingredients in our kitchen.Once you have decided to prepare kuzhi paniyaram for your dinner, prepare the batter and allow it to ferment for 5 to 8  hours.  You can also ferment the batter overnight and you can prepare a healthy tiffin for your family during weekends. Makes an easy tiffin for your regular week night or weekend breakfast. It's spongy and slightly crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

Methi (Fenugreek) leaves Poriyal - simple and healthy side dish for your lunch with 5 basic ingredients. For methi leaves poriyal, there is no need to chop the greens. Just remove the leaves from the stem and wash it well for 3 to 5 times because it has more mud and sand when compared to other greens. The aroma in the kitchen was very nice when we saute the methi leaves. Methi leaves poriyal tastes good when made with fresh leaves. I recommend making it the same day, but if you have busy mornings just pluck the leaves and keep it in a ziploc bag.

Snake gourd kootu is a healthy side dish for your lunch. We have a wide variety of high water content vegetables like bottle gourd, ash gourd, snake gourd, ridge gourd etc. All these vegetables contain eighty percent water and keep you hydrated the whole day. These water content vegetables are a popular choice for kootu, sambar and thayir pachadi. Try to include any one of these vegetables weekly, twice in your regular diet.

Ven pongal - many of our favourite weekend breakfast dishes. Ven pongals are easy to prepare, but they must be prepared with proper measurements to get perfect results.

Coconut curry leaves chutney (thuvaiyal) easy and healthy thuvaiyal for your lunch with a plate of warm rice. We prepare different types of kuzhambu everyday for lunch. But sometimes it will be boring to cook or  you feel tired when you do not have energy in your body. In that situation, this quick thuvaiyal is the best one for your lunch. The thuvaiyal is mixed with the hot rice and served with appalam and sundakkai vathal. We prepare this thuvaiyal during fasting days like shasthi, kiruthikai and sathurthi. After the fasting is over, we mix the cooked rice (pacharisi sadham) with a tbsp of this curry leaves chutney  swirled with a few tablespoons of gingely oil.

White vegetable kurma - one of my favourite side dishes for idiyappam. For idiyappam or aapam i prefer kurmas which are flavoured mildly. This white vegetable is one among those categories and also it is pretty easy to make. This kurma is also good for parotta and chapathi.

Sweet Somasi is my favourite Diwali sweet. During my childhood days, my mom prepares this Somasi for Diwali and I helped her to make the pooris and the stuffing method. I enjoyed each and every part of this dish. All the hard work goes in stuffing and brushing the pooris with maida paste and it requires little patience. After preparing the somasis, the deep frying method requires very few minutes.