An ayurvedic natural way to build immunity and brain power for kids.
Category: Ancient Wisdom
Collection of blogs to share the ancient wisdom from more deeper meaning to understand and inculcate the knowledge into our daily lifestyle. Unlock the science behind the rituals, samskaras, practises, and so on.
Do you know that we can make peanut butters at home easier than going to shop and buy, that too with zero added flavours, additives, artificial sweeteners or colors?
INGREDIENTS:
Peanut – 100gms Jaggery – 1 tbsp Salt – a pinch
METHOD:
Dry roast the peanuts well and allow it to cool completely. Then remove the skin. Grind the peanuts in a mixer. Initially it will turn to a powder form, then slowly it will start forming lumps. Give some rest in between and start grinding again. Make sure the jar doesn’t gets heated. In max 5 – 10 mins the lump will change to a slight creamy texture. At this stage add salt, jaggery and grind for few more mins. Now creamy peanut butter is ready. You can also add few roasted and slightly crushed peanuts to this to get a crunchy feel.
Note: If you didn’t get the creamy texture, add very cold pressed groundnut or coconut oil and grind it. 1/4 tsp of oil would be good enough.
The traditional spicy tea(black tea) which can be had post heavy meals to aid digestion or on those cold evenings once in a while. This is a Kerala style black tea infused with spices and lemon juice. Spices can be added as per our taste.
INGREDIENTS:
Water – 2 glasses Ginger – Small piece, Washed, peeled and grated Cardamom/Elaichi – 1 , crushed Clove – 1 or 2 Palm candy/Country Sugar/Nattu sakkarai – according to taste Tea leaves – a little Lemon juice- according to your taste buds
METHOD:
Boil the water and add all other ingredients. Strain and add the lemon juice. Sip it hot!
Who doesn’t love a warm spicy rasam on the cold days? The specialty of Kalyana Rasam is that it is mostly served in Thamizh Brahmin marriages. You can make this rasam along with the native rice to make it more merrier and healthier.
INGREDIENTS:
Tamarind – 1 small amla size Tomato – 4 medium size Toor Dal – 2 tbsps Salt – as required Curry Leaves Hing– a pinch Turmeric powder – 1/2 tsp Coriander Leaves – chopped
Roast the following ingredients in a tsp of ghee and grind to a powder: Coriander seeds- 2 tsp Toor Dal– 2 tsps Pepper– 1 tsp Dried Red Chilly – 1 Cumin seeds – 1/2 tsp Add this directly while grinding the powder without roasting
Soak the tamarind in water and extract the juice. Pressure cook the Toor dal and mash it well and keep it aside. Chop one tomato into small pieces. Make puree out of the remaining tomatoes.
Add the tamarind juice to a vessel along with chopped tomatoes, salt, curry leaves, turmeric powder, tomato puree and hing. Mix well and keep it on stove top and allow it to boil well till the raw smell goes off.
Add dal and mix well. Now add required amount of water to adjust the consistency and boil for few more mins. Finally add the ground powder and mix well and when the rasam starts to froth remove from flame.
Finally make a tempering using the items mentioned under to temper and add it to the rasam and garnish with chopped coriander leaf.
TIPS:
You can try rasams with Kokum Tamarind instead of regular tamarind.
If you are searching for a healthy evening snack or a home kids party dish, this would the apt one for the little ones as well as the big kids – adults!
Take cooking rice and Channa dal(kadalai parupu), wash it well and soak it for 6 hours. Then grind it to a smooth batter and allow it to ferment overnight, say 7 to 8 hours.
Before making dhokla, to the fermented batter add Lemon juice ,hing, jaggery powder, salt, turmeric powder, ginger green chilly paste (what I did is grounded these two extracted the juice and added that alone into the batter ). Mix everything well. Close this vessel and give a 10 mins resting time.
After 10 mins u can steam these and serve. Can be done in idly mould or Cake tin too. Grease the moulds well before pouring the batter.
After transferring the steamed dhoklas to the plate top it with a simple tadka (curry leaf mustard seeds sesame seeds and grated coconut) and serve it with mint chutney.
For the Mint Chutney, in a mixer grinder bowl take mint leaf, coriander leaf, ginger, garlic, green chilly, little grated coconut, salt and grind it to a smooth paste. Take this to a bowl add water and dilute if needed. Mix little juice and then serve.
Idlies always makes a perfect healthy and quick breakfast during the rush morning hours. When you pair it with some amazing yummy chutneys it would be a jackpot for your taste buds!
In a pan, add oil and add 3 chopped tomatoes, red chilies and salt. Sauté everything until mushy. First powder katti perungayam in mixer and then grind the Chutney along with the fried items and then finally make tadka..
It goes well with idly/dosa/paniyaram/curd rice.. hing gives relief from bloating and helps in good digestion.
The fun to make and munch homemade snacks is always special and mouth-watering. The aroma of each ingredients getting fried in our traditionally milled, flavoured oil cant described in words.
Lets proceed to the recipe now.
INGREDIENTS:
2 Cups of any Millet Flakes/Poha(Buy it from HLP Store)
When I tried Homemade Sathu Maavu laddoos and shared with my friends and family, I got more requests, motivation and confidence to try other varieties of laddoos. No one cannot say no to these healthy laddoos right? 🙂
This time I tried with Unpolished Whole Urad Dal which I bought from the monthly grocery shopping from HLP Store. We all know how Black Urad helps all the women to strengthen their hip region. This is one of the best dishes for the young girls who are nearing / just attained / started puberty.
Also it can be considered as the ultimate post-workout laddoo for the health conscious people! It has the right amount of minerals, energy for your body!
Here is the recipe I followed for making these yummy and healthy laddoos.
We started using Sathu maavu at our home when my grandma was feeling weak and fatigued. At the same time my sister also delivered a baby, and she was in search for food items that can give her better strength & health.
As preparing of this mavvu/powder at home itself from scratch is time consuming process (sprouting, drying, roasting and powdering), my mom started to use a store-bought famous brand. But we were not satisfied as it increased our body weight.
So, we started to make our own powder at home, and it was super food for babies & adults. As days passed, we couldn’t prepare it due to daily workload, unavailability of people and arranging good quality ingredients.
After I joined HLP community, I understood the importance of avoiding 5 whites and wanted to replace milk at home. I was eagerly waiting for this product in HLP Store, as it is the one place, we could buy trusted products.
I started to make kanji with this sattu mavvu. Sometimes I add ginger, jeera, onions, and fresh coriander leaves and it would be my first drink in the morning after having water on empty stomach. If you have 1 glass of this kanji, you will not feel hungry or fatigue until lunch. Unfortunately, my kids and husband are not very fond of this health mix.
But I wasn’t ready to compromise on their health. Being a mother, you need to learn tweaking healthy foods into whole family’s diet, understanding their taste buds and body needs too. I made laddoos out of it so that they can also enjoy Satthu as healthy snacks.
Heartful gratitude to HLP World Store for bringing this product for us. Hope all start to reap the benefits of this wonderful product.
Sharing the recipe, I followed for making the delicious laddoos. Hope you all try this and share the feedback.
Which one is more appealing White, Brown or Copper brown? Does Jaggery help in reducing Phlegm?
It is observed that when there is a problem with phlegm there appears a severe decrease of Phosphorus in the body. Whenever you experience phlegm first understand the body is lacking phosphorous. Phosphorous has a relative Arsenic. If Arsenic is not there still good as it’s a deadly poison. But when it is present in minute amount this gives strength to phosphorus as its complementary.
In olden days when people were seen suffering from phlegm they were advised to have Jaggery. Jaggery has more Phosphorus than sugar with minute amount of Arsenic which helps in easy absorption. As you all know that jaggery is made from sugar cane juice which also has Phosphorus but being in concentrated form its more and the quality of phosphorus is better in Jaggery compared to sugarcane and is easily digestible and even be given to one day old baby too. So make the habit of eating jaggery to keep the phlegm at bay.
Now question arises, which jaggery to use really as market is flooded with so many options?
In markets generally we found white, brown and copper brown. You need to understand that the more the white jaggery is the more poisonous it is .I remember 10 years back while I was making the payasam(kheer) or porridge my maid said not to use the white version as they add 1 bucket of lime to make the jaggery look white and more appealing it seems and that naturally explained how it spoiled the milk payasam.
Since Britishers invaded India we want everything in white including our food. It is said in nature whatever is more white is not considered healthy and need to be avoided probably that’s why few of you avoid the 5 whites. For example the buffalo milk is not compatible for normal people and its intended for Pahalwans and body builders whereas for us we need to use cow’s milk which is usually yellow in color.
So you have seen that sugar cane juice is not white color and its kind of green in color so how does the white color come from? The white color of the jaggery is from lime. Hence understand that white jaggery is very unhealthy. Now the question is which is the best to use then? Please be informed that the natural color of jaggery is copper color or chocolate colored one. Once the demand ceases the production of white one will also decrease and eventually people with concentrate on natural ones. This will change the supply of white ones.
Coming to sugar though they both are made from the same raw material ie sugar cane juice both have difference of culture really. One is the culture of European nations from where the table sugar originated and the other is Indian from where the jaggery was made.
What basically is the difference is the processing technique involved though the raw material is same for both. Once sugar is made that marks the end of Phosphorus content and its basically sucrose. You need Phosphorus for reducing the phlegm in your body and sugar no longer has it.
Don’t be surprised to know that most of the sugar is refined using bone char or rarely carbon granules.
In the US, sugar companies use predominantly use bone char derived from Cows as they are beef eaters. What is bone char? Bone char is made from animal bones heated at incredibly high temperature and reduced to carbon before being used in a refinery. The sugar does not actually contain bone char particles but it does come in contact with them. Refined sugar does not contain any bone particles. The bone char is used to remove impurities from sugar but does not become part of the sugar though.
I don’t want to go into the deeper aspect of chemistry to explains sugar metabolism in the body but understand that ultimately it becomes acid in the body. Whereas when Jaggery becomes digested its converted to alkali. (Base). As you know our stomach has hydrochloric acid (HCl) already and when sugar metabolism produces acid as the end product this will increase the amount of acid in the body and kidney tries to remove it but after sometime it starts entering the blood stream and eventually these acids causes arthritis in the body. So understand that how much ever you eat jaggery the end product being alkaline balances the acidity of our stomach.
Remember one more thing, it takes long time to digest food when sugar is there and the whole energy is utilized to digest it whereas if you eat jaggery it will facilitate the digestion of all other things present along in the stomach. Ultimately, the take away from this article of mine firstly is to use Jaggery in your daily routine for phlegm ideally better to opt for recipe adaptations and substitution for a hassle-free cooking.
Secondly, people who are fasting for religious reasons to abstain from using table sugars for sugar items as it might have animal bone char. Try to substitute table sugar with cane sugar powder and jaggery so you don’t endure trouble in future.
We are part of HLP.World/Store a community driven shopping project, that revives Indian indigenous traditional organic food. A project initiated exclusive by parents for parents at whatsapp holistic group.
