Saturday comfort lunch

I love butternut squash and I love one pot recipes. I soaked chickpeas for a few hours - and then put it in slow cooker overnight - with some spices - cloves, badi elaichi/ black cardamom, few cloves, black pepper and ginger. After breakfast, I added the following in a small pan on stove - one spoon of coconut oil, and jeera, and onions and tomato and some curry powder - coated the butternut squash pieces with this in the pan and then added all of this into the slow cooker. Let it cook on high for 2-3 hours. Topped it with lots of cilantro, home grown mint (:)), and 1 dollop of home made ghee! Ate it with quinoa and millet blend. Yum!! I was lucky I had all ingredients organic today. What a no hassle lunch!

 

Black sticky rice pudding (slow cooker)

Yesterday I made this for the first time and absolutely loved it! This has become my favorite dessert lately. I don't want to eat a huge portion - but a small portion almost every day!! We went to Uwwajimaya to get black glutinous rice (no other rice should be used for this recipe - I gathered from the blogs)
The recipe is simple - Take 1.5 cups of rice and 4 cups of water. Boil it for 2 min on stove - and then add 0.5 cup coconut sugar and 1 tbsp vanilla extract - pour it in the slow cooker - 4 hours on high - or 8 on low. I did try to stir 2-3 times - mostly because I was too excited. Add 0.75 cup of coconut milk in the end. You can top it with toasted coconut if you have it handy.
The dish came out pretty authentic - and I took it to my son's school's potluck - and it got all used up :) I have a feeling I will take this to a lot more potlucks, and I will stop making a one dish order to go in thai restaurants for my cravings ;)

Home made organic ghee - slow cooked

I looked this up online and found this on some blogs - loved how easy it is. Just find organic butter (unsalted) - a regular butter packet with 4 big cubes yielded this jar of ghee. Put the butter in the slow cooker at a setting of low - leave it for 7 hours, with the lid slightly ajar. Thats it - strain it straight into the jar using the usual strainer for chai. Jar of home made organic ghee (for a price at which you would probably get the non-organic ghee in store).

Beetroot sabzi - in slow cooker

Super healthy and exciting recipe. Chop few beet roots (4-5 medium six) into cubes. Chop some onions and one large tomato. In a pan, take one spoon of olive oil.  Add 1 dried tej patta, 3-4 cloves, 3-4 whole black pepper, add onions - let it become golden. Add about 1 inch cinnamon stick; add the chopped tomatoes and add it to the pan. Add some grated ginger. After 1-2 min, add about one cup of water (or even less than that). Put this "gravy" and the beetroots in the slow cooker. Keep it on high for 4 hours. The dish came out so good. I used mostly all organic ingredients and that must have helped too. Milosh loved it also!
I served it methi dal and quinoa/ millet mix.