Tomato Cucumber Feta Salad

One of my favorite salads (of which there are few) is the Greek Salad at Panera Bread. I want to start eating more salads to lose some weight and eat more healthy and one of the salads I came across was a Tomato Cucumber Salad. I made some modifications to it based on what's at home and made a Tomato Cucumber Feta salad with a vinaigrette dressing. It was awesome and I just loved it.

Here's what I did:

Ingredients:

2 cucumbers, peeled, seeded and chopped
2 Tomatoes, seeded and chopped
2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons of olive oil
Salt
Pepper
3 oz Feta Cheese, crumbled
a few sprigs of flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Directions:

1. Peel and take out the seeds from the cucumbers. Then chop them up into small chunks.
2. Cut the tomatoes and remove the seeds. Then chop them up into small chunks. 
3. Finely chop and add the flat-leaf parsley.
4. Make the dressing by adding olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt & pepper and mixing it up. Add this to the cucumbers and tomatoes and toss to coat.  
5. Crumble the cheese on top. You can mix it up to coat the cheese or leave it on top.  

What I've Been Reading

Chip-Enabled Credit Cards are Coming: What You Need to Know :- Recently, I got one of my first credit cards replaced by one with a chip. This article was an easy read to know what's it's all about.

The Exhausting Shadow Work of Being a Modern Wife :- Interesting article!

Which Supermarket Truly Has the Best Deals :- As expected, Costco comes in at the cheapest overall for most of the items with Trader Joe's and Target coming in next. To no one's surprise, Whole Foods came in at most expensive. Of course, one single place may not make sense for buying everything and you can read through this article and decide for yourself.

What I've Been Reading Lately

Money mistakes in your 30s :- I'm in my early 30's and I'm guilty of at least half of the items on this list. I do spend too much money on my daughter and we have bought more house than we really need. Also, while we do save money, we are not really saving for my daughter's college.

How To Break Free Of Emotional Eating :- One of my goals is to lose weight this year and I'm finding this particularly hard. One of the reasons is because of emotional eating. One of the other reasons I overeat is also when I'm bored at work. Now that spring is almost here, I'm hoping to start going for daily walks - hopefully, that should help.

Immunity Boosting Meal Suggestions for Kids

My daughter hates veggies and is very choosy about the food she eates. She just recovered from a long-lasting low-grade fever that lasted for more than a week.

So I want to give her some foods that increase her immunity but which she will eat. I came across this article on WhatToExpect.com on immunity boosting foods. Here's what I got from the article.

Main foods to aim for seem to be foods rich in Vitamin A, Vitamin C, food which has live cultures, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, antioxidants, Omega-3 fatty acids and Zinc. But how to get these foods inside them? Here are some suggestions from the article.

Suggestions on how to serve:

• Steamed baby carrots or broccoli
• Mashed sweet potatoes with some maple syrup if they need the sweetness
• Fruit based smoothie with spinach or kale and tablespoon of flax oil
• Greek yoghurt & serve with granola, fruit, nuts or honey
• Oatmeal with cinnamon and honey
• Whole grain toast with jam and nut butter
• Yoghurt with berries and walnuts on top
• Chicken noodle soup
• All-natural Almond butter on apple slices
• Peanut-butter and jelly sandwich

(Disclaimer: This post is just what I got this article. All credit goes to the author of the original article.)

Fell off the wagon yesterday

Yesterday was a bad day in terms of my diet but I learned something.

I got around 6 hours of sleep the night before and so, was a little bit grumpy. Also, some things happened at work which made my mood worse and I was in a bad mood. I did go for my walk but when I got back, I was still in a bad mood and my sweet cravings hit me again. I caved and ate a bag of chocolate chip cookies. I was eating those cookies again after almost 10 days of resisting.

The interesting thing was I didn't feel better after eating them. In fact, I felt worse. By the time I got home, I felt nauseous.

From now on, I'm going to try to bring some fruits with me everyday to eat if I get a sweet craving.

Grocery store success trip!

Yesterday, I had my first ever grocery trip when I went with a shopping list, bought only the items on my list which was all fruits, vegetables and milk and got out. My bill came up to $25.

I was so proud!

Feeding a Picky Eater

My daughter, who is 22 months old, had a lot of food allergies when she was born. As she grew older, she outgrew a lot of them like milk and soy but still is allergic to anything in the bean family like beans, green beans, lentils.

This has made me very conscious about what I feed her. We are also vegetarians. This narrows down our options for what I feed her a lot and we are Indians as well so our diet is very different from the western diet. She goes to daycare - so what I can give to daycare for lunch and snack has to be daycare-friendly (something she can eat by herself without too much involvement by the teachers, no nuts, etc).

One of the major issues I have hitting with her diet is that she doesn't like any vegetables and she's low on protein. I was reading the article linked below on What To Expect on some tips. Here's what I took away from the article.

Make food fun:- Cut sandwiches into fun shapes (though I first need to get her into sandwiches - so far she's not liked bread much at all). Put blueberry smiles on pancakes or on top of cereal. Interactive food like food with dips where they have to dip and eat might be fun. (I tried this - carrot sticks with ranch dressing. She didn't like it at all). Get toddler involved in meal prep - like getting her to help in picking veggies in the store or letting her choose which healthy food to buy. While cooking, have her do some of the small things like stirring or adding ingredients. Make small portions of food - like mini pancakes or mini muffins.

Sneak in nutrients:- This is where I'm facing a lot of difficulty. Sneak some cauliflower into mac'n'cheese (except she doesn't like mac'n'cheese). Add shredded carrots or sweet potato to pancake batter or omelettes. ( I tried this as her daycare teacher suggested - carrots in omelettes. It worked. ) And fruits are good too - if she likes fruits, let her have them. Her daycare teacher suggested making muffins with veggies and see if that works. She said she'd get me the receipe from her mother.

Be a good model:- Toddlers mimic mom & dad. So we need to eat better, at the table and eat a lot of veggies for dinner. Avoid junk food.

Let them choose:- Let her choose what to eat. Give her 2 healthy options and once she's picked one, stick with it. She'll eat if she's hungry. Don't force your toddler to eat.

Feeding a Picky Eater

Saving time in the kitchen - Chapattis Part 2

So, to continue on my with Chapattis story, (Part 1 over here), I made some dough and put it in the freezer. I took it today morning, thinking to thaw it and use it immediately. Unfortunately, even though I waited for it to thaw for 2 hours, it didn't thaw enough for me to make it.

I then put in the fridge overnight and then used it the next day evening. I waited for some time and then started rolling it out. While the temperature of the dough was still on the cold side, I was able to roll it out but I had to fight with the dough a bit. To make the dough easier to roll, I think I may have to wait for it to completely come to room temperature next time.

The chapattis, after I fried on the tava or frying pan, were ok but a litte on the thick side since I wasn't able to roll it completely thinner.

Lessons learned: Put the dough from the freezer in the refrigerator overnight or at least for 5-8 hours before using it. Wait for it to come to room temperature before rolling it out.

Saving Time in the Kitchen - Chapattis Part 1

I've been experimenting recently with trying to save time while making chapattis at home. Chapatti is an unleavened flat bread (also known as roti) from Nepal, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. I make it at home all the time and it's a integral part of the Indian diet. It's made of whole grain wheat flour. Here are some of the things I've tried and am planning to try to make life easier for myself. 

Making the dough: Make the dough using the stand mixer. This saves me a ton of time and energy. This is the recipe I use which I got from my sister. 


Chapattis

Ingredients: 

2 cups whole grain finely ground wheat flour (available in most South Asian stores)
1 tbsp milk
1 tbsp olive oil
pinch of salt
1 cup warm water 

Preparation:

1. Put all the ingredients except the water in the bowl. Start the mixer on low and add about half the water and let the flour mix well with all the ingredients. 
2. After they are all mixed well, keep an eye on the dough and see if it starts to come together. Add more water in small amounts and wait and see if the dough has become one big ball. 
3. When it looks like it's become one big ball, stop the mixer and touch the dough to see if it's sticking to the hand. If it's sticking, then too much water has been added. Add some more flour and mix again till the dough doesn't stick to the hand very badly - a little sticky is OK. 
4. Now cover dough with a wet cloth, napkin or paper towel and wait for 30 mins. Then use it immediately for making chapattis or put in fridge or freezer. 
5. To make chapattis, take a small piece of the rough and make it into a ball. Use a flat surface and dust some flour on it and using rolling pin, roll the ball out in the shape of a tortilla. If the ball starts to stick to the rolling pin, dust it with some more flour and continue rolling it out till it's thin and round like a tortilla. 
6. Now put it on a hot pan and let it cook till it rises. When it does, flip it over and let it cook on both sides.  

I've heard that chapattis when frozen don't keep fermenting but that it continues to ferment at a slower pace it is kept in the fridge. I experimented with that by making the dough and rolling it out. I put the rolled out dough onto cling wrap sheets so it doesn't get exposed to air and put it in the fridge. When I used it the next day, it didn't taste as good or look as good as freshly rolled out dough. So that experiment didn't work out so well.

My next experiment is to make the dough and freeze part of the dough for later use and see how that dough looks and tastes.

Mexican food does not agree with me

Normally, I like to eat mexican food or american mexican food, anyway. Eating a veggie burrito bowl at Chipotle is one of my favorite things to do.

However, ever since I got pregnant, I've realized that I can't do that anymore. I first tried to eat at Chipotle in the first trimester. I had such a bad case of gas that I did not eat any mexican food for a long time.

Now that I'm in the middle of my 2nd trimester, I thought I'd take another shot at it yesterday since there was a new Chipotle near my office. Boy, oh, boy - was that a mistake!! I was mostly fine yesterday but since today morning, I have had a very bad case of heartburn and acid reflux.

I've learned my lesson - no more mexican food for the rest of this pregnancy!