SUNDAY Breakfast Series...Upma

After the successful(ahem.....ahem) completion of 7 days Blogging Marathon by Srivalli, I was on blogging break .......... yeah...yeah...31 posts in close to 2 years is not a small achievement :))

After some extremely flattering compliments by two dear friends, I was motivated to make a resolution to blog regularly... After all everyone needs a bit of motivation, don't they :)))

In order to ensure I blog regularly, I decided to start a series of blog posts....to make it more exciting and interesting(for me at least and hopefully for the readers as well)......

Presenting the SUNDAY Breakfast Series.....

People generally tend to start their Sundays by getting up late and having a hearty breakfast or brunch as the case maybe.......

So every Monday, I will be blogging about a breakfast dish which we make for Sunday breakfast at our place.......

Today's dish is Upma.... it is basically simple comfort food for me.....

Upma at our place is my mother's specialty. Especially my grandmother was very fond of eating upma made by my mother. She would proudly say that she was never in the habit of eating breakfast every day but the day my mother would make upma for breakfast, she would make an exception and eat it. She was extremely fond of upma cooked by my mother.....

Me being me, of course i had to add carrots and green capsicum to the recipe to make it more healthy and nutritious.......

The following is my mother's receipe of Upma with a few variations done by me :))

So, here's presenting the wonderful and lovely Upma made at our home this Sunday:

UPMA

Ingredients :
Semolina / Jad rava - 2 cups
Water - 3 cups
Oil
Mustard seeds - 1/4 teaspoon
Cumin seeds - 1/4 teaspoon
Hing - 1/4 teaspoon
Turmeric powder (Haldi) -1/4 teaspoon
Green Chillies -2/3 - (or you may use one teaspoon of Red chilli powder)
Carrot - 1
Green Peas (Mutter) - 1/4 cup
Green Capsicum (Simla Mirch) - 1
Onions - 2
Tomatoes - 2
Coriander Leaves - some
Salt - as per taste
Sugar - a pinch
Ginger (grated) - 1/2 inch
Ghee (optional)
For garnishing - cashews and almonds (optional)



Method :
Heat some oil in a heavy bottom pan / kadhai.
Add Semolina / rava to oil and stir continuously.
Roast the semolina for 10 - 12 mins until it turns brown & you can smell the aroma of freshly roasted semolina.
Remove from heat.
Finely chop onions, green chillies, carrot, capsicum and tomatoes and keep them aside.
Grate 1/2 inch piece of ginger.
In a heavy bottom pan / kadhai,take 1 tablespoon of oil and let it heat.
When the oil is hot, add Add mustard seeds (rai).
When the mustard seeds begin to splutter , that's the time to add cumin seeds (jeera) and asafoetida (hing) to the pan.
Add onions into the kadhai and keep on stiring them till they become translucent.
Add turmeric powder.
Add green chilles and grated ginger.
Then, add the chopped carrot, capsicum and tomatoes.
Keep on stirring continuously.
Add water and let it boil.
Add pinch of sugar and salt to the water.
Add semolina slowly and gently to the boiling water one tablespoon at a time.
Stir to ensure that no lumps are formed.
Cover with a heavy lid and let it cook for 10 mins.
Remove from heat and garnish it with coriander leaves and serve hot.
(Almonds and cashews can be added to make upma richer)


Hope you all have a great week ahead.....

General Musings......

I started blogging because i wanted creative outlet for my thoughts and ideas... Somewhere along, I joined food blogging marathon and gradually my blog has turned into a food blog.. which is great because I really love food and cooking in general.......but I felt that somewhere along , I have missed the most important aspect of blogging.......creative writing......During a midnight philosophical chat with my cousin in States, he suggested that I enforce certain rules on myself..for every one food blog post there should be one non- food blog post......I got a bit carried away and in my exuberance excitedly said that for every food blog post I would do a book review and then maybe movie review and one general post...My cousin sagely warned me against pressurizing myself too much with such self imposed rules...So, after thinking deeply for some time (actually after thinking briefly and being too lazy for a really long time) I decided that I should stick to two post every week making it around 8 posts a month which is not much compared to some other fellow bloggers who manage to churn out two dozen wonderful blog posts a month...phew...i am tired by their number of blog posts.. ..... and to say nothing of a certain distinguished superstar of Indian film industry who blogs daily most of time burning the midnight oil in the process.. I realize that it needs a firm commitment to do that....
Anyways.....amidst all this ramblings of mine..the point is seriously getting lost....which is that I have decided to blog twice a week.... I think whenever there is a serious motivation, I tend to blog regularly...like I did not blog for months at a stretch but when I joined 7 day marathons (twice) I blogged 7 days in a row(twice) .........So I have come up with a plan to motivate myself to blog at least two posts every week......