Colorful Food is Appetizing!

A good mix of colors in the food I eat is always very appetizing to me. Even a simple salad made out of carrots, cucumbers (and you can add spinach, cilantro, walnuts or almonds) looks great simply due to the contrast of bright colors. That is one of the items I made today for lunch along with a lentil-rice "pie" and a stir-fry with assorted vegetables.

Carrot-cucumber salad: Washed carrots (scrub well), washed cucumbers and then peeled. Sliced both into small pieces, mixed them up in a salad bowl with some lemon juice and sprinkled salt to taste. Also added some almonds to my salad to give some crunchiness. Picture shows what is left of the salad after we ate it while waiting for the stir fry to get ready.

Stir-fried Vegetables: Will add procedure soon. This included potatoes, zuccini, red peppers with cilantro seasoning at the end. Spices used were garlic, ginger, cummin seeds and asafoetida (optional).

Lentil-rice "pie": Not really a pie, but I just shaped the rice and lentils that I had cooked to softness in a pressure cooker (with 1 tbsp butter added) into the shape of a pie. You can also make this in a crock pot but start preparing the lentils first and then add the rice in about a 1/5th into your estimated total cooking time. So if you wanted to cook lentils for 60 mins in a slow cooker, then add rinsed rice and appropriate amount water about 12 mins into cooking cycle.

A different angle

Note: usually I add 2.25 cups water per cup of dry lentils and 2 cups water per cup of brown rice. these amounts may vary with your rice/lentil type.. add less and you can add more later if needed.