Rainy sunday and yummy pulav

It's been raining in our part of the world all weekend. Usually on weekends, I feel this need to plan for the morning and make sure we take KB out to the park where he can run around and play freely. If we go on weekdays, I have to hold KG and run behind him to make sure he doesn't fall from the slide or some such thing (invariably he runs under some slide structure or falls from one when I am holding her or cannot run under something!). This weekend in a way was more relaxed for me since it was raining and we decided to just take it easy and not go out anywhere in the morning unless it stopped raining.

I gave KB his breakfast and then had mine, fed KG and then started cooking. Decided to make vegetable pulav and raita. I had my MIL's recipe for pulav which always turns out well. While I was cooking, KB had a great time playing in the new school bus tent along with B. He pretended to be driving B to the shop for groceries in his school bus. KB and our neighbor's daughter had a rollicking time playing in this tent on Saturday morning.

After feeding KB his lunch, we ate our lunch. We enjoyed the pulav so much (thanks to my MIL's recipe) that I decided to post the recipe here. After lunch, suddenly the sun was out and it had stopped raining. But we only had about 45 min before KB and KG's afternoon nap time. So we decided to go to the local library. It was so relaxing - KB and I walked to the Children's section, B and KG wandered off into some other non fiction area that he wanted to check out. KB sat on the table like one of the big kids there and pretended to read a book. He then got down and came to the shelf I was at and put the book back, got another book, went back to the table and continued to read.

We got back home and both KB and KG fell asleep in no time. B and I had tea and chatted for a short while. B normally doesn't eat white rice (has cracked wheat) - on days he has pulav he feels this need for a nice afternoon nap. He napped while I spent a little while looking at a couple of blogs, posting responses etc. B came upstairs and downloaded some photos from the camera into the computer - so of course we had fun admiring our own kids in their different moods in the photos. KB woke up early from his nap. Back to duties - feeding the kids/changing the kids/getting some basic dinner ready etc until 6.30pm. We then took the kids out to shop for a larger area rug for the living room. KB had a great time running around at the store and just to make such a relaxing and lovely day even more perfect, he ate his meal peacefully and quickly without any fuss. Some days are just cozy and fun no matter what the weather is outside!

Here is the Pulav recipe and a picture of KB enjoying his new tent!

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1)
Dhania - 3 teaspoons
Black pepper - 3
Cinnamon sticks - 4 or 5 small thin ones (I just took one full long one and crushed a few flakes into the mix - didn't want too strong a flavor).
Cloves - 4 or 5
Jeera - 1/4 tea spoon
Red Chilly - 1
Elaichi - 4 (open and crush seeds).

Fry these in little oil.
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2)
Add:
Grated Coconut - 4tbl spoons
Green chillies - 3 or 4
Coriander - lots
Garlic pods - 2 chopped fine
Ginger - 1 piece
Onion (medium size) - half onion, chopped fine.
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Blend (1) and (2) to paste. Quickly sautee the paste in about 4 tea spoons of oil.
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Add cooked Basmati rice (I cook the rice separately and boil the vegetables separately - all parallel processing - not really hard) and cooked vegetables to the paste (after the raw smell goes away from the sauteeing) and mix it well.
Vegetables I generally use - Potato, carrot, beans, Valore Lilva (not sure what it is called - we get it frozen at the Indian store), peas.
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Cracked wheat pulav:

I make cracked wheat pulav or pulav with brown basmati rice (lower glycemic index - for those worried about sugar/weight/cholesterol etc) if I just want to make a quick pulav with a lot of vegetables.
Since dotmom had asked me how I cook the cracked wheat - I thought I will post that recipe here too.
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Buy cracked wheat – light bulgur or the cracked wheat (No 2)avail at the Indian store.

Need cauiliflower (half, cut into florets), potatoes (1 or 2 small, peel skin, chop into big cubes), onion (one small, medium size pieces), a bunch of coriander leaves finely chopped and green chillies, 3 or 4 cut into half. Mint leaves too if u want. and beans, radish etc if u have/want.. just any veggies you add for pulav is fine.

Heat oil. Add 4 or 5 cloves, lil cinnamon, one bay leaf and two cardamoms (open). Then add onions and sautee for a min. To this add a dash of black pepper (if you have the pepper mill, fresh grind, if not pepper powder). (If you happen to have the MTR Pulav powder, you can add a teaspoon of that too).


To this add the cauli,aloo,green chillies, coriander. mix well and let it cook for just 1 min. add salt.

Add 3/4 coffee mug (or a full mug) of toasted cracked wheat to this and mix well with the oil and veggies.

Transfer the whole thing to a pressure cooker vessel and add 2.5 times (the amt of cracked wheat) water.
Pressure cook to only 3 whistles like for rice.

If you don't want to use the cooker, you can add water to the same pan and keep it covered and cook on low for half an hour. (I prefer this until I kind of get an idea of how much water works for that particular brand of cracked wheat).

Amt of water needed may vary depending on the wheat. This is a watered down version - but since it does not have coconut or too much masala stuff (no blending also) - it is a healthier/lighter version of the other pulav.