Light meals

Yesterday we decided to have an advance New Year's celebration dinner with my parents, leaving today free to PARTY!!! We'd had a rather filling meal at my aunt-in-law's house at lunch time, including a wonderful Black carrot halwa which I'm going to try out asap and blog about, and was totally awesome. Keeping our full stomachs in mind, mom and dad cooked up a great but light meal for us.

That included my favourite starter - salad - with mom's famous vegetable dip. This is a scrumptious dip of which no amount is enough. In fact, yesterday I got to thinking what all we could use it for, including as a sandwich spread, among other uses, or even with hot baingan pakoras. It also works well with kids who can scarf down any amount of crunchy fresh veggies or toast with this spread on it. My kids were in seventh heaven with salad, which they love, and a dahi-based dip.

Mom's famous yoghurt dip

Ingredients:

1 cup hung plain home made curd/ yoghurt

1 cup paneer, finely grated

Handful dhania( coriander) leaves, chopped fine

1-2 green chillies, chopped fine

Salt to taste

Just mix all the ingredients together and chill before serving with batons of crisp radish, daikon, carrots, baby corn, tomatoes, halved cherry tomatoes, lightly steamed broccoli and green peppers, raw yellow, orange and red bellpeppers and spring onions or leeks. Dad had also added lettuce as the base for the vegetables, marinated in apple-vinegar. Delicious!

Now that's a positively reeking-with-health type of last entry for the year. Just in time for me to go hog-wild partying tonight. See y'all next year!