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Spinach is a dark green leafy vegetable that has smooth leaves that is generally cooked but is also eaten raw in the form of salads. Spinach is first believed to have been found in the diets of ancient Persians, but it was also naturally found to be grown in many parts of Asia. It was originally believed to be a winter plant, but now spinach is available throughout the year. Although the winter varieties of Spinach are known to have darker and larger leaves. It is also generally recommended that one avoids spinach during the monsoon seasons in India, as the leafs tend to carry a lot of ground water. Spinach is said to have a bitter sweet flavor and hence many times, the large varieties of spinach are most of eaten in the cooked form.

Natives names:  Hindi (Palak), Tamil (Keerai)

Spinach is low in calories and packed with numerous vitamins, minerals and beneficial phytonutrients making spinach rank at the top of the superfood list. We’ve already introduced how to make juicing a simple and essential part of your daily diet. Nutrition aside, juicing vegetables and fruits make for very filling and balanced meals, without having to count the calories and carbs. Smaller meals like breakfast, brunch or teatime can easily accommodate juices for a tasty and refreshing inclusion.

It’s common to think of fresh fruit when we think of juice, but the benefits of juicing vegetables are undeniable. The Green Juice is now an increasingly common fitness drink. While many of you who aren’t fond of spinach may turn your face away, there are some benefits which make it worth including it in your diet once in a while.

Salad is the first thing that comes to our mind when we think healthy food. It’s everybody’s go to when they’re headed down the road to good health. But you must understand that not every salad is a healthy salad, especially if you load it with creamy dressings, fat-rich meats, and hidden sugars in the form of bottled dressings – all to make the bowl of greens and raw vegetables palatable!

The bad news is that all salads are not healthy. But the good news is that healthy salads don’t have to be boring and unappetizing. Not if you follow our 4 steps to build that bountiful and wholesome salad.

Fenugreek is the native to western Asia and southeastern Europe, it has a long history of culinary and medicinal use. Fresh leaves of fenugreek have strong aroma and taste mildly pungent. While the dried seeds has much strong aroma and flavor to them. The robust herb has light green leaves, the fenugreek seeds are hard in texture and yellowish in color tone. India is one of the major producers and exporters of fenugreek.

Natives names: Hindi (Methi), Kannada (Menthya), Tamil (Vendayam or Venthiyam)

Benefits of Eating Multicolored Fruits And Vegetables is something we have heard about, but many of us are unaware of the colors of the fruits and vegetables and the benefits they provide our health. So how does one go about choosing the right fruits and vegetables?  Read on...

Recent research strongly believes that Punica Granatum, or what we call pomegranates, have what it takes to be the next superfruit. Why? Well, to begin with it is one of those wonderful fruits loaded with a nutrients and compounds known to have healthful benefits. Rich in antioxidants (chemicals that inhibit the activity of cancer-causing chemicals called free radicals) and phytochemicals (naturally occurring chemicals that are known to have anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties), apart from the obvious benefits like fruit fibres and natural sugars, it also is a good source of vitamin C (a single fruit can provide about 17% per 100g of the daily requirement), vitamin B complex group, folates, pyridoxine and vitamin K, and minerals like calcium, copper, potassium, and manganese.

The direct health benefits of these range from small things like building immunity to larger ones like fighting heart disease and some kinds of cancer. Here are 5 reasons (of many more) why you should include more of this power-packed fruit in your regular diet.

Mango is the pulpy and sweet tropical fruit native to India and Southeast Asia. The mango fruit is called as King Of Fruits because of its nutritional benefits and versatile uses. Did you know every part of the mango tree is utilized in some way or the other? Mangoes are generally sweet, although the taste and texture of the flesh vary across different geographical locations, some have a soft, pulpy texture while others are firmer and some may have a fibrous texture. The season of Mango in Indian subcontinent is usually from early April till August and there are a number of varieties. Most popular types of mangoes in India are Alphonsos, Badami, Chausa, Banganapalli, Kesar, Sinduri, Totapuri, Safeda, Kalmi, Neelam, Langda and Dasheri and many many more which are completely region specific.

We have heard that Nuts are the Best Brain Food. Let's find out why! We’re constantly worrying about feeding our bodies well, getting the right balance of nutrients, managing calories and making sure our food is as healthy as it is tasty. But what about food for the brain? Like every other organ, the brain too needs to be fueled right in order to function well. 

Win A Hamilton Beach 12 Cup Espresso Maker - Enter For Free Now! For all the coffee drinkers and aficionados who despise the long café lines, dread the overwhelming coffee options or need a fix for those early morning caffeine pains – fear no more! There's finally an affordable, low-maintenance coffee maker that can brew a basic or premium roast coffee in a fraction of the time and cost as the coffeehouse: The 2-Way Brewer that you can WIN!! 

Archana's Kitchen in Collaboration with ShopAlike.In is giving away a Hamilton Beach 12 Cup Expresso Maker, so you can whizz up your coffee in minutes for the mornings. 

Are you choosing recipes to dish out dishes or to dish out health? Recipes are much more than combining a bunch of ingredients on a cook top. Recipes are indispensable and delicious ways to bring together the rich array of nutrients found in ingredients and pack them with a healthy punch. Recipes help transform ingredients using methods like kneading, roasting, stir-frying, steaming simmering and baking into to irresistible mouth watering dishes with textures, flavors, and aromas. It would be impossible make the tough textures of protein ingredients like paneer or cottage cheese and legumes melt in your mouth if it weren't for recipes and their cooking methods.  

The Cinnamon is the native spice of Sri Lanka and later in the 18th-century cinnamon plantation began in Java, India and the Seychelles. Cinnamon is the bark of an evergreen tree of the laurel family. Like its cousin cassia, cinnamon consists of layers of dried pieces of the inner bark of branches and young shoots from the evergreen tree. The spice has a warm, sweet, woody, intense aroma to it.

Orange trees are the most cultivated fruit trees in the world. Oranges are a popular fruit because of their natural sweetness, the wide variety of types and diversity of uses - from juices and marmalades to face masks and candied orange slices. Due to their availability in the market all round the year, oranges are the most common citrus fruits consumed in India.

Natives names:  Hindi (Narangi), Tamil (Naaram), Kannada (Kittale)

The pomegranate is a fruit-bearing small, deciduous tree or more like a shrub, the fruit is large, beige and red skinned protected. The tree is the native from Iran to the Himalayas, it has been cultivated all around the world since ancient times. The pomegranate pearls are fleshy, sweet, acidic with a refreshing sharpness. 

The arrival of Spring brings festivities into the air. And when the festival of colors (Holi) is around the corner, one can't help but think about fun with family and friends with lots of food and drinks. Planning a party when you have a lot of friends and family over, it is important to start your planning and organization way in advance.  

These foods may differ from one region of India and even from one home to another home. And below we are excited to share a few menu ideas that can help you plan your Holi Party.  Planning helps to ensure you and your guests have a great time.

Jala Neti is a nasal cleansing technique that cleans the nasal and sinus passages. When seasons change, there are some parts of the body that react faster to the change and one of them is the nasal passage and throat. With these seasonal changes, we are eclipsed by the itchy eyes, sneezing, and congestion and other allergies.

Juice isn’t a complicated or new concept for any one of us. We’ve probably been drinking good old juice long before it became a jargonized, complex food trend. Raw, cold-pressed, unpasteurized, vegan, gluten-free, pulpy – it’s time to cut the complexity and get down to juicing, plain and simple.

It’s probably one of the easiest ways to increase your fruit and vegetable intake, through a healthy, refreshing way. Of course, when we say juice we don’t mean the sugar, preservative and chemical-loaded tetra packs that line your supermarket shelves. We mean the freshly pressed, homemade variety that gives you so much control over what you add to it, boosting nutritive value up the way you want to.

It’s the beginning of a new year and we’re all ducking away from those lofty resolutions we’ve made for ourselves. But how about starting small this year, with these measured everyday habits that don’t require too much effort and can be easily incorporated in your daily life?

If you’ve ever wondered where the term breakfast originated, you’d know that it comes from “breaking the overnight fast” – which is the longest your body goes without any intake of food, on any given day. Breakfast, quite literally then, is the fuel that kick-starts your mind and body for the day ahead, fills the void that has developed in the centre of your gut after a night of peaceful digestion, and has the potential to make or break the rest of your day.

What’s better, cardio or weight training, is probably the oldest debate in the history of fitness training. And the truth is, we still don’t have an answer, one way or the other. What we do know is the undeniable benefits of both.

Hello, Home Bakers! I am happy to share with you a special contest that is created just for home bakers by KitchenAid India. For all the creations that we make and share it with friends and family or as a part of your business, we home bakers have a sense of achievement and satisfaction in what we do. 

As a child while growing up, for every seasonal cough, cold, or an indigestion that were caused due to weather changes or the food we ate, my mother always used a home remedy as a first step to treat an infection.

Now that I am a mother of two children I know the number of times the kids fall sick and treating them with medicines all the time, has not always been my first preference. I do try to make sure that I continue this practice not just for my children but for the entire family too.

Last year (2013) was my first interaction with Saffola & Vikas Khanna. It all started off as a series of shows on TV and a few food bloggers, including me had a chance to be part of the series. The experience was one of kind.

A year later, Saffola naturalized the Fit Foodie Concept and created the Saffola Fit Foodie Panel. This Fit Foodie panel is headed by Michelin starred chef, Vikas Khanna and what a delight it is to work with him and be part of the panel.

Pressure-cooking is a method of cooking in a sealed vessel that does not permit air or liquids to escape below a preset pressure. Foods are cooked much faster in pressure-cooking as it uses much less water used than boiling.

Several foods can be cooked together in the pressure cooker, either for the same amount of time or added later and timed accordingly. Manufacturers provide steamer baskets to allow more foods to be cooked together inside the pressure cooker. I have below given a few steps for cooking the more common vegetables. If you are not used to pressure-cooking method, experience will make you better at using it.

Whether it is a quinoa salad, quinoa cereal bar or quinoa cookies, the ancient “super food” seems to be popping up everywhere.  And it’s no wonder - Quinoa does have everything that you could want from grains, and so much more.  Quinoa and the obsession with its health benefits go way back. In the ancient Incan empire, from where quinoa scored its nickname ‘mother of all grains’, warriors thrived on the stamina and strength that they obtained from quinoa. They religiously followed the super–food diet. It was so vital to them that a Spanish explorer actually destroyed their quinoa fields in an attempt to undermine the Incan culture!