Easy Healthy Recipe: Red Lentil Dal

Today I want to share one of my favorite recipes with you: Red Lentil Dal! Especially during the colder seasons, I am a soup-a-holic. The Indian cuisine is one of my favorite. It has the most amazing taste cause of using wonderful spices and herbs.

Dal or Dal Bhat is a lentil dish, usually eaten with rice in southern India, Pakistan as well as Bangladesh, East India, and Nepal where Dal Bhat (literally: dal and rice) is the staple food for much of the population. Most of all, Dal is an awesome and yummy source of protein for a balanced diet.

Ingredients:

2   Cups Red Lentils
1   small Onion
2   Tbsp Cumin
3   dried Chilis
1   Tbsp Garam Masala
1   Tbsp Curcuma
2   TbspVegetable Oil or Ghee
1   can Coconut Milk
3   Garlic Cloves
Water
Soy Sauce
Salt
Ginger
Fresh coriander


- soak lentils in water for about 2 hours.
- chop the onion
- in a pot heat oil/ghee
- grind cumin, chilies, curcuma, and garam masala, and brown them in the hot oil/ghee.
- add the finely chopped onion
- add the drained lentils
- add about half of the coconut milk and about 1 cup of water


Let everything simmer and add the rest of the coconut milk and water if the Dal gets to thick.
As soon as the lentils crumble, add salt and soy sauce to taste.

You can eat your Dal as a stew, and only add some fresh coriander. Naan bread goes well with it!
Or eat it with some (brown) rice!

Enjoy!

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Cupcake Paper Angels DIY // Weekend Recap Feature

Thank you to EVERYONE who stopped by Monday! There were some great DIYs linked up. Please continue spreading the word about this awesome new weekly Linkup though - and if you would like to be my co-host, featuring this LinkUp on your blog, shoot me an e-mail: grapefruitprincess(at)web.de! 

I loved every single post, and again: it was a tough decision! My pick is a very cute DIY - just in time for some last minute Christmas (tree) decoration!

My pick for today's feature are the "Cupcake Paper Angels"

 

from Christianity Cove!

You probably noticed recently that cupcake papers are coming in vibrant colors and many patterns! 

Here’s a chance to make cute Paper Angels Christmas craft / ornaments out of them that are fun, inexpensive, and look absolutely darling on the Christmas tree!

 So come on, head over to Christianity Cove to see the DIY! 

Don't forget to leave a nice comment, and tell them Anni sent you!

Meet Christianity Cove:

Christianity Cove is the web’s #1 resource for Sunday School lesson ideas, crafts, games, activities and tips for teachers. With over 700 free Sunday School lesson articles on our blog, and 26 best-selling resources in our library of products, we’ve helped thousands of teachers around the world revitalize their Children’s Ministry programs and fill their classrooms with eager students.

Follow "Christianity Cove":

Facebook // Pinterest // Blog

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Please come back Monday and link up your Weekend related fun posts on my next
"Weekend Recap" Linkup for the chance to be featured on here!

 

Weekend Recap Feature: Simple Crochet Christmas Wreath Ornament @ Julie's Lifestyle

Thank you to EVERYONE who linked up Monday! There were a few blogs linked up, but please continue spreading the news about this awesome new weekly Linkup. Would you like to be a co-host? Just hit me up and leave a link to your blog in the comments! It will be fun working together and promoting the "Weekend Recap" together.

Again I loved every single post, and picking one post to feature today was a tough decision! This week's pick is a crochet DIY. It's pretty simple, so even beginners should be able to make it :)

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My pick for today's feature is the 

"Simple Crochet Christmas Wreath Ornament"

from Julie's Lifestyle!

Head over to Julie's blog to see the whole project! 

Don't forget to leave a nice comment, and tell her Anni sent you!

Meet Julie:

I am a wife and mother who loves cooking, crocheting, knitting, makeup, fashion, travel, and so much more.  I started this blog on November 8, 2012 by the urging of my teenage daughter.  My daughter also helped me get this blog started and I'm loving every minute of it.  I love meeting new blog friends and I hope you enjoy visiting because my blog has a little bit of everything.

Follow Julie's Lifestyle:

GFC // PINTEREST // GOOGLE+ // BLOGLOVIN  
 TWITTER // INSTAGRAM

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Please come back Monday and link up your Weekend related fun posts on my next
"Weekend Recap" Linkup for the chance to be featured on here!

  Check out my amazing sponsor:

Tomato Parmesan Chicken // Tender & Crunchy!

After sharing the Pizza Dough recipe earlier this week, I decided to share another Italian inspired dish with you. I was coming up with this one, when I didn't feel like going to the store. So all the ingredients are basically things you might find in your pantry and freezer. It turned out so good, it's one of our favorite dishes now.
I love the way the chicken turns out after a few hours in the slow cooker. But I also love a crunchy crust. This recipe is combining the best of both worlds:




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Blogger Tutorial: How To Backup Your Entire Blog On Your Computer

I don't know about you, but I need security in my life. I dig backups. I do have automatic backups of my laptop hard drives to one external hard drive, which is randomly back-upped to another external hard drive as well.  My back-up-addiction sure doesn't stop when it comes to my blog. A few fellow bloggers in one of the awesome Facebook Blogger Groups I've joined just asked how they can back up her whole blog. Since I do this at least once a month, I was sure able to help. I put together this little easy tutorial, so from now on all your Blogger blogs will be safe! Even if the super Blogger Blogspot server dies. 

It's really just a few steps. So here we go:
I guess only a few people know about the Import/Export feature in Blogger. You can access it from the "Settings" tab of your Blogger dashboard. Here are 3 screenshots I made for you, to visualize the 3 steps to save your blog:

3 clicks and a little download time. That's all it takes to create a complete backup of your blog on your hard drive. This might safe your butt when you accidentally delete some older blog post, or if Google blocks your blog due to policy violations.

If you only want to save the "Look" of your blog, and don't care about your content being lost, you can go ahead and safe the template. This is easy as well:

1. Choose "Template" in your Blogger Dashboard
2. Click the "Backup" button in the top right corner
3. Done!

This will download the full template in XML format.

If you have any more questions, feel free to hit me up and I'll do what I can to help you!

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Recipe: Pizza Dough! // No More Store Bought, Please.

I really love food blogs - but somehow I only like recipes, if they are REAL recipes. Home made stuff. Lately I see a lot of "take a box of this" or "use this and that pasta sauce". THIS is not a recipe, in my opinion. It's just putting together ready-made stuff. Especially when it comes to pizza. I have seen multiple pizza recipes of so called food bloggers lately, that start with "Buy some pizza dough - I prefer Pillsbury". Ummmmmm no. So your home made pizza will be just opening a can, putting ready-made tomato sauce on it, pepperoni, and grated cheese? Well, save some time and go straight to the frozen meal section of the grocery store next time. And please don't call it a recipe.
When we make pizza at home, we ALWAYS make our own dough. It is super easy, cheap, and trust me: it tastes DELICIOUS! This is why I want to share my go-to recipe today. Feel free to share it, pin it... Just please spread the word, so people will stop buying this ready-made crap.

And for the tomato sauce: take 1 can of diced tomatoes (plain, no salt added), 1 fresh medium sized tomato, salt, pepper, oregano, basil, and throw everything in the food processor. It tastes YUMMY! Be creative when it comes to the toppings! I love baby spinach, anchovies, onions, and bell pepper on my pizza!

What's your favorite pizza? Plain pepperoni or something fancy?

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Refreshing Summer Recipe: Cool Cucumber Soup

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Expat Problems: Getting Used To New Food

I am in the USA for almost 2 months now. It's been great living here so far. The weather in southern Arkansas is been wonderful, I enjoy spending time outside.

I do have a major problem over here though: The food. I've had 2 really bad allergy outbreaks already. I would show you guys a picture of my hand, but since I plan on talking food in this post, I'll postpone it.

The food market in Europe is way different than it is over here. Additives, GMO, colors, sugars... Most things you find in "food" in the USA are prohibited by law in the EU. 

I read labels at the grocery store, and I'm honestly shocked!! It reads like a label of a chemistry set, and it sounds nothing like something I would EAT! It's really sad, but now I do understand why my body reacts to all this poisoning stuff. If a loaf of bread is advertised being "sugar free", I don't even want to know what's inside all the other bags on the aisle. 

I can cook! I love to cook! But even ingredients you would NEVER EVER GUESS having any additives, are loaded with them. So my shopping trips to the grocery store will take a whole lot of time from now on. Reading labels is very time consuming.

I'm glad I'm used to cook from scratch. So I buy mostly fresh food, and rock the kitchen! I do need some ideas though, cause coming up with new recipes every day is challenging.

Luckily I was stumbling across a great website most recently. It's called "fitsme"! 

Fitsme provides users with the ability to browse recipe and food dishes that are tailored to fit the individuals' dietary preferences. Users are also able to auto-generate meal plans or build meal plans by hand. Our use of persistent preferences and a thumbs up, thumbs down system allows us to learn over time about the each user's cooking and purchasing habits. This, in conjunction with an intricate ingredient relationship database, gives us a competitive advantage in the food tech market. We analyze every ingredient in every recipe and adapt our intuitive Pinterest-like interface to show only dishes that fit your tastes and dietary needs.

 The interface is really user friendly! I just took this screenshot for you:

I know some of my friends are living a Vegan or Paleo lifestyle. You guys might want to check out this website, and see if it has some new yummy recipes? 

Let me know what you think!