Orange, Almond and Fennel cookies

Our vacation was almost 2 weeks ago, and I am already hoping we had another one! You know the first thing I did the day I returned to work? There were some 1500 e-mails staring at me, and my colleagues had already given me a low down on the umpteen number of items waiting for my attention! I looked for the holiday calender, and counted the number of days to the next long weekend! :-)
We were spoilt my our moms and grandmoms! I was off my usual "Eat healthy" ramble, and made sure I ate everything that is deep-fried, unhealthy and fatty. As long it tasted great, I was fine!

So coming home was a bit of a wake-up. These cookies are a healthy version - it uses whole wheat flour, and some oil. Here is the recipe - inspired from Sunita's post



2 cups whole wheat flour
3 tblsp of ground almonds
1 tsp of ground fennel seeds
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tblsp of orange zest
5 tblsp of sunflower or vegetable oil
5 tblsp of icing sugar
1/2 C of milk

Some slivered almonds, and fennel seeds for topping.
Mix together the flour, soda, almonds, icing sugar, orange zest, powdered fennel with your fingers until they resemble fine crumbs.
Mix together the milk and oil. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and tip in the milk mixture.
Fold in quickly, with a rubber spatula or fingertips, till just mixed.
Cover the bowl with a plastic wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes.
Pre-heat the oven at 180 deg c and line a baking tray.
With slightly damp hands, make 25 balls of the dough and arrange them on the tray, a little apart from each other. Flatten the balls a little with the fingertips and press an almond sliver on top. I placed fennel seeds as well - to kind of make a face, but a lot of them fell off :-(
Place the tray in the centre of the pre heated oven and bake for about 22-25 minutes or till the tops are light golden.
Cool on the tray for a couple of seconds and transfer to a rack to cool completely.

Reminder - The DMBLGIT for February 2010 is currently on. Please send me your entries Share

My beloved Citrus press

So you know about my love for a good, nutritious and healthy diet. ( I wanted to add 'fit' or 'fitness' also somewhere in the sentence, but alas I can't remember when I last worked out, so have to give it a miss for now..). Ok, so I think I am quite committed to eating and feeding my people nutritious meals. Of course my husband would argue that I use this excuse each time I am at the kitchen section at Manor gazing at the 'ultimate kitchen tool'. Haha...that would actually be quite true. I love to buy kitchen equipment making myself believe that this is just the kind of equipment I need to combat my laziness.

Anyways, so having experimented with a couple of heavy duty mixer-grinders for juices etc, I figured I am no good at it, and the Magic bullet is just what I need. But you see, it ain't good enough to juice an orange or the oh-so-nutritious grapefruit. (Of course, it's no good even at chopping onions, but we'll see to it some other time!)

So when this fabulous little (little?) equipment caught my eye, I decided to get it. A citrus press. It is not a machine - just a manual press that is quite sturdy, and the best part is that it is completely mess-free. Just halve your fruit, place it on the juicer, and press real hard. Voila, you have a fresh and refreshing glass of OJ!. Of course the juice you see in the picture here is not from the same oranges you see in the picture! We had only 2 of those 'orange' oranges left, so we used another variety which was quite yellow in colour (forget which one though). Needless to say, taking the picture took a lot longer than actually making the juice! :)
Anyways, there you have it - our latest acquisition on the road to a healthy diet. Share