Last few days, I had been coughing break free. Work was ignored, household activities mismanaged and what not due to the sickness. 2 meetings canceled and docs pending to get my attention and many reports to be designed in the coming days. Thank heavens, I am fine now. I have so many things to organize. Now that the new assignment has been started in full throttle, the time crunch is taking a monster shape day by day. So I thought to devote less time in kitchen until I speed up with the work and get on track.

So, I have no options but to depend on simple , fast, comfort foods most of the time. Sticking to what I have planned, I have Upma, Poha & simple no fuss sandwiches, or even simpler, cheese toast only in my list for next few days (or a fortnight, who knows??) for the breakfast.

Upma is just another item, ez and quick, tasty yet healthy. But due to lack of time, I did it simply with the minimal of ingredients and skipped the pain of chopping the variety of vegetables like beans, capsicum, carrot, peas etc.  So, lets cook simple Upma this time.

Time: 20 mins

Serves: 3

Ingredients:

• 1 cup rawa/suji
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 medium tomato, chopped
• 2 green chilies, finely chopped
• 1 medium potato, quartered and thinly sliced
• 1.5 tbsp. ghee (upma tastes heavenly if prepared in ghee rather than oil, but you can substitute oil here)
• a handful of peanuts
• 2 cups of water
• 2 tbsp. soaked urad daal
• chopped coriander for garnish
• salt to taste
• 1 tsp. jeera + rai
• juice of half lemon
• 1 tsp. coconut powder for garnish (optional)

Preparation:

• Heat ghee in a kadhai, meanwhile start chopping the onion, tomato and potato as directed in the ingredients list. In parallel, dry roast Suji in another pan until it turns light brown.
• When ghee is hot, splutter jeera-rai and add peanuts to fry.
• Once the peanuts are fried, add onions.
• Once the onions are light brown, add the soaked urad daal.
• After a min or so, add tomatoes and add salt. (you can add any other masala like turmeric, coriander powder at this point if you wish so)
• Once the tomatoes wilt, add potatoes and mix well. Cook covered.
• As soon as the potatoes are half cooked, add the water and bring to boil. During this process, the potato slices will cook completely.
• Now add lemon juice and stir.
• Add suji and keep stirring. Once suji absorbs the water, cover and put of low flame for 2-3 minutes.
• Serve hot topped with coconut powder along with some orange juice.
• Relish the modest bliss!!

Notes:

Skip potato and lemon if you wish. I usually roast suji in my free time and store it for upma for coming days. That saves much of time.

To speed up the preparation, I usually put oil for heating and meanwhile chop onions. Until onions are fried, I chop tomatoes, while tomatoes are cooking, I chop other requirements. Following such process takes less time to do the food.