Special Mom’s blog

During the month of January I am participating in a writing challenge by writing for prompts provided by wordpress. So here is the prompt of the day!

What is your favorite meal to cook or eat?

I never had interest in cooking when I was growing up, but I can say I can make a decent meal for my family now. I cannot bake cakes or make sweets but my family eats healthy meals.

My special boy loves to cook and I teach him to cook. One of our family’s favorite dish is dosa a South Indian delicacy and a variety of it can be prepared. It is supposed to be a breakfast or an early evening food but is now popular as a dinner.

Autism exposed me to gluten free world and dosa is made from just rice (parboiled rice)and lentils and so it is gluten free. There was a period we reduced my son’s carbohydrate intake and we replaced the rice with millets or raagi. We use different kinds of lentils and make Adai or pesarattu. All these can be had with coconut, tomato chutneys or with sambhar . My family also has it with soup or the vegetable of the day. You can add onions and spices to make oothappam or can make an instant dosa with just semolina or rice flours which does have gluten. So here are my different varieties of dosas. If you have not tried please do at an Indian restaurant. Most of the restaurants do serve some good crispy ones.

This is the regular plain dosas. Restaurants serve with chutney and sambhar and you can have it boiled mashed potatoes inside called masala dosa.My Mom’s sister, my aunt Geetha chithi taught me the proportion for the batter and it has been a hit in my family and there is no going back. Thank you so much chithi.

The next one is a gluten rich dosa. Ha Ha, this is an instant dosa and bit hard to make but I have mastered it. It has semolina and all purpose flour so it is tasty and is called Rawa dosa. It can be had with onions or no onions.

My kids favorite is the tomato dosa. I add lot of tomatoes to the rice batter with no lentils. The tomatoes makes it tasty but the downside it is full of carbohydrates. You need a workout after having this one. I usually make a chutney with cilantro to look the plate more attractive.

This is called Andhra Pesarattu. It is made with green gram dhal. It is gluten free and rice free. Coconut or ginger chutney goes along with it well. A very tasty dish. Healthy one too.

The rice in the dosa is substituted with raagi or finger millet. I would call it a diet dosa and it does not taste so good. But we have got used to the taste. This is very good for dieting since you do not crave more. I serve it with soups in the morning to make it tasty.

A pizza dosa I give my younger one. Add cheese, onions and peppers anything tastes like pizza.

Here is a clipping of my special needs boy who is severely autistic making adai. Adai is full of lentils and rich in proteins and very tasty. My family does not even need a side dish somedays.

By the way there are more varieties you can make with the same batter or prepare more kinds of dosas with different flours and make these crispy treats but this is all I could come up in the short period of time. See you all tomorrow with another prompt. Hope you all virtually enjoy my dosas and I am eagerly waiting to read all other delicacies from all parts of the world.