Testosterone & A Veggie Belly

 Most of the time I prefer to eat light and feel light(hmmm...in my dreams!) and keep away from ingesting meat but owing to the pathetic,motherly corner I am in, invariably I have to cook a non-vegetarian dish daily.

Why corner? Gosh! this younger imp of mine all of eighteen soon fails to consume vegetables!!! and being the mother who hears his pleas and the growls from his tummy...I always end up cooking some meat or the other! Hopefully, once he starts college, he will be in some corner where is is forced to compromise...Beggars can't be choosers, right ?and I will happily sit back and enjoy his trials and tribulations long distance as he narrates his journey eating greens perhaps over phone/e-mail whatever
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As of now let him enjoy the moment...so a bunch of his buddies turned up at home to watch a football match the other day and had a sleepover as well, hence I decided to treat them with a couple of my experimental delights-one being skewering some meat along with the same veggies as shown in the pic.

There was a friend who was strictly vegetarian so I went that extra mile to ensure that I marinated and cooked separately in different dishes.

 As the pic shows, I've use veggies that were available and easy to handle. I used tomatoes(cherry tomatoes preferable),cottage cheese/paneer/tofu, pears,boiled baby potatoes, zucchini yellow/green and an olive. Please feel free to use whatever you like or available at home. Dice them into chunks to fit through your skewers. Place them all(except the tofu) in a marinade of chilly garlic sauce, ketchup, pepper, two tsps. of flour/maida, vinegar,salt, lemon pepper powder,lemon juice,finely chopped spring onions and any spicy masala-I've used garam masala. Let all these veggies be immersed and left to marinate for an hour or more in the fridge until all have absorbed most of the spices in.

The tofu was tossed in some store bought classic pesto and a pinch of salt and handled separately as they would crumble easily.

 You may soak your bamboo skewers in water for half an hour, it really doesn't make much difference, there are a lot of contradictory versions whether to soak or not to...either ways they have burnt at the edges. So do as your mind tells you, no rocket science in this! and this is not a punishable act...you are cooking, just enjoy what you do, the end result are the smiles on the faces of those you feed :)

 I have not put it over a barbecue as I don't have one :) but did it on my skillet with all those ridged grooves...I call it my groovy grill. Keep turning the skewers over from time to time so that all the sides will get grilled. You may lightly rub it with a dash of honey or olive oil as you keep turning it.

Serve it like so with lemon wedges.
The boys enjoyed, had their fill, slept late and was full of gratitude when they bid farewell the next day!
For the boys who ate meat, I did skewer some chopped sausages along with the veggies!

Someday when I am not around and my imp reads this...I hope he reflects and values the existence of vegetables :) and the different culinary routes I have taken to camouflage it in the dishes he likes-like my recent post with pumpkin and corned beef, all the stuffed rotis/dosas etc

"I am a better person when I have less on my plate." Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat,Pray,Love