We are not the best cooks in the world but we do whip a mean pasta once in a while. However, kitchen is not our habitual territory. But our haul of fresh Green Tokri products has us putting our thinking caps on trying new and different ways of cooking the goods.
Since we are not the odd Nigella Lawson or Gordon Ramsay of cooking so we decided to stick to recipes that are easy to assemble and didn't take much time. This ensured we played up the freshness of the vegetables to the maximum and hopefully, kitchen novices as us would appreciate fixing their healthy snacks without having to put on a chef's hat.

In the Green Tokri order, we had received a jar of amazing basil-pesto mix that we wanted to play around with. It is a great addition to our kitchen as it makes for great dip when had with bread sticks or nachos, toss it with some boiled pasta and you have delicious basil pesto pasta and simply spread some on toast or bread and voila! you have a snack. We also had an excess of the fresh, red cherry tomatoes, bell peppers and greens lying around. So we decided to make some light, summery dish of bruschetta. It's not as much a dish as an appetizer but we love it because it's not heavy on your palate, it's easy to put together and tastes so damn yummy!


For our bruschetta, we first popped into our local bakery for a baguette. Your local bakery might slice it for you if you ask or you can bring them home and slice it yourself, which I must say is somewhat therapeutic (the smell of fresh bread, the crumbly texture on your skin, the crunch of the knife cutting through the crispy outer layer.....oh yes). If you are having trouble getting your hands on a baguette, you may want to pop in to your nearest Nature's Basket. We can spend hours there. (Oh, by the way, you can also pick some Green Tokri stuff up from the Nature's Basket outlet) We have a great time shopping for ingredients, sampling cheeses and salami and buying anything other than what we were looking for. But after shoe shopping, I think browsing through a local deli might be my deal.

I digress, so after we had picked, sliced and readied our bread we got cracking on our veggies. We finely chopped the tomatoes and the colorful bell peppers and lightly tossed them with olive oil. We also grated some cheese because everything was just too healthy so we had to balance it out a bit (also because we are gluttons, a bit more inclined to the healthy but gluttons still). You'd also want some basil to throw on to the mix.


For assembling the bruschettas, we:

• Buttered the baguette slices on both sides, then applied a generous layer of Green Tokri's Basil Pesto mix
• Sprinkled a layer of grated cheese and then topped it with the chopped tomatoes-bell pepper-basil mix.
• Placed the bruschetta slices on a hot pan over the stove and let the buttered bread sizzle and warmed it till the bread slightly browned and the cheese started to bubble.
• Served the bruschetta with a dash of lemon juice for a light, citrus tang to cut in through the cheese and bring out the flavor in the tomatoes.


You can make the mix as per your liking and with your preference of tomato-to-bell pepper ratio. The Kukkad Diaries thinks it'd be rather preposterous to us be giving out cooking instructions to people and we'd rather just mention what exactly we did and you could choose to improve on that or send us tips for the same, because we'd love to improve our master-chef skills.


As far as our bruschetta was concerned, it turned out great and it made for great saturday afternoon snack. The Basil Pesto by Green Tokri tasted really fresh and delicious. Green Tokri ensures that the condiments come with no added flavors or preservatives and are healthier as they get.

We still have a bag of sun-dried tomatoes lying around that we'd like to experiment with. Watch this space for more of our experiments in the TKD kitchen!

You can grab your jar of awesome by visiting the Green Tokri website or contacting them.


You can visit Green Tokri's website and register to go through appealing list of products at www.GreenTokri.com | http://Webshop.GreenTokri.com | www.facebook.com/GreenTokri


P.S: Green Tokri also organizes farm tour of their extensive farms in Sasvad. You can visit with your family and enjoy the greenery and natural landscape of their sweeping farms as well as pick produce for yourself. The tour will help you understand the working of Green Tokri and give you a peek into the farm life. The tour is chalked for an entire day and sounds quite fun! Contact GT for more details.