Greetings dear readers, as always it is a pleasure for me to be here sharing with you the things I like to do and one of them is cooking. I love to be able to show you through my blog the recipes that I have prepared and that surely, you have seen them in the posts that I have done before. They are easy recipes to make and that go with the foods that we usually have at home either for breakfast, lunch or dinner, the important thing is to give a creative touch to our food so that we can break with the classic way of preparing them.

The arepa is, without a doubt, the food that is part of Venezuelan gastronomy and that has transcended our borders, being a dish capable of conquering palates and stealing hearts, because an arepa not only means a delicious meal, but also love, family, union, work and cultural identity. It is considered the Venezuelan's daily bread, since it is present at breakfast or dinner and even serves as an accompaniment to a boiled meal during lunch. It can be eaten with an endless number of fillings or alone, which is known as the "Viuda". So, there is no set time to eat an arepa, any time is ideal and, besides being delicious, they are healthy.

The arepa is made from ground corn or precooked white or yellow corn flour. They can be roasted, fried or sweet. This time, I wanted to make some nutritious arepas with P.A.N. corn flour with red quinoa, chia and sesame seeds, but to this mixture, I added three ingredients that definitely changed the flavor of the arepas and they are extremely delicious. These three ingredients are: carrot, pumpkin and beet that together with the red quinoa, chia and sesame seeds, provide us with a high nutritional value to our diet.

Before showing you the recipe, I would like to comment on the benefits of these special ingredients that the special P.A.N. flour brings, as well as those provided by carrots, pumpkin and beets.

Now, without further ado, let's get to the ingredients and the preparation of these delicious colorful arepitas.

Ingredientes/ Ingredients

• 1 Zanahoria/ 1 carrot
• 1 Remolacha/ beet
• Un pedazo pequeño de auyama/ A small piece of pumpkin
• 1 Cebolla pequeña/ 1 small onion
• Harina con quínoa, chía y ajonjolí / Flour with quinoa, chia and sesame seeds
• Sal al gusto/ Salt to taste

Para el relleno/ For the filling:

• 1 lata de atún/ can of tuna
• Queso guayanés/ Guayanese cheese
• y pimienta al gusto/ Salt and pepper to taste

Preparación/ Preparation:

First we will put in a pot with water over medium heat the pumpkin previously cut and cleaned so that it cooks. Meanwhile, we will peel the carrot and the beet to wash them and cut them into medium-sized cubes.

Once the pumpkin is ready, that is to say, that it is soft, we place it together with the carrot in the blender with a little salt and water, we proceed to blend. The juice that we will get, we are going to put it aside in a big cup. Then, we wash the blender to do the same procedure with the beet and we place it in another cup so that it stays like this:

Once the pumpkin, carrots and beets are liquefied, they will serve as a base to make the dough for our arepas. First we use the mixture of pumpkin with carrot, and we are going to add little by little the flour with quinoa, chia and sesame to make a dough, not too much so that it is not hard. We will knead until the dough has a smooth consistency. Then we will do the same with the beet. We are going to mix it with the flour until we get a soft dough.

After this, we preheat a griddle or frying pan and grease it with an oiled napkin. We are going to take an amount of dough to make small balls and flatten it giving it a round shape. We put it in the frying pan to cook it. We leave it for approximately 6 minutes or until it forms a crunchy shell. Turn and cover to cook on both sides.

My grandmother used to say that when the arepas sound like a drum, they are ready hehehehe. So when our arepa is puffy and when you touch them they sound like a drum, remove them from the fire. Cover them in a cloth to keep them warm.

For the filling we chop the onion into cubes, uncover the can of tuna (to my surprise it is shaped like ground beef hehe) and mix it in a bowl with salt and pepper to taste. We chop some slices of guayanes cheese and fill our arepas.

We will have a nutritious dinner that everyone will love, because you can feel the rich flavor of the carrot with the pumpkin when you bite into the arepa, and they are very soft. In addition in the beet ones, we will be able to fully perceive its flavor with that sweet touch so light that it has, but that undoubtedly makes our palate explode, because they are very delicious and provide us with great nutrients.

This dinner is attractive for children, being a different and creative way to provide them with a rich and flavorful dinner, but above all with ingredients that are good for our health, as they contain iron which is beneficial for the formation of red blood cells (erythrocytes) and therefore, allows us to have a good hemoglobin. In addition, these foods contain fiber which is essential for the proper functioning of the digestive system, they also have calcium, phosphorus, magnesium and zinc that help strengthen bones, muscles and provide great benefits to the nervous system and our metabolism.

The important thing is to eat healthy and enjoy rich flavors. I bid you a fond farewell, until my next post.

Creditos/ Credits:

Fotos: Photos: Las tomé con mi teléfono redmi 9T/ I took them with my redmi 9T phone.

Edición y Banners/ Editing and banners: Las ediciones y los banners los he realizado a través de picsart y canva/ The editions and banners were made using picsart and canva.

Traductor/ Translator: Deepl

Nota: Si quieres tener más información sobre los beneficios de la quinoa y la chia, puedes ingresar en estos link que te dejo aquí: chia quinoa

Nota: If you want more information about the benefits of quinoa and chia, you can click here: chia quinoa