Crafty Meals – easy recipes for healthy meals

Spiced Chicken Drumettes
Serves 4
Prep time : 10 minutes
Cooking time : 45 minutes
For conversions, click here to use our handy guide.

Ingredients
1 kilogram of chicken drumettes (these are the first, meatiest joint in a chicken wing).
1/4 cup honey.
2 teaspoons of smoked paprika.
2 cloves of garlic, crushed.
2 teaspoons hot chili paste.
1 cup dried breadcrumbs.
Olive oil spray.

Method
Mix the chicken, honey, paprika, chili paste and garlic together in a bowl, working the marinade ingredients over all of the chicken.
Refrigerate 2-3 hours to allow flavours to penetrate chicken.
Preheat oven to 200C.
Line baking trays with paper.
Place the breadcrumbs in a bowl and toss the drumettes through the crumbs to coat.
Place drumettes in a single layer on baking trays, spray lightly with oil and then bake for 40 minutes.

Serving
Delicious with our crispy baked potato wedges. Allow an extra 15-20 minutes to cook both at once.

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Garam Masala is a blended mix of warm to hot spices used in Pakistani and Indian cooking. There really is no “correct” spice mix, each house would have their own tweaked family recipe passed down over generations.

Traditional mixes mostly use cinnamon, roasted cumin, caraway seeds, cloves, nutmeg (and/or mace) and green cardamom seed or black cardamom pods.

Commercial mixes often include other less expensive spices and may contain dried red chili peppers, dried garlic, ginger powder, sesame, mustard seeds, turmeric, coriander, bay leaves, and fennel.

It’s all about getting a taste you find pleasant. If you feel the recipe below does not give enough mouth heat, add some dried chili. If you like a more aromatic mix, dried garlic and ginger powder will add to the nose of the mix.

Cooking Tips – Garam Masala
Makes 1/4 cup
Prep time : 10 minutes
Cooking time : 5 minutes
For conversions, click here to use our handy guide.

Ingredients
2 tablespoon fennel seeds
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoon ground cardamom
2 teaspoon cracked black pepper
1 teaspoon ground clove
2 bay leaves

Method
Dry-fry ingredients in small frying pan, stirring until fragrant.
Blend or process mixture, or crush using mortar and pestle, until mixture is ground coarsely.

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As I was dicussing earlier, the easiest way to add great flavour to any meal is to use herbs and spices. When used properly, they add wonderful depth of flavor to any meal. These two books are great examples of how to use fresh herbs and spices to make a masterpiece out of any meal.

	This book has appeal for not only home and professional cooks, but also for gardeners and anyone who just wants to sit back and admire the lovely photographic illustrations. The sidebar for each herb/spice that lists what parts are used, where it can be bought, how to grow it and how it is harvested is invaluable. The book also goes into detail on the flavor profile of the herbs and spices, a little history, common cooking techniques, recipes, herb blends and food pairings, and features recipes at the end for herb/spice blends as well as salads, entrees, etc.
	Recipes are well-presented, clear and easy to follow. I cook a lot of Indian food, but in no way felt that these recipes were dumbed-down at all. Kahate wisely confines her recipes to simple, practical ones with accessible ingredients. Does Indian food offer complex biriyanis with 15 spices and many ingredients? Sure. But that’s not what is offered here.This is fresh home cooking, bursting with flavor, yet able to be cooked quickly. The flavors of the ingredients is prominent. And Kahate is a good guide to ingredients and techniques.

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Thanks for dropping by!

As I promised you in the article you were reading, below is a list of resources I found very useful with my own battle to get back into shape. They are not free, and for very good reason.

I wasted so much time in looking for good free resources, only to find that what always appeared to be free was either garbage made to look useful, or absolute rubbish trying to get me to buy something not even close to what I was looking for. Feel free to browse them, as I find more things that are really useful to help you plan your lifestyle change, including more resources for finding easy healthy meals I will add them under this category.

Fat Fighting Foods is a brilliant science backed ebook all about the foods we can consume that work with the body to prevent us accumulating fat. Click here to read more details.

Meal Plans 101 takes some of the mystery out of planning easy healthy meals for you and your family. It is simple to use software that will help you work out the meals you should be eating to get yourself back in shape. Click here for more information on this awesome product.

The Low GI Diet Breakthrough. I give the majority of the credit to this book for helping me get back in shape. Pity it has the word “diet” in the title, as it really is pushing a lifestyle change. Click here and get this ebook. If you do nothing else to help yourself but learn what this book has to tell you about the foods you eat, you will still be well on your way to winning the battle.

Don’t forget, failing is a learning experience. Take heart in the fact that the more you try and fail, the more you will learn.

Good luck with your journey, the reward is worth it.

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