Poached Chicken in Banana Leaf
Poached Chicken in Banana Leaf
• 4 Chicken Thigh Fillets cut in half
• 8 Banana Leaf segments
• 8 Skewers
• 300ml Chicken Stock
• 400ml Coconut cream
• 1 Knob Ginger sliced
• 1 tspn Palm Sugar
• 3 Garlic Cloves crushed
• 1/2 cup Basil Leaves torn
• 1 tspn Sea Salt
• 10 White Peppercorns ground
Wrap your half chicken thigh fillets in a banana leaf
segment & secure with a skewer. In a large frypan
add your remaining ingredients & place over a
medium heat. Place the wrapped chicken parcels into
the poaching liquid & simmer for 12-15 minutes.
Serve the parcels on jasmine or sticky rice.
©Sacred Chef
Sacred Chef sunshine coast cooking school Thai cooking class featured recipe.
Take Control of Your Diet
One of the most empowering things that you can do in your life is to take control of what you are eating. If you are eating a lot of processed foods bought in the supermarket, then you are not in charge of what goes into your body. How much salt and fat is inside that product and what kind of fat is it? How does the chemical balance, which has been put in place by the manufacturer to preserve that product, react with your own metabolism? There are so many variables to consider when you are not eating fresh food, and equally importantly, preparing it yourself.
Learning to cook and discovering the nutritional make-up of foods can really benefit you in so many ways, including losing weight and feeling more alive. Recently there have been huge leaps in the understanding of nutritional science and how foods are processed by our bodies. The importance of certain essential fatty acids, like omega 3, and redressing the imbalance of omega 6 essential fatty acids in our foods, with too much soy, grain fed livestock and vegetable oils – all rich in omega 6 – in our diets, which is often something like 40 times that of omega 3. We are generally not eating enough oily fish, nuts and seeds in our diets today.
What is the result of this? Too much omega 6 causes inflammation within our bodies and what are some of the chronic conditions this causes? Arthritis – inflammation of the joints; cardiovascular diseases – inflammation of the heart’s arteries; strokes – inflammation of the cerebrovascular; and there is speculation that depression may be caused by inflammation of the brain. Diet/ what we eat and how we eat is the most integral factor in our propensity to develop diseases. A lot of foods in the supermarket do not address this and their prime reason for existence is to make money for their manufacturers – food technology is about durability not nutrition.
Food is your best medicine, not some vitamin pill or pharmaceutical – these are again mainly about making money for their manufacturers – otherwise they would be free wouldn’t they? My advice is take charge of what you eat and how that food is prepared. You will find it can also be highly creative and you may derive some pleasure and pride in the act of cooking a great meal – which is healthy and delicious. You can also save money along the way.
Cooking classes are a great way to discover nutritional information whilst having some tasty fun. My Sacred Chef cooking school, here on the sunshine coast, focuses on preparing food that is both healthy and delicious – you will also receive a take home recipe pack with additional nutritional notes and articles, which I wrote for magazines like WellBeing, Conscious Living and Eco Living Health Aware; plus you receive a free health magazine too!
©Sacred Chef
Every class is full of healthy information and great recipes.
www.nofreudnoprozac.org for more information about omega 3
Fig & Dark Chocolate, Macadamia Nut Muffins
Fig & Dark Chocolate Macadamia Nut Muffins
Delicious melt in the mouth muffins that are energy giving and healthy too.
- Flour plain 1 cup
- SR wholemeal flour 2 cups
- Baking powder 1 tspn
- Cinnamon ground 1 tbspn
- Butter 200g melted
- Linseed sunflower almond LSA ground 1 cup
- Coconut shredded 1 cup
- Macadamia nuts 1 cup chopped
- Eggs FR 6 beaten
- Honey 1 cup
- Vanilla Essence 1 tsp
- Raw sugar ½ cup
- Yoghurt 1 cup
- Milk ½ cup
- Lemon peel 1 tsp grated
- Figs dried 1 cup chopped
Preheat oven to 170C. Grease muffin trays and drop in muffin cases. Sift flours and add in to large mixing bowl, with spices, baking powder and melted butter, mix well. Fold in LSA, macadamia nuts, coconut, lemon and figs. In a separate bowl mix beaten eggs, vanilla, sugar, honey, yoghurt and milk, before folding into the bowl with the remaining ingredients. Mix evenly before spooning into muffin cases and baking for 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Makes 18 to 24 muffins.
©Sacred Chef
Quick and Easy – Transformation Guaranteed!
Quick and Easy – Transformation Guaranteed!
We have all seen these words splashed across advertisements, books, and websites; and heard them coming out of the mouths of sales people everywhere. There are doctors, naturopaths, therapists, and other ‘so called’ health professionals, extracting dollars through the promotion of pills, courses and products – all claiming to do the hard work for you. Well here is the bad news, it’s not true and they do not work! There are no quick fixes in health, weight loss, and just about anywhere else in life. Ask yourself honestly, have you ever really taken a pill and instantly achieved whatever it claimed to do for you? Of course not, occasionally they have been an accessory and encouragement on the road to your goals – a bit like gym clothes really.
If you want a few guidelines in life that really stack up, this is point one – there are no quick fixes. Now immediately you have one structure in your life to guide you away from delusional situations, involving those who claim to be able to facilitate change in your life, instantly and without some sacrifice. This is not a case of mere exploitation with you and me as the victims; no we are actively involved in the whole fraud, because we want a quick fix too- as we do not want to do the necessary hard work to achieve change. We want to have our cake and eat it too – and we want to be thin and attractive at the same time, as we want to stuff our faces with cake. This is the modern dilemma of humankind in the consumerist age.
Quick and easy meals! Just 4 ingredients! Dinner in 5 minutes! Cookbooks around the globe are emblazoned with these headlines. What is the mass appeal of this message saying about us? Well maybe that we don’t enjoy cooking and that we would rather be doing something else. There are a number of issues here of course – mothers who are traditionally coerced into cooking meals for an often unappreciative family audience; singles who would rather work or play elsewhere and do not enjoy cooking for one; and those who do not know their tastebuds from their haemorrhoids, to name a few. However health is derived from a good nutritional diet and if we continue to take the easy option, popping a few multi-vitamin pills to prop up our neglected nutritional selves, we are heading for a state of disease. Quick and easy cancer in just a few years!
Become a Reiki master in 3 days! Learn to heal your emotional self in one weekend! Re-birthing in a single session! Wow when I flick through the pages of the monthly, throwaway, holistic journals I can see how easy it all really is. World hunger, victims of the devastation of war and suffering watch out – there is a Reiki master waving his hands right now. Refugees from the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, where our Australian soldiers are fighting now, are however not benefitting from these ads for instant transformation – in fact they cannot even get into our country.
Horny goat weed; fat blaster; tiger penis; snake oil – products packaged and sold in pharmacies, multi-level marketing pyramids, and TCM shops around the globe – all promising transformation in exchange for money. The health industry! We have doctors and pharmaceutical companies (who now own all the vitamin producers) on one side, ready to chop you up and medicate you with anti-depressants, and on the other side we have a mish-mash, containing a few good hearted healers interspersed with the providores of the all natural, quick fix, in various forms. The former bunch do not respect you at all and see you as meat, muscle and bone and the latter are predominantly ineffectual and unrealistic in their claims for you and for themselves – because in many cases their training has been as inadequate as the one they are now selling to you.
All however is not lost. Put down the newspaper, magazine, and mouse. Close your eyes and ask yourself – really ask yourself, where do I go next? What is the next step for me? How can I heal myself? Keep asking the questions – this is no quick and easy solution. Meditate upon the question and follow your fears into the unknown. It may take a lifetime but the journey is worth taking, and really you don’t have a choice anyway. It’s your life after all!
©Sacred Chef
Stop taking short cuts
Would you like to enjoy the taste of your food more?
Would you like to feel free to eat what you want to eat, without worrying about your weight?
Would you even like to lose some body weight?
Well you can by changing your mind set around how you prepare meals, cook and eat.
Stop looking for short cuts!
Quick and easy does not mean great tasting, it usually means bland and mass produced.
Spend more time sourcing your ingredients and produce at market. Try foraging for your food. Build up some anticipation by investing more energy in your impending meal.
Work harder in the kitchen, creating and cooking your meal. Don’t take short cuts when preparing your meal, make it a labour of love! This is where you earn your appetite, if you have not already been physically exerting yourself at work or in the garden. Go the extra mile or kilometre to ensure your dish is the very best you can make it.
The kitchen is a temple and great food demands a sacrifice. Surrender to the process and be totally involved in the creative act.
When you serve your meal and sit down to eat it, you, and whoever else is fortunate enough to partake in the consumption of it, will find that it tastes amazingly good. You have been involved in a sacred contract, offering your labour and intention in return for a magical alchemical transformation – turning lead into gold. Food tastes better when you physically work harder for it and when you are present during its creation or transmutation from base ingredients into a divinely inspired, delectable dish.
When you are cooking, say to yourself, “Be here now!” Make it your mantra in the kitchen. Be present at all times, do not disappear inside your head, thinking about irrelevant things. Be here now!
©Sacred Chef
Recent Comments