The beauty of fresh honey. No doubt that honey has a lot of good properties, that can also cure a lot of ailments; from external problems to internal problems. It is a natural antiseptic and also a natural sweetener - so it goes perfect with tea, cereal and even toast.

The fresher the better!

The other day some guy was walking around town with a bucket, inside was honey combs dripping in honey; black and gold. We bought a couple of the combs, and we chew on the comb till we eat all the honey and spit out the comb after its drained.

• It can help with burns and cuts. 
• Mixed with hot water and a bit of ginger it can help with sore throats.
• If you struggle with acne and acne scars smear some honey on your face for a couple of hours every day. 
• Great to be mixed with egg whites and applied as a facial. 
• Can be mixed with brown sugar and used as a black-head scrub.

Amongst the many health benefits of honey, what is most impressive to me is that honey can be a powerful immune system booster. It's antioxidant and anti-bacterial properties can help improve digestive system and help you stay healthy and fight disease. Start every brand new day with this cleansing tonic if you want to see this health benefit of honey: before breakfast, mix a spoonful of honey and lemon juice from half a lemon into a cup of warm water and drink it. Also, you can mix apple cider, honey and cinnamon for a morning detox drink.

Honey does not cure cancer but what many people don't think enough of or have overlooked is - honey possesses carcinogen-preventing and anti-tumour properties.

It is all in all amazing for the body. There is much more to say, but this is just a few points. I will say its always a great ingredient to have in the home, organic and fresher the better. I love using honey for beauty purposes, it works perfectly and since its all natural it can't hurt. 

The beauty in its creation and the bees that make the honey is mind blowing! Allah created such beautiful things in this world that one cannot even being to explain or even recreate themselves. 

If you have a special tip for honey and how you use it please feel free to comment and share it with everyone.

Masala Dabba, there is no Indian house-hold that does not have one. This is known as an Indian Spice Box, it can be found sold in local spice shops, spices not included.

Now this is a handy little thing that helps with storing your main spices neatly, usually most Indian spices are bought in bulk or plastic packets and so to keep using from that packet will cause an unwanted mess, makes clean up such a hassle and lets be honest its not good on the eyes either. With this tin box, you can keep topping up spices that finish, also its easy to store, use and you will never forget a spice.

It can be found it a whole different range of sizes, so if you tend to cook Indian cuisine once in a blue moon or every day you can choose to your liking. There are small differences when it comes to what spices to store from house-hold to house-hold, there are some staples that must always be in your spice box, but the rest can be what dry spices you usually add or prefer.

In my masala dabba/spice box I find the spices stored in are staples, and are the base in literally every Indian recipe.


WHAT MY MASALA DABBA HAS:

Turmeric (yellow colouring)
Paprika (fresher the better)
Salt
Ground cumin
Ground coriander seeds
Taj/Indian Bay leaf - if you see pictures of this they look like sticks - I would say checking your spice shop for them instead of using just a normal bay leaf
Whole cardamom
Whole Pepper
Cloves

You must be thinking how big is your tin, there are times one spice is replaced by another in the tin, ideally that is how it usually is.
Also, most people mix their ground cumin and ground coriander together and store it as one.

Now I know some people also put gharam masala (combination of all dry spices freshly ground together) or even cinnamon that's entirely up to one-self and what your taste buds like.
If you are a beginner to Indian food, or you think its time to learn how to cook I would say take a good look and even smell these spices because you will be using them quite often!

It takes practice but as you learn to cook and when you start making marinades you will learn to use your instincts when it comes to measurements of the spices. I would say in the start make your marinade first than taste when you feel it tastes fine than add your meat, because it was save you from making an error and trust me we have all been there.

This is just a quick post explaining what a masala dabba/spice box is and what are the main spices stored in it.
I do plan to post once a week a new Indian spice, the low-down on it, what it looks like, what it smells and tastes like and what its mainly used for,
Any questions or comments, and if you feel I have missed any key points in this post let me know. Feel free to like, share and subscribe to this website for personalised emails on all updates.

We're missing a bit of other fruits like kiwi, oranges, bananas cherries, plum and a few more, but we made do with what we have and made use of lychee season!

Enjoy This Delectable Apple Swan Decoration 

Now it was super easy to make and fun, we stuck some fan palm kind of please on the pineapple and attempted to make an apple swan!

Down below I will show the 2 other cutlery we used to design the fruit, there are so many more styles and cutleries you can use for a more extravagant look. I will also show the picture slideshow off how to make the swan with captions, and I will put the video up from youtube that I used, check out which ever one you prefer. 

We used peaches, pineapple, melons, naartjie, apples, paw paws, missing a few but I used the fruit shells after I scooped them out to serve in. Please note the pictures from the step by step bellow are not mine.

How To Make An Apple Swan

Choose your apple, preferably a big one would make it easier to cut up. You'll need a sharp knife and 2 butter knifes that will be your guide when cutting.

Try cutting you apple at a slight diagonal so that it cuts through the centre of the apple core.

After cutting you will have access to the seeds, take them out and keep so they can be used later.

Take the half of the apple that still has the bottom attached and place it face down on the cutting board. For the next step its best to put 2 butter knifes perpendicular to the top and bottom, it will help with the cutting.

Now use your knife to carefully cut down into the apple from the top, and just to the right side of the apple core. You should be able to press down until the knife bottoms out on the other 2 butter knives.

Then use the butter knives as makeshift spacers to line your knife up, and cut in from the side. When the 2 cuts meet, you may feel a little "pop" as the wedge is released.  If not, it means the cuts haven't fully met yet, so just gently wiggle the blade from both directions until the cuts align.

Repeat the process on the other side of the apple so that you're left with 2 apple wedges similar to those seen in the pictures.

The goal is to cut each of these new wedges into 3 smaller wedges, then layer them together to give the effect of feathers and wings.

The process is very similar to how you cut them before, only this time, rather than slicing in from the side, try turning the wedge over to the left, and slicing down. This should give you more control, and save you a few potential cuts to your fingers.

When both wedges have been cut, layer the pieces back together to form a tear-drop shape, and replace them back into the apple "body". The effect should be two beautiful swan wings.

We still need to make a place for the head to sit, so make a couple of precision cuts near the front of the body (like a rectangle), and remove the pieces to leave a clean, and fairly deep, groove, as seen in the picture.

That is how the cut should look like, and the head which you are about to make next will fit into that space.

To form the head, we can use the other half of the apple and place it in-between our butter-knife spacers as we did the other one, except this time we're not going to cut out any wedges. Carefully cut sideways along the butter-knives all the way through to create an apple slice.

If you repeat this 3 or 4 times, you'll end up with different cross sections that sport a variety of shapes and sizes.

All we need to form the head are 3 strategic cuts into the apple slice.You should be able to see that the top cut was started just on the other side of the apple centre, and this is done on purpose to give the sloped face, and the effect of a swan's beak. If you're not sure about the cutting just imitate what was done in the picture.

Hold it up to see if it resembles the swan beak.

Trim the edges if necessary for a clean cut swan head. Take the pits you saved earlier and place them on the head, press down with a butter knife to secure them down and there you have eyes.

Place the head in the small rectangle you had cut on the body.

Place the head in the small rectangle you had cut on the body.

When it comes to the rest of the fruit platter, we didn't do so much as we could have, I would say if you want to take it a step further, watch other youtube videos.

The 2 cutlery pieces above I used for the designing of the apple swan. The red one I used to scoop mini balls of the melons and the silver one with a brown handle, that has a zig zag edging, we used to cut the pineapple and the rest of the green melons.




As you can see its quite easy to make a fruit platter, quite different from usually making a fruit salad and nowadays everyone is making a watermelon cake, or fruit pizza; (now that I recall, watermelon was also what we missed from the fruit platter). 

Be creative and have fun when making this, I even added some funky mini umbrellas and toothpicks to the platter. I also added some flowers from the garden.
Have fun making this apple swan fruit decoration with your kids and family! Although, be warned, it won't last long if you have all that delicious fruit and many people around :p