Garam Masala

I'll be working part time for the next few weeks until they find someone to replace me.  Don't ask how I got suckered into giving a 7 week notice, but I did.  At least I was able to dictate my schedule, and so starting last week I transitioned to my part time schedule of 3 days a week.  Last Wednesday on my day off, Taylor and I took a little down time after homework was complete to watch the Food Network, and oh how I have missed my shows!  The weekend line up is just not the same, with marathon episodes of Guy Fieri going through endless Diners, Drive Ins and Dives, making me want to puke at the crap people eat.  Sure, there's also lots of Alton Brown thrown in on the weekend, but let's be honest, one can only handle geeky food talk for so long.  But I digress.

We caught an episode of Sunny Anderson's Cooking for Real and the Baked Chicken Drummies looked fantastic.  I love Indian food but am too intimidated to make it, but this looked like a simple enough recipe for me to try.  I made my grocery list on Saturday and searched two grocery stores for Garam Masala, the key ingredient to this dish, to no avail.  I became transfixed on making this dish Saturday night so I looked up how to make my own Garam Masala and found a quick and easy recipe here. 

Lo and behold, I just happened to have all ingredients ON HAND in my pantry to make my own mix!  I jumped up and down and immediately tweeted "I have arrived!  I am officially a foodie!"  Never mind that no one was here to crown me with an official Foodie title, I went ahead and took the honors upon myself.

Garam Masala is more smokey in flavor than hot or spicy and added a nice punch to the chicken.  I also added some to our sauteed spinach, the veggie side dish of the meal.  It is a beautiful concoction of rich spices, including Cumin, Coriander, Cardamon, Pepper, Cinnamon, Cloves and Nutmeg.  The Cardamon spice is a little random, but luckily I had a stash of it from making my own Chai. 

I have made my own concoction of spices a couple of times before, including Jerk Chicken rub.  Our local grocery store Sprouts has a wonderful little bulk spice section where you can get small amounts of random, yet common fresh spices.  It ends up being much cheaper to make your own mixture, or even to just get small amounts of spices that you don't commonly use so that it doesn't go bad, rather than buying even a small jar of a spice.  I calculated that this little bit of Garam Masala cost just under a buck, where you'd normally pay at least $5 for a jar.   

The chicken drummies turned out great by the way.  Did anyone out there cook up something good this weekend?  I'm linking up to Heather's Life Made Lovely Monday.