A wide range of healthy recipes that actually taste good!
With an endless stream of health, diet, and fitness books on the market, authors need to be at the top of their game to leave an impression. In her book Happy Healthy Strong, UK-based fit tech entrepreneur Krissy Cela does this by paying equal attention to the three foundations of health and fitness: mindset, diet, and fitness.
The book’s first section, Train Your Brain, educates about the right attitude with which to approach fitness. It dispels myths about motivation and instead asks readers to look inwards and find their “why”. This section also covers the importance of planning ahead on any fitness journey with detailed explanations and examples that readers can easily implement in their own lives.
The second section, Fuel Your Life, contains 80+ healthy, easy recipes to keep you full of energy. There’s an amazing repertoire here, including plenty of foods that you wouldn’t expect to find in a health-focused book, such as pizza. It shows healthier ways to make classic dishes, like using yoghurt in curry instead of cream, and includes the calories that are within each dish. Cela also includes traditional dishes from her Albanian heritage, a unique addition that helps to set this book apart.
In addition to the recipes, this section also discusses the importance of healthy food and encourages readers to embrace it rather than resorting to extremes to lose weight, like self-starvation or cutting out entire food groups.
The book’s final section is titled Move Move Move. A comprehensive guide to exercising at home (which is very handy in a world where gyms are frequently closing), this chapter features 45+ exercises with clear explanations and photographic examples that are easy to follow. Cela has also written a guide on how to plan your own workout incorporating the different exercises she teaches.
The most difficult part of this review was deciding which recipes to sample! I went with muffins from the Snacks category and a curry from the Dinner category.
PROTEIN BLUEBERRY MUFFINS (PAGE 87)
This recipe was a winner. Using a handful of ingredients, most of which I already had at home, the muffins were done in half an hour. There’s no sweetener in this recipe so the muffins had more of a savoury taste, which I prefer. But it’s an easily adaptable recipe with room for modifications depending on your tastes. Adding some mashed banana or honey would make them sweeter.
In addition to being super filling, these muffins are quick and easy to make and perfect for breakfast or a snack on the go. It’s a good recipe to make on a Sunday and have a few days’ worth of breakfasts and snacks ready for the week ahead. Just be sure to keep them in an air-tight container in the fridge.
CHICKEN KORMA (PAGE 152)
Yum! This recipe uses chicken breast which doesn’t always result in tender meat. But as long as you don’t overcook the chicken, it comes out soft and delicious. The flavours were beautiful, although there was quite a bit of bite. You could omit the chilli powder for something less spicy.
I modified the recipe slightly by using less yoghurt than the required five tablespoons, as I felt that it was creamy enough after two. But to each their own. The serves are incredibly generous too—the recipe suggests serving for two but there was enough for three (plus seconds!).
I’ve always made curries with pre-made supermarket pastes, thinking that making them from scratch would be too difficult. Glad that’s behind me! This was super quick to prepare and cook and will be making frequent appearances in my house.
Reviewed by Vanessa Elle
Instagram: @vanessaellewrites
Distributed by: Hachette Australia
Released: January 2022
RRP: $35
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