Cooking / Recipes — No comments
25
Dec 10

Easy and Delicious Vegetarian Side Dishes

It is easy to get stuck in a rut when planning what to make for dinner every night.  When healthy meals and saving money are important meal planning concerns, vegetarian side dishes can add a lot of nutrition and variety to weeknight meals without taking too much time to put together.  Pureed soups make a fantastic accompaniment to sandwiches of any sort, and can taste rich and creamy without any dairy products at all.  A delicious butternut squash soup recipe using only a handful of ingredients adds cheerful color and flavor to the most ordinary grilled-cheese sandwich dinner, and the leftovers are great to take for lunch the next day.

Roasted vegetables are so easy to make, and if you have a bit of time before dinner needs to be on the table, the rich caramelized flavors that ordinary root vegetables gain in the oven will liven up the rest of your dinner plate.  Just tossing uniform-sized chunks of potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, and whatever other vegetables you’ve got on hand in a bit of olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper, and baking for an hour or so in a 400 degree oven gives you a hearty, tasty side.  This one can be as simple or fancy as you like.  Jazz it up with sprigs of fresh thyme, chunks of rutabaga and parsnips if you are feeling more creative.

Great grain side dishes can be prepared easily with the help of a modern rice cooker.  Fuzzy logic rice cooker recipes are widely available and free up the cook to tend to last minute details of the main dish.  A rice pilaf is often more visually appealing and appetizing than plain white or brown rice, and is a good way to use small amounts of flavorful ingredients that might otherwise go to waste.  It’s only a couple more steps to make than plain rice, and adds so much to the meal overall.  Consider adding some new sides to your rotation to make your meals more interesting and nutritious.

Recipes — No comments
14
Dec 10

Scottish Short Bread Recipe

One of the traditional accompaniments to tea and a quick serve when you have guests during the holiday season such as Christmas is home made Scottish biscuits. The other name of these crunchy delights is short bread and they are a great reminder of sweet moments with family and being at home. It is likely that you can find a short bread recipe in virtually any area where people gather together. Different family members will have encountered different versions of the same thing. In this article you will find the most basic recipe and you are welcome to make amendments and add your own ingredients to make it uniquely yours.

The ingredients you require are: one cup of butter, a quarter teaspoon of salt, half a cup of sugar, half a cup of icing sugar, 2 cups of all purpose flour. Since this is a baking recipe you will need to have the baking pan for the cookie mixture. The method for making the short bread is: mix the flour, the sugar, the icing sugar, and the salt evenly and then blend them together with the butter. Beat the mixture until it develops a thin cream like texture. Though you may use a mixer to do this, the hand mixed mixture always tends to develop a much more traditional taste. Once the mixture is finely and evenly mixed you are ready to start baking.

Before you start you can pre-heat the oven to 150 degrees. Take your greased baking pan and spread the mixture on it thinly. Put it into the oven for about six minutes, and then remove it. To create the decorative pattern on the top, use a fork to make small indentations on the top spreading them out as you like. Then you can pop the pan back into the oven and bake the cookies at 150 degrees C for about 25 to 30 minutes or until they have a cooked beige hue (this mixture only cooks, but will not turn golden brown).

Once baked remove from the oven and cut them into different cookie shapes with a cookie cutter. Then allow them to stand so that they can cool for about an hour or more so that they are hard as cookies should be. The thing that takes everyone right back to their grandmother’s kitchen with this crunchy snack is the way that you serve the cookies. You can select any one way that works for you.

I hope you enjoyed the short bread recipe.

Refrigerators & Freezers — No comments
11
Dec 10

Choosing Freezers For Vegetable Storage

Deciding which of the many freezers available to buy for storage frozen veggies can be a tough decision.  Do you need a lot of space?  What size is your budget?  Are you willing to purchase stackable freezer baskets?  All these factors come into play.

By far the simplest answer to this dilemma is to simply buy a cheap compact freezer. These small freezers are designed for the shopper who only needs a little bit of freezer space, and who does not have the money for one of the larger freezers that are available.

Unfortunately most freezer buyers are looking for more space than compact freezers offer.  They then need to choose between an upright freezer and a chest freezer.

Upright freezers are good if you want an appliance that fits well into your kitchen.  These tall freezers have a very small footprint, so look somewhat like a regular refrigerator or fridge freezer.  If, however, looks or size are not a factor for you then a chest freezer may be a better choice.

Deep chest freezers are short freezers that take up a large surface are on the floor.  This makes them not idea for kitchens, but they are great for areas like garages where they can do a great job of offering bulk frozen storage.

The advantages of chest freezers are significant.  They offer probably the most capacity for the dollar spent out of the different types of freezer available.  Not only this, but they are very energy efficient; this means that their month to month operating cost is really quite low.

The one downside – if it can even be called that – of a deep chest freezer is the fact that they are so large.  They are basically a huge box for freezing things in.

If you are not going to end up with a terrible mess of frozen products piled in the bottom you will need to invest in a set of wire freezer baskets.  Stacking these wire baskets within your chest freezer allow you to organize the contents into common sense categories for ease of retrieval later on.

No matter which of these freezers you choose to buy, the additional ability to freeze vegetables and other foods will be a welcome addition to your household.

Nutrition — No comments
08
Dec 10

New Front-Of-Package Nutrition Labeling

The Food Marketing Institute (FMI) and Grocery Manufacturing Association (GMA) have decided to enforce a new labeling system for their member companies. This decision was announced with an online press release.

The prominent food and beverage manufacturers of America, in an attempt to battle against obesity have made a decision to team up and develop a new front-of-package nutrition labeling system. This plan will be of great help to busy consumers in making accurate, healthy selections while shopping. America’s food and beverage companies and vendors have said yes to this change of product labels with a consumer awareness campaign estimating $50 million.

In its first FDA-sponsored Front-Of-Package (FOP) labeling report which was released just two weeks back, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) proposes that the FOP symbols indicate only about the calories, sodium, trans fat and saturated fat, the nutrients which are directly linked with obesity, heart problems and diabetes. This led William Neuman of The New York Times to sum up its attempt as “Tell us how your products are bad for us.”

GMA and FMI prefer to mention “no trans fat” or “no cholesterol” in their product labels if they must do negatives, but they prefer highlighting all the constituents that are good in the products like added vitamins in beverages (not to worry, the universal cup holder can handle the added weight of additional vitamins), omega-3s in cereals, and fiber in pizzas.

In any event, they specifically do not want the UK “traffic-light” symbol labeling system to be put into effect by FDA. This system shows a red circle for less healthy nutrient levels and a green circle for healthier levels. These symbols were so strongly resisted by the food industry that they caused the called off the British Food Standards Agency as they deter consumers from buying foodstuffs denoted in red.

Mr. Neuman, in a New York Times article quotes Mary Sophos, a GMA representative and executive vice president for the group. She says that the group is not keen on entering into interpreting food elements. The label would not demonstrate the whole nutritional attributes of a product as good or bad as the UK system does.

GMA and FMI evidently are looking forward to having a similar thing to take place in our FDA. An FDA statement said, “Our hope is that the industry will develop a label that aids in consumer understanding and helps parents and other shoppers easily identify and select products that contribute to a healthy diet.”

This move shows all the signs the FDA requires for compulsory FOP labels. The food industry will not keenly label its processed foods in a manner that will assist the public to choose healthier foods. After all, the food and beverage industry is exactly that, an industry, one that relies on consumers to purchase it’s products, whether they are good or bad for them, to make money. Apparently profits are more important than the health and wellness of the American people.

Food / Fruit / Nutrition / Vegetables — No comments
07
Dec 10

Benefits Of Eating High Fiber Vegetables And Fruits

Many common diseases and ailments including high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and constipation are related to an unhealthy diet rich in processed foods. Our body is starved of the nutrition that it needs and the foods that help it stay cleansed. You may have heard nutritionists’ advice that people eat high fiber vegetables and foods. Interestingly, most often such fiber cannot be digested by the human body but helps the intestines and colon function effectively by keeping them clean. For your body to remain healthy it is crucial for the digestive system to function efficiently, and high fiber fruits and vegetables help in this direction.

High fiber vegetables

Some vegetables that contain high fiber include beans, carrot, potatoes with skin, green vegetables such as kale and collards, peas, peppers and rhubarb. Fruits that contain high amounts of fiber are apples, avocados, bananas, oranges, guavas and dry fruits such as apricots, raisin and dates. Experts recommend that we eat about 30 to 40 g of fiber every day. This can come from grains, fruits or vegetables. Some foods contain soluble fiber. When digested it gets bound with the fatty acids in the body and increases the time it takes to digest food. This helps control blood sugar and accordingly diabetes.

Advantages of eating high fiber food

The organ systems in the human body are interlinked and if there are problems in one system it influences the functioning of others too. The digestive system is vital because it ensures that the body receives nutrition and gets rid of toxins. If one mostly tends to eat processed foods that contain low fiber then the digestive system is the first to be affected, leading to constipation. By adding fiber vegetables to your diet you can control many ailments and this also helps in losing fat and weight.

Uncategorized — No comments
02
Dec 10

How Technology Makes Food Better

Technology is taking over the world. Literally, taking it over… everything! Almost everything we seem to know is infused with technology, even food. You might say this is a bad thing, but like someone once said in a song, to survive, we should only go “forward and onward, always up never down.” With new innovations such as molecular gastronomy (click here to see some molecular gastronomy recipes) and even simple espresso coffee pods, food tech is simply on a roll.

Aside from giving us tools to help better our cooking and food prep experience, technology has also allowed us to make better food. And then there are those which I would like to call “cooking aids”. Stuff such as thermometers, measuring cups etc… etc… Like I said before, technology does not necessarily mean machines powered by electricity, but simply, the tools we use. Anyway, here are some examples as to how technology made food better:

Canned Goods

Don’t tell me this isn’t a wonderful innovation. Before canned products were marketed worldwide, food was difficult to preserve. It had to be consumed fast or else it would spoil and be wasted. Now, canned goods provide us with long lasting food that is also (most of the time) quite easy to prepare. Food such as sardines doesn’t require any cooking at all.

Instant Food

We have the canned goods, and we have the instant food. The most popular would be instant noodles, but now, a lot of “instant” stuff has already surfaced such as instant coffee (just add water), instant mac’n cheese, even instant meat – and a lot more.

Powdered Drinks

Before, if we would like a cold glass of orange juice, we have to rush to the market, buy some fresh ones, and squeeze it to make our own. Right now, we can just buy powdered versions of this stuff (again, you just have to add water). It’s much simpler to prepare than its all-natural counterpart. Stock cubes work the same way, and if you don’t think they’re an innovation, you’ve clearly never spent 5 hours making beef stock!

You may still be asking how on earth we achieved all these. Why, you should know by now… Technology of course!

Food / Vegetables — No comments
29
Nov 10

Tips for Storing Fresh Produce

Learning how to store potatoes, tomatoes, and other vegetables properly can be an interesting and educational process and there are many books that have been written about this topic to help you along the way. It will become much easier to keep onions fresh and readily available for longer periods of time as you learn how to do it well and become more adept. It can potentially save a home or business money that is much needed for other things these days, by not having to buy onions on a weekly basis or having to throw them out when they go bad.

Savvy consumers can search the internet in order to find great suggestions as to how to store onions. One of the determining factors in which method is best to choose is the business or home environment where they will be stored. Dry basements, clean pantries, dark closets and even a cool, clean and dry area of a garage can be used to store onions. You should periodically check on the onions for discolored, damaged or moldy onions. This onion should be removed immediately so it does not spread to the rest of them.

The advantages of onions both medicinally and nutritionally are now being made known thanks to the internet. If you need more tips, recommendations or how to store onions properly, there is a wealth of information just a short internet search away. Onions can be used for anything from causing a windshield to not frost when treated with an onion or curing male pattern baldness. When cutting an onion, a sharp edge is imperative to slice through rather than ripping through the membranes. Wetting an onion first will make it easier to peel as well as washing it to ensure cleanliness at the same time.

Cooking becomes more convenient as stored onions are on hand anytime you need them. Onions add a great depth of flavor to just about any dish and it can be frustrating when you find that you have run out as you start your desired recipe. Onions are desired by the home cook as well as the restaurant chef.

Sweet onions are the most popular, and just a few of the preferred kinds of sweet onions are Walla-Wallas, Imperials and the ever popular Vidalia. These types of onions can be safely stored for four to six weeks so consumers should buy them in smaller quantities so none go to waste. Sweet onions are much lighter in color than their yellow counterparts and have a thinner skin. Their growing season is typically from February to late August and because their growing season is shorter, their price is a bit more expensive than other types. Most consumers prefer the taste of the sweeter onion so will happily pay the higher cost.

Storing onions is an economical, practical and convenient method to promote a healthier lifestyle and contribute to a more balanced food budget. It is a great habit to start whether you have a small or large household.

Food / Vegetables — No comments
28
Nov 10

Overview About Sweet Potatoes

If you were asked to give 100 random questions which will all be answered, would you include a question like “What do I do with this sweet potato?” Luckily, there are a lot of things you can do for this wonderful root vegetable. It is quite healthy and tasty and is very cheap as well.

Sweet potatoes are originally from South America. This sweet and tasty tuber has been cultivated for 5000 years. These had been distributed around the world through the hands of the explorers. Among of these voyages include the 1492 expedition of Columbus, where Europeans received their first taste of this staple food. Because of its long history, many healthy sweet potato recipes were created so that this vegetable can be enjoyed in many ways, and in fact, it can also be served as breakfast food.

These healthful tubers are loaded with dietary fiber, complex carbohydrates, and beta-carotene. In Africa, they are commonly served with peanut sauce and eaten with tea for breakfast. The young shoots and delicate buds are eaten as well which contain a generous amount of several essential vitamins. In Asian countries like Korea, they are added as a topping for Pizza chains. In China, sweet potatoes are either mashed or roasted and usually served as street food. They are flavored with ginger as well. In India, the potato is largely seasoned with salt and highly revered as the main source of nourishment due to their low consumption of meat products. In Japan, they are flavored with soy sauce. In Malaysia, the tasty tubers are added with coconut milk.

Sweet potatoes in the United States have long been a favorite selection for delectable starchy foods, probably second only to potatoes. America just loves this healthy vegetable that it always had a place on holiday tables. It is served as a side dish or as a dessert in the form of a pie. Restaurants generally make sweet potatoes fries than the familiar potato fries. Let the color palette of the world inspire you to look for a favorite sweet potato recipe that you can make as a staple food in your home.

Food / desserts — No comments
23
Nov 10

How To Mold Chocolate

Everyone loves chocolates shaped to look like things. The chocolate Easter bunny is one example that everyone knows. Even though these are available just about everywhere you look, there is also the possibility of using chocolate molds to make your very own novelty chocolates. In fact, if you have chocolate, chocolate candy molds, and a little bit of creativity, anyone, even the worst of cooks, can make a wide array of novelty chocolates using only a few simple steps.

Before anything else, you are going to need a chocolate mold in the shape of the finished product. There are hundreds of different molds available on the market, so you will have little trouble finding the right mold for what you want to do.

Molding chocolate is next up on our shopping list. This is because it is much easier to work with than regular chocolate, which needs to be tempered in order to achieve the proper look and texture that you would expect. So you will want to start with molding chocolate and build your skills a bit before you try to work with the real thing or buy yourself a chocolate tempering machine.

Melting your chocolate very slowly over low heat is the best way to prevent burning it. A microwave set to low is perfect for those who are using molding chocolate, but other varieties are better off melted using a double boiler. Even melting requires that you stir it occasionally.

Next you will need to add the chocolate to the mold; a spoon or a squeeze bottle can make this easier. You can very easily make a mess by overfilling the molds if you are not careful.

Now we come to the last and hardest step in the entire procedure. Before you try to remove the chocolate from the molds, you need to be sure that it has first thoroughly cooled. Not only will it release from the chocolate mold so much more easily, but it will also have the texture and gloss that we are looking for.

Food / weight loss — No comments
16
Nov 10

The Best Fat Burning Foods for Vegetarians

It is hard to be an overweight vegetarian.  When people think “vegetarian”, they immediately associate that with skinny, fit, and in shape.  As you may know, being a vegetarian does not ensure a thin physique.  Vegetarian diets should include a lot of vegetables, which are some of the best fat burning foods out there!

The first thing you should try to do when you are looking to burn more fat is cut out foods with high sugar values.  Although baked goods and other snacks are vegetarian friendly, they can be loaded with sugar!  Sugar causes you to have more hunger throughout the day which can mean falling off your diet again and again to satisfy yourself.  Pay attention to serving sizes on pasta, bread and rice, and use the natural whole grain versions whenever possible.

One great food to keep around that will help you burn more is celery sticks.  Celery sticks have very little calorie to weight ratio, which means you can keep on eating them without packing on calories!  I make sure to bring them with me in my purse wherever I go.  They are the perfect movie theater snack.  To enhance the snack you can even put peanut butter, or another nut butter (macadamia nut butter is my personal favorite).  This incorporates healthy essential fats (which oddly enough help for weight loss).  Be sure to read the label and only use the amount of nut butter recommended for the day.

Lastly, you can spice up your cooking with spice!  Spices are known to burn slightly higher calories than their bland counterparts, which will also help you eat all of your vegetables if you were previously slacking on that.

Luckily for you, you avoid a number one culprit on many diets, fatty meat products!   Being a vegetarian, you can incorporate many natural weight loss tips that will help you reach your goal faster than you might think is possible.

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