Tag: <span>food</span>

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One of the fastest growing cuisines on the internet is free soul food recipe sites. You can find advertisers clamoring for space on many of the many popular search engines. You can find major mainstream food manufacturers and processors advertising under the keywords. And you can find ambitious upstarts paying for adverting along side billion dollar food corporations for search engine ad space.

Where did this sudden interest come from? Soul food recipes have always enjoyed a long tradition. A popular southern cuisine that dates back to Pre-Civil war slavery. The food that slaves invented, nurtured and preserved for over 3 centuries, is now a billion dollar industry. Yes, this popular southern cuisine has come from food the slave master didn’t want to a lucrative industry. The soul food recipes industry includes cookbook publishing, restaurants, food manufacturing, television cooking shows, and food marketing. Now can you see why major food manufactures are elbowing for a piece of the soul food recipe market.

But what’s fueling this sudden surge in popularity? The big surge now is the economy. People are eating out less and cooking more meals at home, specifically African Americans who have been hit hardest by the economic downturn of the past 3 years. They’ll looking for more ways to save money. One of the biggest and quickest ways to save money is to cook more meals at home. The average family can save over half of their total food cost by cooking more meals at home instead of eating out.

As more African Americans save money by cooking more meals at home this has been an obvious boost to the soul food industry. Why? Because African Americans consume the most. And any market that experiences fast growth automatically attracts advertisers and the crowd that comes with it. That’s why you’re finding more websites, food marketers, processors and distributors adverting on those pages hoping to attract the growing number of eyes to their products and services.

In the industry is expected to grow as more new families and mothers look to save by cooking more meals at home. There is a whole new generation who will have a need to learn soul food cooking skills in the coming years. Recipe books, websites and even classes will fill a growing consumer need to many people who have to learn how to do what mothers of past generation learned from their mothers and grandmothers.

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Source by Roy Primm

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Remember being a child when you were attached to an item such as teddy bear or a blanket and how it made you feel secure and happy? That feeling is the exact same one that millions of overweight people struggle with on a daily basis to overcome their emotional attachments to food. Can you be emotionally attached to food? Absolutely, and more people are than those who are not and they generally are not even aware that they are which is how and why the weight becomes an issue.

If you can become attached to an object such as a blanket, certainly you can become attached to food. Certain foods bring on specific feelings inside your mind that make you happy or secure, or even just fill a void in some cases. For example, imagine being in college and coming home for the first time to relieve yourself of all the junk you have been eating and dig into a home cooked meal that only mom can make. How good you feel eating it, it is not only good in taste, but it is what you refer to as being “home” and it is comforting to your stomach and to your mind and soul.

There are endless comfort foods such as cakes, cookies, pies, ice cream and the warm soul foods such as chicken, mashed potatoes and biscuits that millions of people adore to keep their spirits up and make them feel good. The problem is these foods are fattening and they are not good for you. Food brings people together, look at how many American holidays are surrounded by a large meal for the get together? People look forward to eating these meals because they taste good, the give you a reason to see your friends and family and they make your mind at ease. A once a year huge feast is not going to hurt you, it is the ones that eat ice cream while they are bored, the ones that consume an entire box of doughnuts while nursing a bad day from work at night those types of eating habits that will bring on emotional attachments to foods. Some people eat just because they are lonely and have nothing else to do. You need to break this self-destructive cycle as soon as possible, and tell yourself the truth which is that you eat food to survive you do not survive to eat.

Once you become comfortable with that truth in life you can begin to eat wiser choices and realize that in fact food can only make you happy for a short time until the repercussions of it sink in and then you are unhappy. You will be much more unhappy with yourself if you eat a lot of junk food and then gain ten pounds and have to hurry up and lose it than if you eat smarter foods and get up the next day feeling good and your body looks good as a result of your smarter eating choices.

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Source by Jesus Smith

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Dinosaur Themed Party Food

When it comes to organising that dinosaur themed party for your dinosaur obsessed youngster, one of the many questions we get asked is how to customise the food to fit the dinosaur party theme.  It is not easy to find dinosaur shaped sandwiches and tit-bits in your local supermarket, but you needn’t spend a fortune to make sure that your dinosaur themed party buffet cuts the “Mesozoic mustard”.

For example, dinosaur shaped cookie cutters are inexpensive to purchase and can be used to create biscuits shaped like prehistoric animals.  However, don’t be limited to just the sweet elements of your buffet when it comes to using the cookie cutters.  We have used both the plastic and tin cookie cutter types to create dinosaur shaped savoury snacks.  With a cookie cutter, it is simple and easy to make your own dinosaur shaped sandwiches.

Using soft bread (we find that a quality white or wholemeal loaf works best); and a series of simple fillings such as spreads – peanut butter, jam, chicken paste or honey, dinosaur shaped sandwiches and light bites can be created by simply using the cookie cutter to cut out the slices once the sandwich has been prepared.  A firm push into the sandwich with the cookie cutter is all that is required, but have a pair of kitchen scissors or a sharp knife handy in case you need to trim off any bits.  This is a simple and straight forward way of theming up your dinosaur party platter.

The majority of dinosaurs known from the fossil record were vegetarian so don’t forget to put plenty of salad out for the young dinosaur fans.  They are used to seeing strange plants such as cycads and tree ferns alongside dinosaurs in their picture books and you can use this to encourage them to eat their greens.  A mixed green salad containing such delights as rocket and a little water cress can resemble the most exotic of ancient prehistoric plants.  For added spice a handful of washed dandelion leaves can be put into the salad bowl.  Dandelion leaves are edible, but don’t forget to wash them and use them sparingly as they are a diuretic.  The “toothed” edges of the leaves make a great prehistoric addition to any salad, we have even called them T. rex jaws, it is fun to watch the young party guests trying to find a green T. rex jaw and put it onto their plate at feeding time.

Take a cocktail stick and a coloured piece of paper, prepare a label for the sandwiches using simple dinosaur vocabulary.  A quick peek inside your child’s dinosaur book should provide you with plenty of names for inspiration, for instance we have created “Jurassic Jam” and “Hypsilophodon Honey” sandwiches in the past.  The cocktail stick can be used to stick the label securely in the plate of sandwiches, but don’t forget to blunt the end that points upwards, we don’t want any of your little monsters pricking their fingers.

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Source by Mike Walley

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Obesity, which contributes to several health problems like cancer, stroke, diabetes and high blood pressure has become epidemic and affects nearly half the U.S population. The number of obese people has doubled since 1985, which has led to a 30% increase in health premiums. The overall financial costs of obesity are greater than those for alcoholism or smoking. The annual cost of treating health problems related to obesity is estimated at upward of $100 billion. Reduction of health costs over time will not happen if obesity is ignored.

Why more taxes?

Two reasons; First and most obvious is to raise part of the money for what is being proposed as universal health care, a subject that carries with it a separate debate. The second and probably most import reason is to raise awareness of what we are eating and how it affects our bodies. The American public is woefully ignorant about nutrition.

What to Tax

There have been dozens of “sinful-food” tax proposals from a penny a can for sodas to 10% on all fast food items. It probably needs to be more inclusive than that. Packaged foods with a lot of sugar and starch probably contribute as much to the problem as the entire fast food industry. It could well be a sliding scale on all foods except fresh produce based on grams of fats and sugar per 100 grams or per serving.

What is the Tax Rate?

The Department of Agriculture has suggested that, for “sinful-food” taxes to change the way people eat, they may need to equal at least 10% to 30% of the cost of the food. It is estimated that a 10% federal tax on fattening foods would raise $530 billion over 10 years. There should also be a program of tax subsidies to encourage the purchase of healthy foods such as fresh fruits and vegetable. This of course would reduce the gross income somewhat.

Opposition Response

Most of us are opposed to more taxes, myself included, but there are other oppositions to a tax of this kind. Here are some of the most common.

• I,m not fat and I don’t want to pay for someone who is and I like my sodas and Dorritos. You can still eat whatever you like. Paying $1.10 for a 99 cent bag of Dorritos may well be the cheapest way for you to pay for this problem. It is inevitable because of the magnitude of this social problem that it won’t cost you in some way.
• The government must stop trying to legislate our behavior and picking our pockets. Sorry friend…too late. In a society this complex and generally prosperous, everything we do in some small way affects everyone else. “No man is an island.” The only way for the government not to do something is to completely drop the idea of universal health care. How good is your imagination on that happening?
• It’s a regressive tax that unfairly affects the poor. This appears to be true on the face of it. Low income people eat high starch and fast foods in an attempt to stretch their food dollar. As mentioned earlier there should be a tax subsidy for choosing healthy foods. More of the public health dollar needs to go to nutrition education and awareness. With the right information and a little assistance, low income people can have healthy diets.

One of the glitches in pursuing a national health care problem is the political avoidance of personal accountability and responsibility. We have been lulled into reliance on government, a condition which is hard to reverse, and the government seems to cherish it’s role. Individual responsibility is the ultimate solution; until then everyone pays in one way or another.

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Source by Al Van Abbema

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We’ll use the term “preparation areas” to refer to food planning. After all, a lot more activities than cooking are crammed into most kitchens. Right here are some of the major work sections you may find.

Fabrication:

The fabrication area is wherever raw (or processed) foods begin their journey to their final destination: the guest’s plate. Sometimes referred to as pre-prep, it is here that we break down prime cuts of beef, clean and fillet fish, cut up chickens, open crates of fresh produce, and decide what gets stored and what gets sent on to the other parts of the preparation region. In planning for each region, begin with a flowchart to determine which functions should be included.

If the restaurant plans to handle its own meat-cutting duties (and numerous do to save money), you’ll require room for a sink, a heavy cutting board, portion scales, meat saws, grinders, and slicers. Some of these items can be placed on mobile carts and shared with other places of the kitchen.

Preparation:

Within the preparation region, foods are sorted further into individual or batch servings. The loin we trimmed in the fabrication area is cut into steaks, lettuce and tomatoes are diced for salad assembly, shrimp is battered or peeled. Ingredients are also mixed: meat loaves, salad dressings, casseroles. Salad and vegetable prep areas are found in nearly every foodservice setting. They are busy places, and their focus should be on efficiency. When designing the layout, remember the require for worktables, compartment sinks, refrigerators, and mechanical equipment. Order some worktables with food and condiment wells that are cooled from beneath with ice, allowing simple accessibility. A prep area with unique requirements is the garde manger, a term that encompasses both food planning and decoration

or garnish.

The garde manger region is the source of cold meals: chilled appetizers, hors d’oeuvres, salads, patés, sandwiches, and so on. Obviously, refrigeration is of paramount significance here, as are knife storage and room for hand-held and small appliances: ricers, salad spinners, graters, portable mixers, blenders, juicers. Colorcoded bowls, cutting boards, knives, scrub brushes, and even kitchen towels all assist to avoid cross-contamination among various kinds of raw foods.

Manufacturing:

Yes, it’s finally time to do some cooking, within the production area. This region is divided into hot-food planning, usually recognized as the hot line, and cold-food preparation, known as the pantry. Manufacturing

may be the heart from the kitchen area, and all the other places are meant to support it.

Holding:

As its name suggests, the holding region may be the one in which either hot or cold foods are held until they’re needed. The holding area takes on various degrees of importance in various types of foodservice operations. Basically, the larger the quantity of meals produced, the a lot more critical the need for holding room. For banquet service and in cafeterias and hospitals, food should be prepared well in advance and stored at proper temperatures. In fast-food restaurants, the require isn’t as excellent but it still exists.

Assembly:

The final activity of the preparation area is assembly of each item in an order. At a fastfood place, the worktable is where hamburgers are dressed and wrapped and fries are bagged. At an à la carte restaurant, it may be the cook’s side of the pass window, where steak and baked potato are put on the same plate and garnished. Again, in large-scale foodservice operations, grand-scale assembly takes up a lot more room.

The menu and type of cooking you do will figure out the makeup of your manufacturing region. Will you need a fabrication region at all, if yours is a fast-food franchise that uses mostly prepackaged convenience meals?

Conversely, cooking “from scratch” will most likely require a lot of room for preparation, baking, and storage. Batch cooking, or preparing several servings at a time, will also affect your space allocation. Finally, the number of meals served in a given time period should be a factor in planning your room. Your kitchen area must be able to operate at peak capacity with plenty of room for everyone to perform efficiently. For a hotel with banquet facilities and for an intimate 75-seat bistro, this means very different things.

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Source by Franco Zinzi

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No one knows when the next earthquake, hurricane or other natural disaster will hit. Civil unrest can occur in a very short period of time and require that you have the means to stay indoors for at least 72-hours, or perhaps even longer.

But what if you had to remain inside for a week? How about a month? While every household should have some type of emergency preparedness supplies, how many households have enough supplies to last one or two months in the event of an emergency? Many households stock extra pantry items such as canned foods along with emergency lights, batteries, blankets, first aid kits, and other emergency supplies. However, the most important items in your survival stash needs to be food and water.

When creating a food storage strategy, consider some of these benefits of freeze dried food:

1. Long-term shelf life

Purchasing #10 cans of freeze dried food will keep for 25 years depending on the storage temperature. All the major freeze dried manufacturers make #10 cans which is a standard method of food storage. Cans in storage can be rotated for backpacking and camping trips, or just rotated as part of your normal meal preparation. Even smaller containers such as #2 ½ cans from AlpineAire have a 15-year shelf life, and small 2 and 4-person serving freeze dried food pouches last 7 years.

2. No cooking required – just add water

Many preppers underestimate the benefits of having freeze dried food that can be prepared quickly and easily by just adding water. While hot water is desirable for the best taste, in case of an emergency, cold water will provide the same nutritional benefits. The last thing you want to do in a survival scenario is to worry about different meal combinations as you want to dedicate all of your energy to keeping yourself or your family safe.

3. Food has intrinsic value

Food is a universal currency during a survival scenario. You can trade it for other necessities such as medicines, protection, or transportation. Your food value also never goes to waste as you can rotate the food that you purchase in and out of your food storage. Finally, buying food now with a long shelf-life locks in the cost of food now so in the event of severe price inflation, your supply of freeze dried food has already been paid for.

4. Other considerations

• Food storage gives you peace of mind knowing that you are prepared in the event of a disaster.
• You can supplement your freeze dried food supplies with canned foods and foods you use regularly but have 1-2 year shelf life so that it can function as both food storage and an extended pantry.
• Do not forget to stock up on your most favorite items such as coffees, teas, hot chocolate, candies, and whatever else you view as a luxury or comfort food. In times of crisis, these food items will help lift your spirits.
• Consider whether you need to have smaller, more portable food storage units if the types of disaster you are preparing for may require you to move quickly. A six month supply of food storage is great to have in your basement, but if you cannot stay at home during an emergency, you need the ability to collect your food and move quickly.

In summary, serious thinking about how an emergency scenario may affect you should lead you to consider, amongst everything else, that food is a key element to your disaster planning.

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Source by Timothy Darwin Lee

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The Italian food of the Veneto region poses a perplexing question: With so many dishes to choose from, how can anyone have only one favorite? Given the great regional variations within the region, not to mention between Veneto and the rest of the country, there are a lot of unique dishes waiting for you to discover them. However, if risotto is something you crave, Veneto is definitely for you.

Other than pasta, risotto is one of the most famous of Italian foods. And if some of the greatest Italian food dishes in existence are what you’re looking for, Veneto is a place you must visit, at least via the dinner table.

Risotto is a specific way of cooking rice, and is growing in popularity to take it’s rightful place alongside pasta in the pantheon of Italian food, like many specialties of the Veneto region. To make a true risotto, the rice must first be cooked in olive oil or butter.

The rice must be coated evenly in the butter oil, and toasted just until translucent. Broth is then added just a little at a time, the idea is to slowly saturate the rice with the broth, which helps it achieve it’s distinctive risotto texture. Unless the rice is toasted, it’s not risotto. Even if it’s served at the finest of Italian food restaurants, it just isn’t the same unless toasted.

Risotto is an incredibly versatile dish; almost anything may be added to it. Because of the diversity of high quality local ingredients in the Veneto region, this makes for a fascinating variety of risottos to be tried. The local specialty (for example, seafood and fish in coastal areas) tends to put in an appearance in the risotto.

The possibilities go far beyond seafood though, all sorts of fresh local specialties show up in the Veneto region. Pumpkin, asparagus, even radicchio turn up in these local gems. Frog legs may even be found, a more commonplace part of Italian food than many would suppose.

Italian food differs from the stereotype held by many; this is doubly true in the Veneto region, which features some wonderful dishes not found elsewhere in the country. Pasta and beans, for instance is a very popular dish in Veneto and is turning up at more and more Italian restaurants all the time.

Anchovy, as well as stockfish are present in some dishes of the Veneto region. But the popularity of sausages dwarfs that of the humble anchovy, with the local dry-cured, pressed salami (sopressata) and garlic salami being special favorites.

In Veneto, the Italian food prominently features the local produce; radicchio and asparagus are things the Veneto region is well known for, as are peas with rice. This is a dish found only in Veneto, and is something of a departure from what Italian food is generally assumed to be.

The Veneto region offers many different choices for the discriminating diner. From sopressata to vegetable dishes to it’s unparalleled risotto, the Italian food of Veneto is an embarrassment of riches. If you require risotto to make it an Italian meal, the foods of Veneto are just the thing for you. With so many unique dishes, Veneto has enough different, wonderful Italian food for everybody.

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Source by Isabel Da Silva

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Eating nutritionally lacking food is as good as eating no food at all. Even if you’re making sure your food is rich in proteins, vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates and other nutrients, there is a great chance it loses nutritional value before eating it.

Few people are aware that most of the nutrients in food are lost while cooking if the cookware is not made of the right material. It happens in the following three ways:

1. Conventional cookware (metals or ceramic) leach toxins into food while cooking. At cooking temperature, metals like Stainless Steel, Aluminum, Titanium, Cast Iron etc., leach ions and react with food — a biochemical entity, with heat acting as a catalyst. As a result, food gets contaminated and becomes unhealthy. These toxins cause serious health issues in the long run ranging from short-term illnesses to chronic diseases.
2. Also, heat from these pots is destructive to the delicate nutritional cells in food. Touch a metal pan five minutes into heating, it burns your skin and leaves a scar, food is made of the same tissue and is subject to damage while cooking.
3. The steam has to be released through a vent before you open the lid. So, the water-soluble nutrients evaporate. This is another way nutrients are lost.

You can check your cookware at home with a simple alkaline baking soda test to see if it’s leaching toxins into your food.

How is Pure Clay different?

Pure clay is 100% safe and healthy for making cookware as it is made from primary clay – clay without natural contaminants. The following features of pure clay pots ensure food cooked in them is healthy:

1. These pots do not leach any chemicals or metals into food while cooking.
2. They cook with a unique far-infrared heat that penetrates deep into the grains without damaging them. This heat is food-friendly and cooks gently thus keeping the nutrients intact.
3. This healthy cookware has excellent steam management properties. The ergonomically designed pot & lid uniquely allow steam to circulate inside and let food cook with its own steam pressure. The straight walls of the pot, its concentric circles, the inner flute on the lid and a cool underside of knob allow for steam to rise, get condensed and drop right back into the pot. This prevents water-soluble nutrients to evaporate as steam like in conventional metal/ceramic cookware.

All these great features make food nutritionally rich and truly healthy for you and your family. No more worries about toxins entering your food or losing nutrients, choose healthy pure clay cookware today and enjoy healthy food for the rest of your life.

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Source by Sharon Ray

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It is often a standing joke that what Americans consider to be Chinese food is totally of our own making, and cooks and diners in China would find them completely foreign (like chop suey–what on earth is that?). But somewhere along the line, Chinese food was adapted from our Asian immigrants, Americanized and became wildly popular, not only as a take-out but served buffet-style and sit-down as well. Many dishes are accompanied by plain white, brown or fried rice. Let’s review our most popular:

Dim Sum: bite-sized dumplings stuffed with veggies or meat,essentially a Cantonese preparation not always offered at many restaurants; can be also presented as small sampling dishes, depending on the menu and the cook’s whim;

Hot and Sour Soup: a delightfully “sour” soup with a spicy broth, it contains red peppers or white pepper and vinegar; another favorite soup is a light broth with won ton (meat-filled dumplings);

Quick Noodles: a staple in every Chinese home and found on most Chinese restaurant menus, it comes in several versions, often called lo mein and may be plain or have veggies;

Szechwan Chilli Chicken: a fiery Sichuan delight loaded with pungent spices like ginger, green and red chillies and brown pepper; be careful if you are not a fan of hot chilli peppers;

Spring Rolls: frequently a lighter version of traditional egg rolls, which are shredded meat and veggies encased in a papery thin dough, rolled and deep fried; a favorite to be sure;

Egg Foo Young: an egg pancake with veggies, often too bland for Chinese foodies, served with a brown sauce;

Shitake Fried Rice with water Chestnuts: mushrooms and water chestnuts are used frequently in Chinese cooking, and this is just another version of traditional fried rice; some things never go out of style;

Moo Shu: stir-fried veggies and meat, chicken, shrimp or tofu, rolled up in thin pancakes spread with plum sauce (this author’s favorite dish);

Kung Pao Chicken: savory pieces of chicken cooked in a wok with veggies and flavored with peanuts and spices; from the time of the Qing Dynasty (circa 1876);

General Tso Chicken: deep-fried chicken dish in a tangy sauce, an all-time favorite; it may have been named in honor of a Qing dynasty military leader, but it’s really anyone’s guess;

Orange Chicken: another popular deep-fried chicken dish, coated with an orange sauce after cooking (not for a low-fat diet, to be sure);

Peking Duck: don’t expect this specialty to be readily available at many Chinese restaurants, Peking duck harkens back to the Imperial Era (221 B.C.) and characterized by its thin, crisp skin; often must be ordered ahead of time but fit for an emperor;

Like many other cuisines, Chinese cooking uses sauces and seasonings native to their regions, which might include:

soy sauce

oyster sauce

sesame oil

rice vinegar

rice wine

soybean paste

star anise

five spice powder

chili sauce (or paste)

chili powder

sichuan peppercorns

black bean sauce

Many of these are available in the Asian aisle of your local grocery store or a multitude of Asian grocers in larger cities and can be great fun to try in your own kitchen. So look up the closest Chinese buffet or restaurant, bring your appetite and get ready to sample some of American’s favorite foods. As the old saying goes, you may be hungry an hour later, but it’s well worth it.

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Source by Dale Phillip

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When it comes to choosing the right kind of healthy dog food you may find that it is more difficult than you first thought. Certainly most of the dog foods that you find available in your local pet or grocery store contain large amounts of preservatives as well as being over processed. Therefore in order to help you find the most healthiest dog food for your beloved pet we provide you with some tips below.

Firstly you need to understand what your dog’s diet should be made up of. It is important that you provide your dog with ample amounts of protein (40%), fiber (30%) and starch (30%). Therefore look only for those dog foods which contain these amounts of ingredients within their formula. Also when looking at the label ensure that the first ingredient that is listed is some form of protein (pork, chicken etc) and is not made up from meat by products. You will often find that some of the cheaper dog foods will least a meat ingredient first but then just below will provide details of by products and fillers that have also been used to make the food that they produce. Be wary as this means that you will not be provided with sufficient amounts of meat (protein) which your dog requires to remain fit and healthy.

Secondly look at what preservatives the dog food manufacturers are producing. Certainly they are essential as they help to keep the food from going and so remaining edible. However they do not need to be ones which are made from artificial substances as these could actually cause serious health issues for your dog in later life. Instead look for those foods which use Vitamins E and C within them as they are not only great for preserving food but are also much better for your dog as well.

If you can afford to then choose only premium brand foods such as Eukanuba, Iams or Hill’s as these contain the most healthiest of all ingredients that you are likely to find in dog food today. Plus they also provide a wide range of foods that are suitable for dogs of all ages and when they reach certain stages in their lives.

However if you really want to ensure that your dog only eats healthy dog food then you could consider making your own. Today if you were to carry out a search online you will find that there are plenty of sites now offering a vast array of healthy dog food recipes and meal plans that you could try out and see which your dog prefers.

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Source by Allison Thompson