Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Have You Tried Granola

Fruits like strawberries, watermelon, oranges, bananas and blueberries are all loaded with vitamins and minerals and taste good. You can eat as many of these as you want. Add them into your meals as side items. Add some frozen blueberries into your morning oatmeal or cereal to add some healthy taste to your breakfast, Italian food and Italian recipes.

Have you tried granola? Granola is a healthy combination of whole grains, nuts, honey and dried fruits like cranberries and raising and coconut. Some flavors of granola also combine flax seed which contains omega 3 fatty acids which are essential to your body's daily functioning. At Sam's Club they sell a brand of granola called Bear Naked that contains no high fructose corn syrup and tastes good. You can combine it with yogurt to give it some crunch. Eating granola instead of a candy bar is a healthy snack alternative.

Sodas and diet sodas. Neither one is good for you. So avoid them. Replace them with healthy drinks - the best one being water. But water can be bland. Try adding some 100% grape juice to give it a sweet flavor. Or try adding some lemon juice to give it a bit of a sour flavor.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Cooking With a Dutch Oven

I have baked delicious one dish meals such as stew and soups in a Dutch Oven that have turned out perfect especially when out in the outdoors. Other meals and snacks that can be made are pizza, rolls, and cakes. Meat is another savory meal that can be cooked to perfection in a Dutch Oven.

There are a few things concerning the cooking source that are important to fruitful Dutch oven cooking. They can cause the difference between undercooked or burnt food. When I am near cooking a meat dish such as ribs, chicken or roast, I like to brown the meat in the Dutch oven on a camp stove. The delcious flavor from the browned meat is in the Dutch oven and makes the finished product tasty. Another thing it does is this gets the Dutch oven hot so when it is placed on the coals, they sustain the heat and energy so it isn't lost trying to heat the Dutch oven up http://www.italianfood-recipes.com/The-Skinny-on-Skinless-Chicken-Breasts-Italian-Recipe.htm.

The heat for the Dutch oven has to be just right. To take a line from the three bears, it must be, "just right." This might seem hard to determine, but if you are using charcoal briquettes it is no harder than counting the number of briquettes to put under and on top of the Dutch oven.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Hot Gourmet Coffee

To fully appreciate a cup of hot gourmet coffee, you should take a minute to familiarize yourself with the basics of gourmet coffee. The coffee bean is not really a bean; they are actually the seeds of a cherry that are found on a coffee tree. There are a couple of different ways to extract the seed; wet process and dry process, http://www.italianfood-recipes.com/Broiled-Portobello-Mushrooms.htm.

Each process will bring about the shared result of removing all of the fruit from the seed.There are two grades of coffee: Robusta and Arabica. The Robusta makes up the coffee that contains the most caffeine, at the lowest price. Arabica (a.k.a. gourmet) coffee is the superior grade. It has half the caffeine of Robusta and has a more desirable taste.

Those that enjoy this type of coffee will also tell you that gourmet coffee has a much better smell and more desirable flavors than Robusta.Gourmet coffee is available in many of your favorite flavors, including: almond, amaretto, Irish cr�me, French vanilla, Swiss mocha, vanilla, chocolate, mint, peppermint, pumpkin spice and just about anything else you can imagine! Basically, if there is any flavor that you are partial to, you will be able to find.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Cooking Prime Rib On The Grill

You need a lot of charcoal for cooking prime rib on the grill. The cooking time is about two hours so you need about 8 pounds of good quality charcoal. Fire up the charcoal and wait until the flames die down and the charcoal is giving off a good heat.

When cooking prime rib on the grill, you don't want the meat to be directly over the hot coals. Move them over to one side of the grill so that you can place the roast on the other side. Before putting the meat on the barbecue, rub the exterior with a mixture of coarse salt, pepper and herbs. http://www.italianfood-recipes.com/links4.htm

You can use either bone on or bone off when cooking roast prime rib on the grill. You can ask the butcher to remove the bones and then tie them back onto the meat. This gives you the best of both worlds -- easy carving and great tasting ribs.

Place the meat on the grill and cover it tightly. If the cover has vents, you want to close them as well. Check the grill from time to time to make sure it has enough heat to for cooking roast prime rib on the grill. If it cools off, you can open the events to let the flames build up again.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Serious Pasta Lover

First of all, allow me a short digression. To a serious pasta lover the name "noodles" is plain simply dreadful. Noodles is a very good name for Chinese pasta, or Japanese, or Thai, or any other nationality pasta, but not for Italian pasta. Calling Italian pasta "noodles" would be like calling American baseball or English cricket something like "Stickball".

That is just sad. Yes, pasta is easy to cook, *if* you have the right ingredients, *if* you know the right way of preparing it, and, above all, if you have the right attitude. "What is this?" - I hear some of you gasp - "I now have to be like a zen archer or a samurai warrior just to prepare a bowl of noodles?" Let's proceed in order, one secret to the next (by the way, didn't we agree never to call pasta noodles again?). http://www.italianfood-recipes.com/links2.htm

If you feel your guest swooning in delight over your steaming pasta is a good thing, you have to take cooking seriously. Cooking, and especially cooking pasta, is an act of love and self-sacrifice. It requires your personal energy, your prana, your inner and outer purity, and your uninterrupted concentration. Without these elements, cooking is not cooking anymore, but just cold, mechanical, heartless food preparation. Would you feed such food to your dog?

Serious Pasta Lover

First of all, allow me a short digression. To a serious pasta lover the name "noodles" is plain simply dreadful. Noodles is a very good name for Chinese pasta, or Japanese, or Thai, or any other nationality pasta, but not for Italian pasta. Calling Italian pasta "noodles" would be like calling American baseball or English cricket something like "Stickball".

That is just sad. Yes, pasta is easy to cook, *if* you have the right ingredients, *if* you know the right way of preparing it, and, above all, if you have the right attitude. "What is this?" - I hear some of you gasp - "I now have to be like a zen archer or a samurai warrior just to prepare a bowl of noodles?" Let's proceed in order, one secret to the next (by the way, didn't we agree never to call pasta noodles again?). http://www.italianfood-recipes.com/links2.htm

If you feel your guest swooning in delight over your steaming pasta is a good thing, you have to take cooking seriously. Cooking, and especially cooking pasta, is an act of love and self-sacrifice. It requires your personal energy, your prana, your inner and outer purity, and your uninterrupted concentration. Without these elements, cooking is not cooking anymore, but just cold, mechanical, heartless food preparation. Would you feed such food to your dog?

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Attend Cooking Classes

You have a variety of places to choose from to attend cooking classes. You might start at a popular spot, a nearby community center that offers classes or workshops. Your local restaurants, also may have classes. or can suggest a good cooking school. You also can try learning from a family member or friend. There may be a lot of fantastic cooks in your immediate circle of friends and relatives. Your final choice in classes will depend on what you wish to accomplish with your cooking.

How do you choose a type of class? One place to start is with what you love to eat. Your favorite restaurant may offer classes by the chef. Or, if Aunt Mary always has made the most delicious salads, ask her if she might spend an afternoon with you, to show you how she makes them. Often, you will find people that love to cook and produce great dishes, will be glad to share their cooking methods.