Archive for June, 2008

How to Use Bagged Salad Greens Safely
* Check the “best if used by” date, and of course, choose the one that is furthest from the date you buy it.
* Look through the bag and check for wilted, spoiled or old greens, and don’t buy that bag. When you get them home, don’t wash them. They’re pre-washed and safe to eat. Washing them can actually make them break down faster and become more susceptible to bacterial growth.|
* If you have leftover greens, leave them in the bag they came in.
* These bags are more high tech than they look; they’re specially designed to allow the perfect amount of oxygen and moisture into the bag to preserve the greens still in there.
* Add some protein, some vegetables and a light dressing and you have a ready-to-eat meal in minutes, and you get the vegetables you need.

How to decorate sports cupcakes

* To make turf: Place coconut in zip-top plastic bag. Add a few drops of green food coloring. Close bag and knead coconut by hand until it turns green. Spread on the serving platter.
* To make a basketball: Frost a cupcake with orange frosting, turning cupcake as you go to evenly coat. Using a pastry cone filled with chocolate frosting, pipe lines on the cupcake to look like stitching on a basketball.
* To make a baseball: Frost a cupcake with white frosting. Pipe two arcs on top using the red frosting in the pastry cone. Then pipe the stitches on each arc pressing down as you start to squeeze frosting out and then lifting up.
* To make a tennis ball: Frost cupcake in the “tennis ball” green frosting. Pipe two arcs in white on top.
* To make a soccer ball: Frost cupcake in white. Using the pastry cone filled with chocolate frosting, make a pentagon in the center of the cupcake and fill in with chocolate frosting. Make a line from each of the points of the pentagon out to the edge of the cupcake. At the edge of each of the lines, pipe and fill a triangle shape.
* Place finished cupcakes in a cupcake tree or on top of the coconut “turf” on a serving platter.

Note: Cupcakes can freeze for up to two months.

Download the book here (Right click and save target as)

Foods containing sugar are not the healthiest out there, but from time to time you just have to pamper yourself. Especially if you like ice cream. What goes perfectly with vanilla ice cream? What makes a perfect dessert? Yep, it’s apple crisp. And lucky for us, apple crisp is pretty easy to make at home. This apple crisp recipe will teach you how. The ingredients you need for this recipe are the following:
for apple filling:
4 – 5 cups apples
1/4-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
3 tablespoons sugar or less
3 tablespoons flour

and for the crisp
1 cup flour
1 cup oats
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup cold butter

Now we can begin. Set the oven at 350 degrees. Thin slice the apples into a pan and mix them with 3 tablespoons of flour, 2-3 tablespoons of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. Done? Good, now we will do the crispy part. In a bigger bowl mix in 1 cup of flour, oats and brown sugar then slice the butter into the bowl. Mix it in with a fork and spread everything over the apples. Apple crisp is done when it turns golden brown.. That should take about 45 minutes. Let the apple crisp cool down a little and you are done. If you liked this one, you can find more apple crisp recipes here.

Buying fresh fish can be a little scary, if you don’t know what to look for. Whole Food Market’s Martha Drayton shows and tells what you need to know to make sure you’re getting the freshest fish.