Healthy Eating Tips » Desserts

Tips For Quick Meals and Desserts

Food Blogger — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:08:02 +0000

With cooking, creativity can be just as important as the ingredients. With our busy lives, we can all get in a rut sometimes when it comes to cooking. We want simple and quick meals that we’ve cooked hundreds of times – no surprises! We want our children to try new, healthier foods but aren’t willing to be creative and try out some new recipes.

If you find yourself cooking the same old meals week in and week out, there’s good news. Now you can try out new recipes using many of your handy ingredients and create new healthy meals easily. Here are some tips to get started.

Buy an Easy Cooking Cookbook

This might sound obvious, but you should first find a cookbook with recipes your family will love that’s very easy to follow. Many cookbooks today offer only “fancy” foods packed with bizarre ingredients you’ve never heard of. Often, the food in these books doesn’t even look tasty in the photos! Shop around online to find a cookbook that makes cooking easy and uses many of the ingredients you already keep around the kitchen. Be sure the cookbook offers your basic types of recipes such as entrees, casserole dishes, breads, fruits, veggies, beverages, and desserts.

Cookbooks also tend to favor one style of cooking, such as Santa Fe style cooking or Southern cooking. Choose one that caters to your family’s taste buds, but don’t be afraid to try something new.

Spice It Up

After buying a cookbook, go through the cookbook marking recipes you’d like to try for the month. You might try one or two new recipes a week just to add a little excitement to the dinner table. Write down the ingredients required, but don’t forget the spices. Spices are usually what can make or break a meal. Buy spices that are required for the recipes and maybe a few extra spices for later. You can stock up on spices and keep them for a long time. When you become familiar with the new spices, you can test them in a variety of foods to enhance the flavor.

Create Menus in Advance

Preparation is the key to saving time and sticking with a meal plan. Plan menus in advance so there are no surprises. Keep ingredients on-hand that you know you will need. Most recipes give a preparation and cooking time. Plan your meals according to your schedule. Check out the available time listed for cooking. On days that you get off work late and will be rushed, find simple meals that you can cook quickly.

Prepare Mixes and Simple Foods in Advance

If you plan to make a dessert or a large meal, prepare your mixes and simple foods in advance to save time. For instance, if you plan to serve rice, potatoes, or macaroni with a meal prepare these the night or morning before and store them in the fridge. Then you’ll only have to warm them up when needed.

Cake, cookie or brownie mixes for dessert can also be stored in the fridge for later cooking. Tip: To make your flour last for months and months, store the bag of flour in the freezer. The flour itself will not freeze, but it will last a very long time.

Mix Old with the New Just to be Safe

When preparing a brand new dish, be sure to mix some old food items in the menu just in case your family dislikes the new dish. This will ensure that everyone has something to eat even if they don’t like the new recipe. For example: Perhaps you’re introducing sourdough bread for the first time. You can cook some regular bread along with it and present both types of bread for everyone to try. Some family members might like the new bread and some might not. At least they are trying new foods!

With any new cooking venture, you will need to take some extra time and effort to give it a try. Once you become familiar with some new recipes, you’ll find that it gets easier and easier to add new foods to your family meals.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie Recipe

Food Blogger — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:16:07 +0000

Ingredients:

14 Nutter Butter peanut butter
-sandwich cookies, crushed
3 tb Butter, melted

1/3 c Chocolate chips; semi-sweet
4 tb Corn syrup, light; divided
4 tb ;Water, divided
1/3 c Peanut butter, creamy
1/3 c Sugar; + 2 Tbsp
1/4 c Peanuts; chopped
2 Egg whites
1 ts Vanilla
1 c Heavy cream; whipped

Prepare the crust by combining cookies and butter. Press into bottom and up
sides of a 9″ pie plate. CHILL UNTIL SET.

Combine the chocolate chips, 1 Tbsp corn syrup and 1 Tbsp water in the top
of a double boiler. Cook over simmering water until the chocolate melts and
the mixture is smooth. Remove from heat and COOL WELL.

Meanwhile combine the peanut butter, 1/3 cup sugar, 3 Tbsp corn syrup, and
3 Tbsp water in a 2 quart saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring
constantly until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is well blended.
Pour into a bowl and stir in the peanuts; COOL.

Beat the egg whites until foamy, using an electric mixer at high speed.
Gradually add 2 Tbsp sugar, 1 Tbsp at a time, beating well after each
addition. Beat in the vanilla and continue beating until stiff, glossy
peaks form when the beaters are slowly lifted. Fold the egg white mixture
into the whipped cream. Then fold in the peanut butter mixture. Pour half
of the peanut butter mixture into the crust. Drizzle half of the chocolate
mixture over the filling. Top with the remaining filling.

Drizzle the remaining chocolate in parallel lines over the filling. Pull a
knife across the lines at 1 inch intervals. FREEZE UNTIL FIRM. Wrap
securely in aluminum foil. Return to the freezer and CONTINUE FREEZING 8
HOURS OR OVERNIGHT. Remove from the freezer 10 minutes before serving.

Chocolate, Wonderful Chocolate

Food Blogger — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 02:23:23 +0000

Residents of Central America were enjoying chocolate drinks more than 3,000 years ago, a half millennium earlier than previously thought, new research shows.
art.chocolate.gi.jpg

People were drinking chocolate in Central America more than 3,000 years ago, scientists say.

Archaeologists led by John Henderson of Cornell University studied the remains of pottery used in the lower Ulua Valley in northern Honduras about 1100 B.C.

My Halloween Candy Top Ten

Food Blogger — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:53:15 +0000

In honor of Halloween, I’ve decided to post my Top Ten List of the best candy. Since I am a self-proclaimed sugarholic, I know candy

10. Candy Corn – A Halloween staple of which I was never a big fan; it’s just too sweet. It was one of my younger sister’s favorites.

9. Butterscotch – This hard candy goes a long way………….

8. Bazooka Joe – The gum doesn’t last very long, but is tasty & I really like the comic strips.

7. Jawbreakers/Gobstoppers – Large and small, these are fun, but could break some teeth.

6. Whoppers – Chocolate and malt always work well together.

5. Caramels – Melt them down & put them on apples or eat them straight out of the bag, caramels are wonderful, milky goodness.

4. Sweetarts – Hard, gummy or chewy, Sweetarts rule. At Easter there are jelly beans and they are out of this world!

3. Nerds – This one is just fun. Tiny little pieces of tart and sweet goodness. I prefer the grape/strawberry combo myself.

2. Tootsie Rolls – For that quick chocolate fix, this candy is perfect.

1. Smarties – These are the best! They’re made with more natural sugars than other candies, so even those who have problems with refined sugar, like myself, can have them sometimes.

So, those are my top ten favorite Halloween candies. To be honest, I love lots more, but these are ones that just remind me good times Trick or Treating with family and friends.

Relevant pics from Flickr

By ~Erin~ Sweet Baby Photo

By boopsie.daisy

By diyosa

By ~Erin~ Sweet Baby Photo

You Scream, I Scream for Ice Cream!

Food Blogger — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 23:23:58 +0000

I don’t eat much dairy, in fact I think that I could give it up entirely if it wasn’t for one thing – Ice Cream!

I love ice cream in all form and flavors. Personally, I don’t like a bunch of stuff in my ice cream, but I’ll eat it with some nuts or fruit in it, just don’t stick any cookies or marshmallows in mine please. But if you want to mix and match and make your own flavor ( virtually ) pay a visit to Ben and Jerry.

A little ice cream history from Wikipedia:

Before the development of modern refrigeration, ice cream was a luxury item reserved for special occasions. Making ice cream was quite laborious. Ice was cut from lakes and ponds during the winter and stored in large heaps, in holes in the ground, or in wood-frame ice houses, insulated by straw. Many farmers and plantation owners, including U.S. Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, cut and stored ice in the winter for use in the summer. Frederic Tudor of Boston turned ice harvesting and shipping into big business, cutting ice in New England and shipping it around the world.

Ice cream was made by hand in a large bowl placed inside a tub filled with ice and salt. This was called the pot-freezer method. French confectioners refined the pot-freezer method, making ice cream in a sorbtierre (a covered pail with a handle attached to the lid). In the pot-freezer method, the temperature of the ingredients is reduced by the mixture of crushed ice and salt.

The salt water is cooled by the ice, and the action of the salt on the ice causes it to (partially) melt, absorbing latent heat and bringing the mixture below the freezing point of pure water. The immersed container can also make better thermal contact with the salty water and ice mixture than it could with ice alone.

Ice cream is not all fun and games – it’s a huge business. Not to mention that ice cream seems to figure in more crime then one might imagine. And criminals are even getting into the act of making ice cream.

Relevant pics from Flickr

By merkley???

By Thomas Hawk

By awonderfultreat

Yahoo Answers
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