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You can’t beat home cooking, you know exactly what went into the recipe, and you know exactly when it was made. That is the problem when you buy ready meals and pre prepared foods, you do not know how good the ingredients are, how much salt went into it, and how many days ago it was made.

So home cooking is definitely the way to improve the quality of the food you eat. It is also a really great way to try new things, you just need to be a little bit more organised.  the best way to do this is to decide before you shop what you are going to be eating for the week ahead. Then make a shopping list of all the ingredients you will need, add up the different quantities so that you have a total of, for example all the flour you will be needing. This way you should have everything you need to make all those delicious home cooked meals.

If you really want to try some new things, why not get a luxury hamper and use the different ingredients to give your cooking some extra flavour. if you enjoy this you can also think of giving one as a top Christmas Gift, and also pass on the recipes you have tried too, this makes a more personal gift to friends and family.

One really nice thing that can come about from you cooking more at home is that you could get all the family involved, and make cooking something you all participate in. Choosing your menu together, and steering away from the kids’ favourites of chips with everything. Children often are more willing to try new things if they have had a hand in making it. Home cooking could transform your family life in more ways than one.

Whenever I think of baked goods, I think of the smell of a hot coffee. Those two just seem to go hand in hand. Ever since I visited Italy and tasted my first cappuccino, I have been on a quest to recreate the perfect froth and while they say you can easily just whisk your own, I gotta admit that I prefer any of the more luxury brands type of milk frothers.

After testing several different frothers, I have found the model I am using these days, the Froth Au Lait Mini Stainless Milk Frother, which is very easy to use, creates the perfect froth and is small enough to keep next to my coffee maker on the counter top.

Whenever I have friends over and ask if they want to have a cup of coffee, they always ask for cappuccino. And I fully understand them. There is something special about drinking cappuccino instead of just having milk in your coffee. The froth adds a different dimension, a sense of luxury if you may say so. It makes you feel appreciated and pampered.

So for me it is the perfect way to indulge every so often, and the right moment to just stop everything I am doing and fully enjoy the taste of the coffee and the sensation of the creamy, airy froth on top.

Something that I have been fascinated with for over 10 years is capturing the moment a nice meal that has been lovingly prepared is just about to be served.  I will often take pictures of the whole process from start to finish.  From the peeling and cutting of the veg, to the basting or browning of the meat, i like to take a photograhic journey of some of my favourite meals.

I have a whole iPhoto folder dedicated to Food that has been prepared by my good self.  It’s nice to look back to see some of the creations i have experimented with in the past.  The thing that has been funny lately is that my daughter has been avidly watching me for the last 7 years and now she wants to copy what she has seen.  I use my own digital camera and to be honest I don’t want to lend her my one, i’ve had too many scrapes in the past. 

I went online to look for where i could get an affordable kids camera for a good price, i had a few options to choose from as a lot of brands have cottoned on to the fact that if they can get a kid to prefer a certian style of camera now, they might have a customer for life.  Well this is what most manufactures do these days anyway, that’s totally fine with me I just wanted a decent camera that would let my daughter take pictures of the food i was making and of course for her first forays into baking cookies and cakes!

I decided on the Kiddizoom Camera and it has done the job perfectly.  Now i have setup a folder on my computer for her to store all her food photos aswell, i’m pleased that she is taking an interest in cooking, even if it is just taking pictures…for now!

We all want to be healthy and fit, but it’s a goal that is hard to accomplish in our society. The best ally you can get in your quest of a healthy life style is triple leaf tea. Full of antioxidants, vitamins and other micronutrients your body needs, triple leaf tea will help your body to function properly. 

Triple leaf tea is an amazing combination of over 20 plants, which are used for centuries to improve people’s health and typically considered to be the best detox tea. Modern medicine made us forget about the natural ways to heal our body. The drugs we are using now usually treat the symptoms we have, and not the cause. Traditional remedies, on the other hand, work on the cause of the problem, and, by resolving it, the symptoms disappear.

It doesn’t mean we should give up to modern medicine, quite the contrary; but we can also benefit of ancient, natural remedies, such as triple leaf tea. For instance, if you have high blood pressure and high cholesterol, your doctor is forced to put you on drugs, and those drugs have a lot of nasty side effects.  
But, through a simple gesture such as drinking a few cups of triple leaf tea every day, you might not get to the point where your cholesterol and blood pressure is so high that you need drugs. The combination of ingredients from this tea will help your liver and kidneys to function better, the toxins will be neutralized faster, and you’ll avoid, that way, to reach the trigger point of serious chronic illnesses. 

Though glamorous by association with its myriad shapes, tasty stuffings, and imaginative decorations, pastry is basically simple, consisting of a paste made from flour, water, shortening, and a dash of salt and baked in a hot oven. It is the method of mixing, the temperatures at the various stages of preparation, the careful baking, and the addition of other pastry ingredients for flavor and texture which give pastry its final festive touch. To differentiate pastry from cake, rolls and other hot breads, cookies, and torten is a delicate matter.

Essentially, it is a baked product which does not employ a chemical leavening agent. While cake uses baking powder or other combinations which produce a gas to form a light and tasty baked foam, pastry depends on the skilful manipulation of the shortening, flour, and liquid and on the manner of baking. Exceptions are the multiform Danish pastries and a few French pastries which use yeast. The flour used in pastry is almost always ordinary milled wheat. Chinese pastries use nee flour, and some of the heartier Scotch pastries add oatmeal for a chewy quality.

Pizza, an Italian pastry which is popular in a number of countries, is prepared from a yeast dough, professionally baked on hot tiles, with a filling of Mozzarella cheese, tomato sauce, and a variety of garnishes. Barring these exceptions, there are three basic types of pastry: plain, flaky, and puff.

I was browsing online for a great dessert idea that I could serve at my wedding when I came across these chocolate sea salt caramel tarts on etsy.  These looked so good and I decided I wanted to try making them myself.  All the recipes online for making caramel sauce were so complicated that I was afraid that these cute little pies were way out of my league.

I came up with a really easy idea to make these desserts that’s fool proof even for those who burn water.  First instead of making the pie crusts from scratch I used pre made pie crusts that I found at whole foods in the freezer section.  The crusts still need to be baked but they are already formed, I just have to bake them and fill them with caramel.

The only thing left to do is to fill the tarts with a caramel sauce.  I found an easy method online where all I would need to do is to cook some sweetened condensed milk over low heat for an hour.  The milk will slowly thicken and turn brown, turning into caramel.  While my quickie caramel won’t look anything like these sea salted butter caramels, they are creamy and rich enough for my pies.  After cooking the sauce all I had to do was pour it into the baked pie shells, wait a couple minutes for the sauce to harden and sprinkle some sea salt on top.

So how did it go?  I’m happy to say that these chocolate caramel tarts were a hit with all the wedding reception guests.  My mother in law even made me promise to make them this year at our Christmas dinner.

If you are on a low carb diet then more than likely one of the foods that you really crave is bread.  Bread is a staple in most meals we eat from the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we have as kids to the hot rolls served as an appetizer at a fine dining restaurant.  Most everybody agrees that having bread as a part of the meal is highly desirable, expecially for the millions of sandwiches and burgers that are sold every day.

The problem is, if you are on a low carb diet then white bread is not going to be on the menu.  White bread is baked with highly processed flour which turns the complex carbohydrates in wheat into simple carbs.  This means the carbsohydrates are quickly digested and turned into blood sugar.  This spike in blood sugar can cause problems for diabetics and for other people on a low carb diet.

What would be heaven is if we had a no carb bread to choose from.  Well that isn’t available but there are a lot of low carb bread products that can be added to a high protein diet without blowing your daily limit of carbohydrates.  The most restrictive phase of the Atkins diet still allows 30 grams of net carbs so there is room to add some of these alternatives to your food list.

It is very common for a serving of low carb bread to have only about 4 or 5 grams of net carbs.  If you have a craving for bread then this would not be hard to work into your diet.  These breads, rolls, and biscuits are usually made from a combination of flax seed, oat bran, and whole wheat flower.  There is enough roughage available that you don’t have to worry about a spike in your sugar levels because the digestion process is slowed way down as the roughage is digested.

And the best part is the bread really does taste like bread and the low carb tortillas made with this recipe really do have the flavor you want.  So if you are limiting your carb intake don’t take that to mean that you can’t have a sandwich now or then.  Just be smart and use a low carb bread variety.  You can enjoy the taste and keep your carb count low.

If you or someone in your household is on a gluten free diet, learning how to make gluten free bread can bring back a lot of food options.  To make the process easier you may want to invest in a bread maker, if you don’t have one, and of course gluten free flours.

You can buy gluten free bread in many stores now, but these breads are pretty expensive and some of them aren’t that great unfortunately.  Learning how to make your own gluten free bread at home has many benefits.  It makes the house smell wonderful and creates a cozy feel.  Homemade bread tastes better.  You also have full control of the ingredients when you make it yourself.  This is particularly helpful if there are other food sensitivities in play.  You can also add make the bread healthier by adding fresh flax meal, higher protein gluten free flours and nuts.

Don’t get discouraged when you first try to make gluten free bread.  You may have some flops, but that’s ok; it’s part of the learning process.  To increase your chances of success find a couple of gluten free bread recipes that have good ratings and reviews.  If other people have had success with a recipe there is a better chance you’ll have success as well.

Once you find a couple of recipes you like you can start to modify them a little at a time to create your own versions of your favorite breads like cinnamon raisin or hearty, nutty breads.

When I was in college, all my friends loved it when I baked for them. The most requested items were sticky buns and cinnamon rolls. I have always made my baked goods from scratch with high quality ingredients, which is what I credit to their popularity. With so many requests, I decided to open my own bakery since I was spending more time baking than at my day job. Before opening the business, I met with a local small business group that helped me setup everything I needed including bank accounts, public liability insurance and business licenses.

I focused on selling just cinnamon roll and sticky buns for the first year. After that, I slowly added other baked goods and built a coffee bar onto the business. Things were going great until one of my customers slipped while going to the bathroom. While another customer has spilled coffee, I did not get it cleaned up before someone fell. As expected, I was on the line for this woman’s medical bills, which thankfully were not that much. Not that it mattered though, because my insurance policy was enough to cover all of her expenses. Not having that policy just might have put an end to my business.

Who doesn’t like to make perfect rice? We know that it tastes much better than some clumpy or undercooked rice. But trying to reach that perfect rice can be hard to do. Luckily the cool-touch rice cooker made by Aroma can help you cook perfect rice every time.

The Aroma Cool-Touch Rice Cooker isn’t just for cooking rice. It can also be used to make stews; soups and it can even steam vegetables and meats at the same time. This can be a real time saver for families who are pressed for time.
For rice is can prepare up to 12 cups of any type of rice you want to cook. After it has been cooked, this rice cooker will then automatically keep it warm until you are ready to serve it. A feature that I really like is the water reservoir. This reservoir allows the water to channel away the condensation from the rice, leaving it fluffy and light.
You can find this rice cooker online at Amazon. I recently saw it offered there for under $30. As a bonus, you can have it shipped to you for free. While you are on Amazon, take the time to read the reviews there. You will see that there are over 85 reviews and they give it a four star rating.