I love cooking. Cooking relaxes me, it soothes me, and it makes me feel capable. Not everyone is the same though. For some people, cooking and trying to decide what to cook just makes them feel anxious and stressed out. I know some people who dread the end of the day because it means that they have to try to decide what to feed their family. Many of them resort to convenient, packaged meals because it requires little thought. Let’s face it, we all do that once in awhile. But packaged meals don’t present the most healthy or balanced food options and using them on a regular basis is not the best idea. There are many dinner recipes that can take away the anxiety by presenting you with simple and easy meals.
Most family cooks are mainly concerned with finding fast and easy dinner recipes that the entire family will love. They’d prefer to come home at the end of the day and find a fully cooked meal on the table but that’s not overly realistic. What is realistic is the many recipes that can be found that will make your life easier. If you choose to buy a cook book (either in a book store or in one of the many online book stores), look for a book that uses simple ingredients that you would use everyday anyway. If you have no idea what cumin is, don’t buy “The Cumin Lover’s 100 Easy Dinner Recipes” book because they likely won’t be easy for you. I love to use my crock pot so I enjoy different crock pot recipe books or books that have an entire crock pot section.
If you are in a rush and need a dinner recipe using something specific – let’s say chicken breasts – there are many free recipes on line that can help you with your meal. Within only a couple minutes you can find recipes for several chicken dinners. In less than a minute I found a recipe for a chicken casserole (which I highly recommend because it means only one pot to wash afterwards!), chicken stir fry, and chicken fingers. All of these dinner recipes are easy to prepare and have a minimum number of ingredients.
While you are looking at dinner recipes, you’ll find other useful information online as well. You can find sites that will help you to plan meals (which sounds like a lot of work but will take away the need to look for recipes at the last minute), keep your kitchen sanitary, and prevent health risks.
Dinner recipes do not have to be extravagant or have a zillion ingredients. In fact, by finding about ten tried and true recipes, you can make your evenings simpler and more relaxed. Once you are comfortable with these recipes, you’ll soon be looking for more to challenge yourself with.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Beef jerky - Recipes
Although beef jerky is a popular snack food, it did not start that way. Beef jerky recipes were a necessity, not a luxury. People would cook recipes beef jerky because it would help them survive. If they had a long way to travel in the wilderness, for example, or if they had to find a way to keep meat through the winter, they could use beef jerky. Preserved meat would be used on ships, by armies, and by travelers because there was no refrigeration.
Nowadays, however, beef jerky recipes are a popular way to prepare a delicious – if unhealthy – snack food. Most of the time, people who cook up a beef jerky recipe are hunters. The best beef jerky, after all, is made from wild big game. Deer, moose, elk, and other similar animals all make great beef jerky recipes. It doesn't even occur to most of us non-hunters that we can make our own beef jerky recipe. Whoever heard of cooking beef jerky at home, after all? I had been eating Slim Jim jerky for years before I even realized that I could make my own. I wish I'd realized sooner. It is much cheaper to cook your own beef jerky recipes, and the taste is out of this world!
I have been perfecting my beef jerky recipes for several months now, and have impressed a lot of people who were not beef jerky fans. My mother would not touch the stuff before she tried mine. She thought it was disgusting, oily, and awful. I can understand where she came to that opinion. Most of the store-bought beef jerky recipes really are pretty poor. They've been sitting in plastic bags for months, and have been stuffed so full of artificial preservatives and MSG that most of the original flavor is lost.
Homemade beef jerky recipes, by contrast, preserve the flavor of the meat intact. When you dry the meat and turn it into beef jerky, it actually intensifies the flavor. Beef jerky recipes are not for people who only like mild food. They often have an intense and gamy flavor. Nonetheless, a lot of people find these beef jerky recipes delicious. Even if you have not enjoyed beef jerky in the past, if you have a chance to try some homemade beef jerky, you should. After all, if you don't like it you don't have to keep eating it. If you do like it, however, you will have found a delicious new treat!
Nowadays, however, beef jerky recipes are a popular way to prepare a delicious – if unhealthy – snack food. Most of the time, people who cook up a beef jerky recipe are hunters. The best beef jerky, after all, is made from wild big game. Deer, moose, elk, and other similar animals all make great beef jerky recipes. It doesn't even occur to most of us non-hunters that we can make our own beef jerky recipe. Whoever heard of cooking beef jerky at home, after all? I had been eating Slim Jim jerky for years before I even realized that I could make my own. I wish I'd realized sooner. It is much cheaper to cook your own beef jerky recipes, and the taste is out of this world!
I have been perfecting my beef jerky recipes for several months now, and have impressed a lot of people who were not beef jerky fans. My mother would not touch the stuff before she tried mine. She thought it was disgusting, oily, and awful. I can understand where she came to that opinion. Most of the store-bought beef jerky recipes really are pretty poor. They've been sitting in plastic bags for months, and have been stuffed so full of artificial preservatives and MSG that most of the original flavor is lost.
Homemade beef jerky recipes, by contrast, preserve the flavor of the meat intact. When you dry the meat and turn it into beef jerky, it actually intensifies the flavor. Beef jerky recipes are not for people who only like mild food. They often have an intense and gamy flavor. Nonetheless, a lot of people find these beef jerky recipes delicious. Even if you have not enjoyed beef jerky in the past, if you have a chance to try some homemade beef jerky, you should. After all, if you don't like it you don't have to keep eating it. If you do like it, however, you will have found a delicious new treat!
Monday, March 10, 2008
Feature Of Italian Cooking And Flavours
Italian cuisine dates back to the days of ancient Rome, with its roots beginning in Greece. As a matter of fact, one of the first cook books was written by a Roman, Apicus by name, in the first century A.D. Italian food today is enjoyed with relish by millions of people in countries around the world.
Italian cooks are very serious about their food, using only the freshest of ingredients which are available in season. The Italian menu is typically organized seasonally for this reason. At the base of the philosophy of Italian cooking is the belief that the freshest ingredients, combined with flavors and seasoning that complement each other will always produce a superior dish. It's small wonder that Italian cooking is one of the most popular world wide.
In addition to using only ingredients which are in season, Italian cooking is regional in nature. Although, in modern times, certain dishes have 'migrated', like pizza, coming from the south to become standard fare in the north, regional cooking is still deeply ingrained in the Italian cook, where traditional dishes are prepared in the manner they have been for centuries, with fresh ingredients found in each region.
Although Italy is a relatively small country, there are no less than eighteen separate regions, each with dishes developed with ingredients found in their locale. In the north west region of Lombardy, rice figures prominently in this region's cooking, with over fifty different versions of risotto. A bit of history you may not know: butter was invented in Lombardy.
While butter is used lavishly in Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna's traditional Italian cooking, olive oil is the choice in the southern regions, where olive trees are abundant.
As you might imagine, Italian cooking in the coastal regions feature seafood dishes, particularly Calabria and Sicily, famous for fresh tuna and swordfish native to their waters.
This abbreviated discussion can not hope to represent all the treasures of Italian cooking. Only in Rome will you find all regions represented in restaurants, prepared in the traditional way, which makes Rome an Italian cooking enthusiasts' dream come true.
Italian cooking brooks no shortcuts. You won't find frozen or out of season foods in the typical Italian refrigerator. Unlike in the United States, where we typically shop once a week, stocking up on produce and meats for a week's worth of menus, Italians shop daily for bread, fruit, vegetables, fish and meats as needed for the day's meals.
The Italian philosophy of freshness above all, with the artful combinations of flavors which complement rather than overwhelm and the centuries old traditions of food preparation, make Italian food a gastronomic delight. If you're only familiar with pizza and lasagna, you'll do well to find an Italian cookbook which can teach you the art of this wonderful tradition of Italian cooking. Prego!
Italian cooks are very serious about their food, using only the freshest of ingredients which are available in season. The Italian menu is typically organized seasonally for this reason. At the base of the philosophy of Italian cooking is the belief that the freshest ingredients, combined with flavors and seasoning that complement each other will always produce a superior dish. It's small wonder that Italian cooking is one of the most popular world wide.
In addition to using only ingredients which are in season, Italian cooking is regional in nature. Although, in modern times, certain dishes have 'migrated', like pizza, coming from the south to become standard fare in the north, regional cooking is still deeply ingrained in the Italian cook, where traditional dishes are prepared in the manner they have been for centuries, with fresh ingredients found in each region.
Although Italy is a relatively small country, there are no less than eighteen separate regions, each with dishes developed with ingredients found in their locale. In the north west region of Lombardy, rice figures prominently in this region's cooking, with over fifty different versions of risotto. A bit of history you may not know: butter was invented in Lombardy.
While butter is used lavishly in Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna's traditional Italian cooking, olive oil is the choice in the southern regions, where olive trees are abundant.
As you might imagine, Italian cooking in the coastal regions feature seafood dishes, particularly Calabria and Sicily, famous for fresh tuna and swordfish native to their waters.
This abbreviated discussion can not hope to represent all the treasures of Italian cooking. Only in Rome will you find all regions represented in restaurants, prepared in the traditional way, which makes Rome an Italian cooking enthusiasts' dream come true.
Italian cooking brooks no shortcuts. You won't find frozen or out of season foods in the typical Italian refrigerator. Unlike in the United States, where we typically shop once a week, stocking up on produce and meats for a week's worth of menus, Italians shop daily for bread, fruit, vegetables, fish and meats as needed for the day's meals.
The Italian philosophy of freshness above all, with the artful combinations of flavors which complement rather than overwhelm and the centuries old traditions of food preparation, make Italian food a gastronomic delight. If you're only familiar with pizza and lasagna, you'll do well to find an Italian cookbook which can teach you the art of this wonderful tradition of Italian cooking. Prego!
Best Cooking Courses In The Community
Though my husband tells me that he loves my cooking, even I have to snicker when he says it. I’m not a bad cook; I just don’t know how to cook a lot of things. Most of the meals I know how to make are simple, though they are very good. I think he gets tried of the same things, and I am thinking about taking a few short cooking courses to see if I can learn some new things about cooking so perhaps I can make something a little different on occasion.
Cooking courses can offer the basics of cooking, or they can offer you new meal ideas. It all depends on what you need to learn and what is available where you live. If you have all the basics of cooking down, you may not even need to take any cooking courses, you might just want to watch the Food Network. They have great shows on there that give you recipes and meal ideas for all sorts of budgets and tastes. My husband watches it all the time. Perhaps he is trying to tell me something.
As much as I like the Food Network, I think I might go for the cooking courses anyway. I might be something fun to do a few nights a week for a month or two, and it might be a good way to meet new people. I haven’t lived in my town for long and I don’t really know anyone. It might be a good time to make some new friends and learn some new meal ideas as a bonus. I know the local community college offers all kinds of cooking courses and that is where I will probably go.
If you want to find cooking courses in your community, you should also look to your local community college. They may or may not have classes for you. If they don’t, you may find that someone else does. You might even look in your local paper for cooking courses. If that doesn’t work for you, ask someone you know to help you out. We all have that one friend that is a whiz in the kitchen, and they are usually quite happy to show you what they know. If that doesn’t work out, you may have to bite the bullet and ask your mom. She may tease you, but she will be happy to help you out if you just ask.
Cooking courses can offer the basics of cooking, or they can offer you new meal ideas. It all depends on what you need to learn and what is available where you live. If you have all the basics of cooking down, you may not even need to take any cooking courses, you might just want to watch the Food Network. They have great shows on there that give you recipes and meal ideas for all sorts of budgets and tastes. My husband watches it all the time. Perhaps he is trying to tell me something.
As much as I like the Food Network, I think I might go for the cooking courses anyway. I might be something fun to do a few nights a week for a month or two, and it might be a good way to meet new people. I haven’t lived in my town for long and I don’t really know anyone. It might be a good time to make some new friends and learn some new meal ideas as a bonus. I know the local community college offers all kinds of cooking courses and that is where I will probably go.
If you want to find cooking courses in your community, you should also look to your local community college. They may or may not have classes for you. If they don’t, you may find that someone else does. You might even look in your local paper for cooking courses. If that doesn’t work for you, ask someone you know to help you out. We all have that one friend that is a whiz in the kitchen, and they are usually quite happy to show you what they know. If that doesn’t work out, you may have to bite the bullet and ask your mom. She may tease you, but she will be happy to help you out if you just ask.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)