Sonic Supper!

Starting with Mom, you’ve always heard that you need to eat your veggies. What’s the big deal about them? Vegetables are often the least favorite of the food groups. Even for people who like them, it can be challenging to get the recommended 5 servings a day. Are they really that important? Yep! Mom was right: eat your veggies! Eat your fruit too.

Up until recently a primary measure of nutrition value has been the vitamin and mineral content of a food. It turns out that vitamins and minerals are only a small part of the nutrition offered by plants. Some foods like celery, apples and mushrooms don’t have significant levels of vitamins and minerals, but they are rich in other healthy compounds called phytonutrients.

Phytonutrients is a catch-all phrase used for a wide variety of secondary nutritional components. The term “phyto’ originated from a Greek word meaning plant. These compounds include carotenoids (including lutein and lycopene), flavonoids, isoflavones, inositol, lignans, and indoles. They are part of the plants strategy to defend itself against pests, and it turns out that these compounds have multiple protective effects for us as well.

A vegetable soup diet is an incredible way to both lose weight and pack your body full of nutrients. There’s different approaches you can take to a vegetable soup diet. You can go all out and do an exclusive vegetable soup diet, or you can simply replace it with a few of your meals, which will cut down your overall caloric intake, while adding a horde of new nutrients to your diet you normally wouldn’t get. Whichever way you go about your vegetable soup diet, it’s important to keep a few things in mind.

Just buying canned vegetable soup from the store is not the way to go for a true vegetable soup diet. The sodium content is through the roof and the vegetable content is often weak. This can easily lead to bloating and a false sense of nourishment and nutrition.

Standard vegetable soup diet recipes tend to involve adding a lot of salt to the mix causing the broth to once again contain a high level of sodium. And many vegetable soup diet recipes call for potato’s which have a relatively high glycemic index count which one may not want when their goal is to lose weight with the vegetable soup diet.

The world we live in is full of varied cultures & traditions, each one featuring their own unique way of cooking & hence offering a diversified taste. Chinese cooking is one among the most followed ones.

As a nation, China has several festivals and traditions. Accordingly they have varied dishes for each event. In America, Chinese skills of cooking are looked upon as an art. For centuries together, their delicious delicacies are tickling the taste buds of the Americans.

Here are a few key features of Chinese cooking:

1. Chinese cooking is relatively quite easy and quick.

2. The specialties in Chinese items are categorized as per the nation’s culture, festivals & districts.

3. Some examples are steamed fish, Doufu, dark vinegar rice served with ginger, din sum, etc.

4. Cooked tea is the most preferred drink with the Chinese cuisine. In china, different varieties of tea are planted, hence, it becomes a part of their daily routine.

5. The basic ingredients of Chinese food are water and/or oil.

6. Chinese cooking takes care of everyone’s personalized tastes as the food items that can be added to these dishes are quite optional and can be modified as per an individual’s choice.

Get this: for many years scientists claimed that drinking coffee was responsible for all kinds of ailments and illnesses, and they were wrong. In actuality most of the ailments were caused by the cigarettes on which most of the coffee drinkers were puffing. It turns out that coffee and cigarettes are habits that go hand-in-hand for many people, a factor that the studies did not take into account.

Not that coffee is as healthy as, say, a drink from an unpolluted spring high in the mountains. It’s not. The caffeine from coffee can be addictive, and those who drink coffee on a regular basis will find that quitting can be somewhat painful. In addition, coffee can be a bladder irritant and disturb your sleep. People who drink a lot of coffee are also at greater risk for developing osteoporosis.

Health Benefits of Coffee

On the other hand, coffee also has its health benefits. Aside from a mild (and sometimes useful jolt) here are a few:

Reduced Suicide Rates

Caffeinated substances act like mild antidepressants. According to the Nurses’ Healthy Study, suicide rates 50% less among coffee drinkers than among those who don’t drink coffee.

As much as people wanted to consume food whenever they want to, gaining weight is a big consideration. This is why numerous food recipes have flagged the market, all purporting to be healthy and diet-friendly. However, not all these foods are actually good for the body. Some contain high caloric value even though they appear to be full of nourishment. The person is left then to decide which the real deal is.

To guide the health-conscious people out there, here are healthy cooking recipes that contain diet friendly foods:

Grilled Brocolli
To prepare, mix lemon juice, oil, a little salt and pepper and pour the mixture over the broccoli. Wait for 30 minutes before placing it in the grill. Brush the grill first with cooking spray. Place the broccoli inside a plastic bag, add some cheese and shake vigorously, ensuring that the broccolis are well-covered. Grill the broccoli over medium heat.

Stir-Fried Thai Chicken
Although chicken contains fat, one can still devour it when the part is carefully chosen. Pick the thigh part since this contains less fat. In high heat, put oil in the pan. One by one, add garlic, ginger, and the chicken. Stir well. After the chicken is a bit cooked, add the onion, red and green pepper, ginger, and sugar to taste. Stir until cooked. Finally, add the oyster sauce and peanuts. Mix well.

You think the Crock Pot is just for stews? Well, you might be surprised to find out that you can make everything from chicken, steaks, desserts and more. During especially busy days, cooking with a Crock Pot is a GREAT way to save yourself some time so you can take care of other things that might need to be done or just have a little extra relaxation time instead of spending excessive time preparing meals. So to save YOU time, I’ll shut my trap and show you a few recipes that you can try out at home.
Enjoy!

How to make Chicken Cordon Bleu in the Crockpot

Crockpot stuffed chicken recipe with Swiss cheese and ham.

INGREDIENTS:

4-6 chicken breasts (pounded out thin)

4-6 pieces of ham

4-6 slices of Swiss or mozzarella cheese

1 can cream of mushroom soup (can use any cream soup)

1/4 cup milk

PREPARATION:

Put ham and cheese on chicken. Roll up and secure with a toothpick. Place chicken in the slow cooker/Crock Pot so it looks like a triangle /_\ Layer the rest on top. Mix soup with the milk; pour over top of chicken.

About 20 years ago one of my aunts diligently collected recipes from various family members and friends and created a cookbook. It wasn’t very sophisticated, there were no photographs or anecdotes and it was typed and photocopied on loose leaf paper. I think we each provided a binder for our individual copy. I still use some of those delicious recipes and every time I browse through that binder it brings back memories of special family celebrations, casual backyard barbeques, and picnics in the park. Of course the most treasured of those memories are of the cooks themselves, because cooking good food is an important tradition in our family.

What is the attraction of project like a family cookbook? The obvious purpose is to preserve some of the best of family recipes that have handed down through generations. Many of us have recipes written on scraps of paper, faded and splotched, and tucked away in various places, hard to find when we want them. Or, we’ve lost grandmother’s recipe for lemon loaf or chocolate cake and can’t duplicate it exactly.

Your dog treat packaging is a very important consideration in building your dog treats. We have put together some thoughts and options perhaps you have not considered. Take a look.

In selecting your gourmet dog treat packaging, some things to keep in mind are:

1. This is the first impression that a customer has of your product and your company.
2. Your packaging is a great place to advertise.
3. Different types of packaging may appeal to different consumers.

#1 - Your Package and First Impressions

When a potential customer finds your website, or your dog treats in a pet store, they may very well see your dog treat packaging first. And let me also say, the pet treat industry is very VERY competitive. If your packaging looks like the majority of other packages, then most likely a consumer will purchase based on price. If your packaging looks cheap, the customer may decide that your product is cheap, even if it is the best gourmet dog treat going.

There are many theories about the best way to store coffee beans or ground coffee to retain freshness. One of the theories is to put your beans or ground coffee in the freezer for later use. Is this method the best way to store coffee? Let’s explore the idea.

Freezing seems like a universally accepted way to keep foods fresher longer. Freezing is a great way to store many of our everyday foods. Vegetables, fruits, meat, bread, and even butter can be given a life extension through freezing. In fact, freezing often retains many of the important vitamins and minerals in foods. Unfortunately, coffee may not share the same benefits from freezing.

There are 4 main enemies of our precious coffee beans: moisture, light, heat and air. At first glance, freezing doesn’t seem like it should be too damaging. Appearances, however, can be deceiving.

Coffee beans have been roasted in order to enhance flavor. The beans are also porous. Unfortunately a freezer can contain many other foods which have odors. The porous beans can absorb the flavors of many other frozen foods. Flavored coffees can be pleasant, but no one wants to drink seafood or garlic flavored coffee.

America is a melting pot of many different nations and peoples. We come to this country to make a new home and then assimilate to the customs of our new country. In that assimilation we often lose the traditions that are part of our family heritage. Over the years some of those traditions might be changed slightly and some might be carried out today exactly like they were done hundred years ago.

It is important that as new immigrants come to our shores they need to be aware that no matter how hard they try to keep hold of the old ways, their children will adapt those changes as they assimilate to become American kids. It has happened with every wave of immigration in this country and it really gives the richness to how our nation evolves.

Many of these traditions are about food. These traditions can be about what to eat and what not to eat. Some of these traditions may be about how to celebrate certain holidays. Most of these “recipes” are still passed on in the kitchens in homes all over America. Women have always handed down these ways of cooking to their daughters and granddaughters in the old country and even in America. Somehow here in America the chain becomes broken with the pulls of our modern life. It is important to have these recipes and traditions written down so todays children will have something to share with their own grandchildren.