Sonic Supper!

Archive for February, 2009

Italian salami is not often named as a typical Italian product, even if it is really present in Italians daily diet.

This simple cold cut is commonly used in Italy in an antipasto or, more commonly, inside a sandwich that a young Italian student eat at school pause.

Generally salami is made with 1/3 beef, 1/3 pork and 1/3 fat. This proportion varies depending on the kind of salami. For example, the felino one is usually made with precious meat and less fat, being considered a gourmet one.

Outside Italy, cold cuts are not always fresh and often are considered as something conserved, not appropriate for a daily diet.

This false impression is due to the fact that often these cold cuts are not consumed often in these countries, associated with fat and conserved food.

They are indeed conserved, and one should not base the own diet on cold cuts. But it is not a drastic choice, as they have high nutritional values.

Italian salami has a protein percentage range that goes from 24 to 30%, and contains potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and B1, B2 and PP vitamins.

Wine Collecting For Beginners

Collecting wine can be a very fun and exciting hobby - especially when you try to find the wine. If you are looking to collect wine, you may end up spending a bit more money than you thought. Wine collecting is a great hobby, although it can be very expensive. If you are just starting out, the tips below may come in very handy to help you get started.

The first thing to do, is find a place to store your wine. You can store your wine at home, although you?ll need to have a location with the proper amount of space and cooling temperature (between 50 and 65 degrees F). You?ll also need to determine what brands and types of wine you are planning to collect. There are several options to choose from, including red and white wine. You?ll also need to find some places with good quality and refinery to buy your wine from.

Most of us want to eat healthier meals. Many people believe this means you have to eat foul tasting foods, but that’s not the case anymore. With so many cookbooks and tips available today, any home cook can begin preparing more healthy foods in a short amount of time. Let’s take a look at how you can start eating healthier today.

The key to healthier cooking is in choosing the right foods to prepare. You can always use your favorite recipe and modify it with more healthy ingredients without giving up on the taste. Simply look at where you can take out the fats and reduce the calories.

For those of you who are not cooking inclined, you can even use restaurant foods and simply alter some of the ingredients. Add some more healthy dressings, sauces and other seasonings. Remove some of the fatty cheeses.

Cooking healthier foods doesn’t mean always eating raw vegetables. Cooking healthier foods involves combining a mix of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants into your foods. It makes no difference how they are prepared.

Cut Down On Fat

Cooking throughout the colonies depended greatly on your economic status. The upper classes hired European trained chefs, while the lowest classes relied on the mistress of the house to prepare one-pot dinners. What was similar throughout all of the classes, however, was what was prepared in the kitchen was only what was in season. The colonial chefs had to be very judicious with their food; a chicken could not be killed for dinner unless it would be eaten for breakfast and lunch too. To waste food was not an option. Especially with the new and ever-changing seasons of the Americas, the chefs had to make the most out of what they could get their hands on, and store and preserve what they could, as winters could be brutal.

Being the chef of the household wasn’t as easy as turning a knob on the stove as it is now. To have a chicken for dinner meant going out in the morning and killing it yourself, plucking and dressing it. Starting a fire and keeping it going throughout the day. The organs of every animal were also considered a delicacy, fruits and vegetables were always cooked, never raw. The drinks were made especially sweet, and the punch had generous amounts of alcohol. The meat also often came to the table with the head and feet still attached and the rolls served for sopping up the juices and gravy. Cooking was a difficult, all day job in Colonial America and a good cook was sometimes worth his weight in gold.

How many times have you been planning meals and came up disappointed when you discovered you didn’t have time to make the meal you wanted? Most people will not even think of putting a recipe in the crockpot unless it is written expressly for the crockpot. Did you know that many standard recipes could be converted to crockpot recipes?

The low setting of most crockpots is around 200 degrees Fahrenheit. The high setting is about 300 degrees Fahrenheit. An hour of cooking on the high setting is about the same as 2 to 2.5 hours of cooling on the low setting. You will find that most recipes for crockpots recommend cooking the food for around 8 to 10 hours on low.

Advice for Converting Recipes to Use in a Crockpot

When you convert a recipe to the crockpot, there are a few tips you will want to keep in mind. You will want to reduce the amount of liquid the recipe calls for. In the crockpot, liquid does not evaporate. You normally wind up with quite a bit of liquid at the end of cooking time. Reduce the amount of liquid you add to the dish by half, unless you are also using rice or pasta.

Over the past 30 years marketers have tried thousands of tactics to sell things. We have heard the “Your to smart to be without this product” tactic. We have heard the “Everyone needs this product” tactic. We have also seen the way that TV sells products making them more appealing then they really are. Has the coffee industry followed such tactics? Sure it has! Do you remember Folgers little jingle? “The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.” That ad made Folgers famous! So, is the term “Gourmet Coffee” another sales tactic? No! Allow me to explain.

Hey, singles and couples, do you want to dine like Emeril Lagasse on a Boston Market budget? As a self avowed foodie, I highly recommend a subscription to Gourmet Magazine. You cannot imagine how easy it is to prepare small portion, fabulous and delicious meals or huge feasts, fit for royalty, all in one gorgeously presented magazine! Let’s consider a few small changes in how we plan and shop.

Guess what, cooking for only one or two people doesn’t doom you to TV and prepared, corporate designed food. A little planning can change your dining experience from pre-made, easy, soulless heat and eat grub to easy and exciting dishes that are nutritious, tasty and easy on the pocketbook.

If you usually cook for only one or two people - or if members of your family rarely have time to eat together, here’s how to plan healthy meals for one or two, reduce the wasted food, and discover delicious and fun ways that small-quantity cooking can be made easier, healthier and more interesting and cost effective.

If your doctor has told you to cut back or even eliminate caffeine you probably left the office in a state of semi-panic. Coffee holds a special place in many people’s daily routine. It’s not always the caffeine that makes people love coffee, for some it is the flavor and aroma that excite the senses. So what are you to do now that you can’t enjoy your piping hot mug of hazelnut coffee? Don’t despair, despite what you might know, gourmet coffee is available in decaffeinated varieties.

Gourmet coffee producers finally realized that they had to produce decaffeinated versions to keep up with the ever-growing population of health wise individuals. The taste of decaf coffees may be slightly different than that of regular roast coffees but it can still be flavored and have a nice flavor to them.

Typically there are two methods for decaffeinating coffee. With either of the processes it is done before the beans are roasted and a little of the flavor of the bean is lost. One process uses a solvent to absorb the caffeine from the beans and then they are washed to remove the solvent.

Dealing With Hangovers

A hangover is something that just about all of us have experienced at some point in time. After spending a night out drinking, you may wake up in the morning with your head feeling heavy and your stomach in knots. At that moment, you probably decided that you would quit drinking, to prevent this awful feeling from happening again. No matter how hard you may have tried though, chances are that it happened again.

Even though we all know that alcohol can lead to hangovers, the cause of a hangover is something we don?t know. Alcohol does have some positive effects on the body, although it can also lead to negative effects such as hangovers. Some doctors will actually recommend it, while others will tell you never to drink it. Even though drinking is good, moderation is the key. The easiest way to avoid hangovers is to drink in moderation - and never get drunk.

As many of us already know, whisky, bourbon, and wine can result in a much harder hangover than vodka or beer. For many people, chemicals in wines or yeast found in unfiltered beers can result in headaches. Beer, wine, and liquor can be fun and relaxing to drink, although if you aren?t careful you can easily get a headache or a hangover.

The New Year is a time to reflect. It’s also a time to think about the things in our lives that we wish to change in some way. This dinner party idea combines the company of trusted friends, goals and a lovely meal.

Think about it. How many of us actually share our New Year’s resolutions? How many put a lot of thought into them? How many take them that seriously?

Why not host a dinner party and in the invitation send out some tips to consider when setting out your New Year resolutions. Your friends may have some resolutions already or otherwise this may prompt them to take a look at things they could improve in their life.

Ask your guests to come with a list of their resolutions and during your meal, each take a turn and share why you’d like to improve e a particular area in your life.

This is a lovely way to better understand your friends and where they’re coming from. If you’re really close, the resolutions will probably come as no great shock and people will only share what they feel comfortable with sharing publicly.