spoon

I have made a commitment to stick to a healthy diet this year, so as much as possible, I eat less meat and opt for seafood instead. The change was kind of difficult at first, considering seafood is more expensive than meat. What is more is that it is not all the time you can find a good seafood recipe that won't cost you that much. Luckily, I have a partner who is creative in the kitchen and just recently, she made me this delicious seafood meal that I would love to share with you, guys. She calls it called Grilled Herbed Prawns in Mayo Mustard Dressing with Mixed Green Salad. If you are into seafood and salad, this is the perfect dish for you! The recipe is simple and you can prepare it in less than an hour (not including the marinating part, of course). The best part is that it won't cost you that much, which means you can always prepare it every time you're craving for prawns and salad.
Enjoy!


Main Ingredients:
For the prawns
3 pcs. prawns, butterflied and deveined
paprika
cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil
For the dressing
½ cup mayonnaise
1/8 cup Dijon mustard
salt and pepper
chopped parsley

Instructions for preparing the prawns:
Begin by marinating the prawns with paprika, cayenne, salt, and pepper. Once marinating is done, sear marinated prawns in a little olive until the color changes. Remove prawns afterwards and set aside in a separate container.

Instructions for preparing the mayo mustard dressing:
Take both mayonnaise and mustard and whisk them together in a small bowl. Season the mixture with salt and pepper to taste. After that, sprinkle the mixture with parsley and mix it well.
Now comes the assembling part.

Instructions for assembling:
What you will need
Mixed salad greens
chopped onions
chopped carrots
To assemble

On the center of a salad plate, assemble a bed of mixed salad greens and sprinkle some chopped onions and carrots on top. Take the grilled herbed prawns and position them gently around the green salad. I would suggest placing up to three pieces of prawns only per serving. Finally, drizzle the dish with mayo mustard dressing.

There you go! Another healthy seafood recipe you can enjoy this year. If you want, you can also enjoy this dish a bottle of favorite red wine. Perfect for a lovely evening with your partner!

About the Author: Stephen John is a food and wine enthusiast. He loves to travel and try exotic cuisines of different countries. He also writes for winemarket.com.au, an excellent source of some of the best wines of the world like Penfolds wine, Australian Shiraz, and more.

Poached Salmon in Vacuum Plastic with Grilled Toast

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Posted on Thursday, March 7, 2013

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One of my resolutions for this year 2013 is to lean more on healthy dishes, and I'm very blessed and fortunate for having a wife who can cook healthy meals really, really well. They say that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach and I couldn't agree more. The past few weeks, I have been craving for salmon so I asked my wife if she could prepare something for me. You can say it was one of the best salmon dishes I have ever tried in my entire life. I'm not sure where she learned to prepare this dish, but she calls it Poached Salmon in Vacuum Plastic with Grilled Toast. If you want to go on a healthy eating journey this year, this dish will definitely motivate you as it has motivated me. 



Main ingredients:

½ cup rock salt
2 cups of water
500 grams ice cubes
Salmon, skin on (15 grams per portion)
½ cup olive oil
Chili powder
Sun-dried tomato
Fennel
Lemon zest
Grilled toast or crouton for garnish

What you will need for the toast:

Baguette, cut into thin slices
Butter
Chopped mixed herbs

Method for preparing poached salmon:
1.    To prepare the brine, combine the salt, water, and ice. Marinate salmon in the brine for 20 minutes. After that, remove the marinade and drain salmon on paper towels.
2.    Place salmon in vacuum plastic and add olive oil, chili powder, sun-dried tomato, fennel and lemon zest. Next, seal the plastic with vacuum sealer.
3.    Take the sealed salmon and poach it in 40-degree Celsius in  a covered saucepan for about twenty minutes.
4.    When done poaching, remove salmon from pouch and set on a plate. Garnish the dish with lemon zest and crouton or grilled toast on the side.

Method for preparing the toast:

1.    Spread some butter on bread slices and sprinkle them with chopped herbs.
2.    Toast or grill the bread until they turn light brown or light golden. Turn over to cook the other side.
3.    Once done, place a piece of salmon on a small cocktail bowl.
4.    Take the marinade with which the salmon has been poached earlier and spoon over the fish. Season dish with salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Make sure the oil has been drained out.
5.    Garnish dish with grilled toast, drizzle with chili oil, and serve.

There you go. I hope y'all like it. Enjoy!

About the Author: Stephen John is a food enthusiast. He blogs about food and culture and loves to travel and try exotic cuisines of different countries. He recommends that you get fish recipes here.



Simple tips to organize your recipes

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Posted on Tuesday, December 11, 2012

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A recipe is usual set of instructions which are sued for producing and preparing a certain drink, dish or food. The main objective of using the recipe is to have clear-cut ingredients to be used and the materials required and in what way they are combined. A recipe name states what you are going to make. A recipe may also include the author name sometimes. Three components may be presented in the recipe and they are list of ingredients, amount of ingredients, and preparation of instructions. 

Healthy Recipes

  Some of the objectives of recipes collection to accomplish are, 

1.Easy to add
2.Easy to find
3.Easy to browse
4.Keep clean

There are lots of ways to organise and collect recipes on a computer through online or software applications it is important to maintain a hard copy of your much-loved recipe which is typed or handwritten and pasted on the cards. These recipes play a vital role in sharing the memories and shared meals.
The copies which are maintained this way will always ensure that preferred serving dishes are not lost over a period of time. There are numerous options to organise scraps of papers and recipe cards. You can also organise them with the photo albums by using artificial pockets to maintain them clean.

Some other storage methods:
Spiral notebooks or unattached leaf pages in a file. In this method it is not having any flexibility to sort and arrange. With the binder it is easy to attach pages at the desired location whenever required. 

Recipe boxes are also another way to organise the recipes, but they are too small and not sufficient, if are having more than small gathering of methods and recipes. 

Here are some of the perfect storing models and recipe which doesn’t have drawbacks.

Use lengthy index card folder box, which can hold a big amount of recipe cards or index. These are easy to rearrange, easy to add and organise. You can place one after another on the top of another. 

Recipe files can be arranged alphabetical order.
These boxes are easy to get acquainted with many preferred recipes and also easy to browse. These boxes are portable and can be simply set on the kitchen desk, you can sit and sip some tea or coffee and play cards to know what catches your senses. 

Cookbook Nook: Create and a keep cookbooks and nook or magazines in the kitchenette so that the recipes will be easily accessed and can be indexed. Keep only cookbooks which are used frequently in the kitchen. 

Make your grocery shopping list and plan your meals at the same time, with the help of the menu planners so that you can get an idea of the ingredients and the meals to be used before heading the store. It helps to provide a balanced diet all through the week or month and simultaneously discourage unwanted purchasing. 

Author Bio: This article has been written by Maria Benson, a professional blogger from UK. Maria Benson is interested in finance and politics and she has been writing articles on several such categories. Her hobbies include painting and reading, during free time. Her interests are researching on financial products and services and writing reviews on them. She is working on ppi claims looking forward to posting a few articles on it.


A major reason of hair loss and weak hair is unhealthy diet. Just like other parts of the body when hair does not get proper amount of nutrition, it tends to get weak and starts falling. Once you face such problem, the first thing to do is to check your daily diet chart. Evaluating your diet you can understand whether some kind of nutrient is in excess in the diet or something is lacking. In most of the cases it is the intake of junk food in excess and a lack of fresh, green, healthy food that causes problems. Therefore, what is most important for healthy hair is a balanced diet with balanced amount of nutrients.

Best Food Recipies

Healthy hair requires proper amount of water, protein, vitamins and minerals. To remove toxins from our body and to keep your hair hydrated, we must drink a minimum of 8 glasses of water every day. It is important to stop consuming junk food and add fatty acids to the daily diet. The fishes like tuna, trout, mackerel, sardines, herrings and salmon are full of fatty acids as well as vitamin B-12 and iron. Apart from these, olives, nuts, avocadoes and seeds are also good source of fatty acids. For healthy hair, flaxseeds and pumpkin work wonder.

For healthy hair the green vegetables are very vital. Green vegetables like spinach, broccoli, Swiss chard and add a lot of iron, vitamin A and C in your diet.  Beans are excellent source of protein, iron, zinc and biotin. Being rich in zinc, nuts are also great for your hair. Proteins and vitamins are important for hair growth and therefore, you need to have poultry eggs, oysters and whole grains.

For shiny, healthy and lustrous hair that bounces with life, some excellent foods are Whole Grains, Dark Chocolate, Milk, Oysters, Sweet Potatoes, Bacon, Red Meat, Carrots, Yogurt, Blueberries, Salmon, Kiwis, Tomatoes, Red Wine and Nuts.

Sandeep Arora is a senior chef who has been working as the Chief Chef in the top hotels of India for twelve years now.  He has written many articles on Restaurant Mumbai. In this article he is providing us with some valuable information on foods that work wonder for healthy and lustrous hair.

Choosing the Keurig Cup that is Right for You

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Posted on Tuesday, September 18, 2012

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No matter if you’ve browsed online or the store shelves for K-Cups to use with your Keurig machine, it’s likely that you’ve come across a wide assortment. If you are new to K-Cups and have never used them before, the variety of K-Cups has probably been overwhelming to you. While the assortment of K-Cup flavors and types is definitely advantageous in many ways, in some instances having so many different options to choose from can be quite confusing, especially for novice K-Cup users who are new to the Keurig scene but know that they want something they can enjoy. To help make your decision a bit easier, here are some ways to narrow down your options.
Coffee Beans

Tea or Coffee?
One of the first and probably easiest decisions you’ll have to make when choosing the right K-Cups is whether or not you want coffee or tea. If you plan to purchase both kinds, make the choice as to which ones you’d like to pick first. There are dozens of tea and coffee K-Cups to choose from, so picking between tea or coffee helps to eliminate some options. Once you’ve made this choice, you can then continue on picking between K-Cups.

Know Your Taste Buds
When you have decided between tea or coffee, you’ll then want to determine which type of tea or coffee K-Cups that you want. When looking at tea K-Cups, you’ll notice that there are all sorts of tea varieties to choose from including:
  • Iced teas
  • Earl gray tea
  • Breakfast tea
  • Green tea
  • Herbal teas
  • Specialty teas
  • Decaf teas
The same goes for K-Cup coffee varieties. With K-Cup coffees you’ll find:
  • Decaf coffee
  • Name brand coffee
  • Various roasts
  • Half-caff coffee
  • Flavored coffee
  • Seasonal coffee
Still Undecided?
Even after considering all of your likes and dislikes, you may find that you simply cannot choose between certain K-Cups. If this is the case for you, the best option is to purchase a K-Cup variety pack. These variety packs come in both tea and coffee flavors and often contain some of the most widely sought and liked K-Cup flavors. With a K-Cup variety pack, you don’t have to spend money on buying several different K-Cup packages that you may or may not like. Instead, a variety pack allows you to sample an assortment of K-Cups so that next time you are K-Cup shopping in-store or online, you’ll know exactly which ones you want to purchase.
Keurig Cup

Finding a Larger Variety
Another thing to keep in mind when choosing and buying K-Cups is that stores only tend to sell the most popular K-Cups. If you are looking for the widest variety so that you can truly find that K-Cup that will brighten your mornings, it’s best to browse online. Here you’ll find many more types of K-Cups and even those that are only available in stores during certain months throughout the year. Online K-Cups also tend to be much more affordable. With the right K-Cups in hand, you’ll love your Keurig that much more.

Coffee Retriever has a huge selection of K-cups and they offer 24-count boxes, instead of 18 like most other places. Check them out here.

Women as cocktail enthusiasts

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Posted on Wednesday, September 5, 2012

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cocktail enthusiasts

If you think of American men as beer guzzlers and women as cocktail enthusiasts, think again. Americans are now consuming more wine than beer, and women are purchasing more wine than men. The times they are a-changing, and the stereotypes require adjustment. According to Merrill Research & Associates, Americans have increased their wine consumption for 11 years straight, and per capita consumption is now all of 2.77 gallons per year. If you’re thinking that whoever is drinking 2.77 gallons a year has a lot of work ahead before catching up to you, you’re probably a member of an group referred to as “Wine Clubs,” who comprise 13.7 percent of the population, drink 87 percent of the wine consumed in the United States, and have 99 percent of all the fun. Total wine consumption in the U.S. is now 703 million gallons with a $26 billion value at retail, which would be nothing for oil companies, but the wine business is grateful. So if you’re a “core wine drinker,” you’re sharing 611,610,000 gallons among one another per year, hopefully with food. But since 42.7 percent of Americans are non-drinkers, and 24.7 percent of the population still drinks only beer and/or spirits and probably a little water, both foreign and domestic wine producers and retailers are salivating at the opportunity that this potential market presents.

Apparently, women are less influenced by wine ratings and scores and more focused on the actual quality of the wine, the label design, the bottle shape, and the philosophy of the winery. “It makes good business sense to make sure that communication messages have appeal to women,” the Wine Institute astutely observed. 

Not only are women buying more wine, but more of them are making it too. Women are also assuming leadership roles in the industry. Women are also taking lead roles in sales, marketing, and distribution, and they are also becoming sommeliers in increasing numbers, a position traditionally held by men.

So in case you count yourself as a postmodernist and don’t believe in progress, be heartened. At least in the world of wine, a little progress seems to be occurring.

 

No baker is complete unless he’s got all the essentials he needs to arm himself inside the kitchen. Indeed, the art of baking is something millions of people are keen to share with everybody. In fact, more and more people have gone crazy over baking their own fresh bread or preparing their own cake for their kids’ birthday. Whatever the reason, preparing your own bread or pastry is something delectable not only for the palate but for the heart. And what makes your culinary masterpiece perfect is when you made the right measurement and not an inch of it too much or too little. 

Now you want to be your own pastry chef par excellence? Here’s what you need for a start:
1.       Scale
It’s been said many times over that the art of baking has to do more with science than with the taste bud. And so, you can achieve this when you measure the right ingredients. Choose a scale to give you just the right amount of ingredients you need. Remember that too much or too little ingredients could mean disaster to your finish product. Scales will guarantee less waste and fewer cleanups, so instead of using 2, 3 or 4 different measures, why not settle for one scale and get the same accurate measurements?
2.       Measuring spoon
Measuring spoons are perfect for small quantities, especially liquids, since they are more intricate to weigh. Now how to do measure a teaspoon and not a tablespoon? You’ll know it with the right measuring spoon, so invest on this one and you’ll never go wrong with your baking. 
3.       Silicone spatula
A silicone spatula does so many things inside the kitchen. You can use it to scoop and stir ingredients, scrape your mixing bowls or frost the icing the right way.
4.       Oven mitt
It’s always best to ensure your safety, and the heat-resistant oven mitt is what you need to protect you from the extreme heat. You’ll need to wear one especially when taking out something very hot outside the oven. Choose a mitt that’s made from durable materials so it will last for quite a while.
5.       Glass bowls
Mixing is an essential part in baking and so you want to make sure that you do it well and right. Shop for at least three bowls of different sizes, ranging from small to large. Choose glass instead of plastic or metal. Plastics get stuck with odor and you’ll have a hard time whipping eggs whites within. Meanwhile, metals are reactive to acids at times, especially with lemon or lime juice.
6.       Jellyroll pan
A large and stainless jellyroll pan is perfect for baking cakes or cookies, so it’s a must to have this. But there’s more. The flexibility of jellyroll pans also extend to working perfectly well when preparing granolas, sponge cakes, brownies and muffins.
7.       Cake pan
Every start-up baker would want to test his mettle in baking cake. But don’t start baking unless you’ve purchased an 8x2 nonstick cake pan, the ideal size for round cakes. You can purchase bigger ones later, although most homemade cakes are made using this one.
Now there you’ve got the seven most important baking tools that you need to jump start a successful career in baking. So grab these baking essentials now and start kneading the dough!
About the Author – Manilyn Moreno is a writer and caterer for Better Cater. She enjoys writing about her passions which include cooking, organizing events and outdoor activities.

The Difference between BBQ and Grilling

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Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2012

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Most people do not very understand the distinction between BBQ and broiling. once they throw a BBQ party or get invited to a BBQ picnic, they image a jolly experience preparation steaks, sausages, chicken wings, sweet corns, marshmallows, potatoes or different things over a grill. Well, they need been mistreatment the incorrect term right along. properly speaking, it'll be additional correct to mention that they're really throwing a broiling party instead of a BBQ party. Let's take a glance at a number of the variations between BBQ and broiling.

Source of warmth
Generally, you'll be able to think about broiling as quick preparation done at a heat. once individuals observe a BBQ party, this is often the fashion of preparation that is sometimes used. The food is grilled over a grill with direct heat from the fireplace. whether or not you're employing a gas grill or a traditional grill with charcoal, the food is grilled terribly as regards to the supply of warmth thus it's quite probably that charring happens. On the opposite hand, BBQ is sometimes typified by slow preparation that is completed at a lower temperature. in a very real barbeque, the food is grilled with Associate in Nursing indirect supply of warmth.

Time of preparation
In relevancy the supply of warmth is that the time of preparation. As explained earlier, the time taken to grill your food is real quick as a result of the food is grilled directly by the warmth supply. For this reason, seasoned grillers can understand that the simplest meats to use for broiling square measure the costly and high grade cuts of meat. once these sorts of meat square measure grilled over Associate in Nursing open flame, they will be grilled during avery short time. Typically, the skin of the meats are going to be cooked however you'll be able to make certain that the juices square measure latched at intervals, promising a most luxurious meal. after you square measure talking regarding real BBQ, the time taken may be a minimum of many hours, and there square measure instances once the meats square measure grilled many days. you'll hear BBQ lovers talking regarding "low and slow" and you recognize why after you study the time of preparation. in a very typical barbeque, the more durable cuts of meat that square measure more cost-effective square measure used. once these meats square measure grilled with low heat over a extended amount of your time, they flip tender whereas the juices square measure maintained.

Flavor
In broiling, it's quite not possible that you just can fancy any flavor that comes from the supply of warmth. Generally, grilled meats style flavorous just because individuals use the choicest cuts for this sort of preparation. compared, grilled meats style entirely completely different from grilled meats as a result of they totally absorb the smoky flavor of the supply of warmth. There square measure varied sorts of wood which may be used for barbecues, giving the meats a particular flavor that cannot be duplicated.

Now that you just understand the distinction between BBQ and broiling, ensure you utilize the proper terms after you square measure organizing a broiling or BBQ party within the future!

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