Moms Easy Cooking - Fast Meal Ideas For Busy Moms
August 18, 2008
Every busy mom worries about how to prepare fast, nutritious meals for her family. Working moms often find they have very little time for meal planning and preparation. After a long day at work, the last thing on your mind is spending an hour or more cooking and cleaning up afterwards. A little advance preparation and some creative menus are all you need to make mealtime less stressful. You will save a lot of time and energy if you plan an entire week’s meals in advance, and do your shopping all in one trip instead of making several trips to the grocery store each week.
A simple online search will give you some great recipes and meal ideas, most of which you can prepare in less than fifteen minutes. You will be able to find delicious recipes for family favorites such as spaghetti, meatloaf, and stroganoff, all of which can be partially prepared in advance, saving you valuable time in the evenings. Most busy moms worry about nutritious, fast breakfasts. Consider keeping frozen waffles, yogurts, cereal, and microwave items such as Hot Pockets on hand to save precious time in the mornings and still send your kids off to school with a good breakfast.
If your children take their lunch to school, prepare them the night before. You will have more time to make sure your kids are taking nutritious lunches and you will save yourself a lot of time and hassle in the mornings. Lunch items can include vegetable sticks, fruit snacks, cheese, crackers, and convenient juice boxes. Your kids will love the variety and will often be able to prepare their own lunches for the next day.
If you want to save additional time in the evenings, try cooking in a Crockpot. You can cook meat and vegetables in one convenient location, and the best part is your food will be ready when you get home. Your family will love coming home to the smells of delicious Crockpot meals that have been cooking all day. Another helpful idea would be to purchase a bread machine with a timer. You can place the ingredients in the bread machine and set the timer so that the bread will be ready upon your return home from your busy day.
Jennifer Houck is the owner of an ever growing Online Resource Guide for Mothers. Visit http://www.ilovebeingamom.com today!
Ten Proven Tips to Buy the Best Meat Available
August 9, 2008
Ten Proven Tips to buy the Best Meat Available
As you look through the meat section at your local grocery store you are probably like so many others asking yourself if the steaks you have chosen is really good meat. Here are some tips on how to make sure you buy good meat.
The quality grade does not necessarily mean that you will be getting good meat. Some cuts of meat are just naturally more tender than others. You should look for cuts from the less used muscles along the back such as the rib and loin sections. The shoulder, flank and leg cuts will be tougher. How to make sure you buy good meat
As you look through the meat section at your local grocery store you are probably like so many others asking yourself if the steaks you have chosen is really good meat. Here are some tips on how to make sure you buy good meat.
Hans is author of Steaks, Seafood and Barbeque Recipes at Steaks-Guide.com
Garlic: A Quick Guide
August 1, 2008
Garlic, there’s nothing like the smell of garlic. It’s great in soups and sauces, roasted with meats or on it’s own, and it’s wonderful mixed with butter and slathered on bread and then baked.
The scientific name for garlic is Allium Sativum. It is related to the lily and the onion. Although related to the onion, and having a flavor that very slightly resembles that of an onion, garlic does not bring tears to the eyes when chopped.
When buying fresh garlic, be sure that the head feels very firm when you squeeze it. Over time, garlic will soften and begin to sprout, which turns the garlic bitter. To store fresh garlic, keep it in a dark, cool place, such as the basement. Do not refrigerate or freeze the garlic, as it will begin to loose it’s taste.
To peel a clove of garlic, place it on a cutting board, and put the flat of the blade of the knife against it. Press down on the other side of the blade with the heel of your hand, flattening the garlic slightly. The skin will come right off.
The strong flavor and odor of garlic come from sulfur compounds within the cells. The more cells that are broken, the stronger the flavor of the garlic will be. For the mildest flavor, just use a whole or slightly crushed clove of garlic. For a bit stronger flavor, slice or chop the garlic, and for the strongest flavor, mash the garlic into a paste.
Cooking garlic tames the strong flavor, and changes it in different ways, depending on how it’s cooked. If using in a sauce, it can be sweated or sauteed. In sweating the garlic, it is first chopped finely, and then added to a cold pan with some oil, it is then gently heated, causing the oil to become infused with the garlic flavor. To sautee garlic, heat the oil in the pan first, and then add the chopped garlic, stirring frequently, and being careful not to let the garlic burn and become bitter.
Roasting the garlic softens the flavor, and makes it soft and perfect for mixing with cream cheese to spread onto toast, or just spread on the toast itself.
To roast the garlic, take a whole head of garlic, and remove the papery outer skin. Place the garlic on a piece of aluminum foil, and drizzle with some olive oil. Loosely wrap the garlic in the foil, and place it into a 350 degree oven for 1 hour. Remove the garlic and let it cool. When cool enough to handle, separate the cloves of garlic, and squeeze each one. The flesh should pop right out. The roasted garlic is great mixed with cheese or potatoes, or on it’s own.
Don’t be afraid to use garlic in your cooking. Garlic is flavorful, and healthful, and of course, it will keep those pesky vampires away.
Tim Sousa is the webmaster for Classy Cooking, a library of free online recipes. Come and check out our selection of recipes, or share your own recipes with others.
What You Need in a Gourmet Kitchen
July 23, 2008
The best way to decide what you need in your kitchen is to first decide what it is you are going to be cooking in there. The best suggestion I ever heard on this matter is to find five dishes you really love. The dishes you like to find on menus at restaurants. The next thing you want to do is learn to prepare those dishes to your standards. This is going to take some time, and some research, but I promise you it is well worth the effort.
They say that professional cooks don’t like to discuss the way they prepare a disk or recipe, and I find this to be a fallacy most of the time. People in general love to talk about what they do, and enjoy appreciation for their hard work. So don’t be afraid to ask, politely, a chef how he makes a certain dish or what is in the recipe. Keep the question general, and you might be surprised about the tips you can pick up from a simple question. If she doesn’t want to share her knowledge, thank her and be on your way. Its not like you can’t find out from several other sources what is in a certain dish and how to prepare it. No harm no foul. Most of the time I get great results by paying attention to the chef if only taking a quick look at his pots and knives.
Each of our five dishes are going to have a few nuances regarding the items required in their creation. But there are some basics we want in our kitchen no matter what we are going to put on our home menu.
The first item on the list is a set of good cooking knives. You can’t do much without chopping and slicing. A set of good knives is always worth the money. Generally they last forever. When ever I get offered something like a “life time warranty” I always wonder “whose life?” But in the case of a fine set of cutlery we don’t have to worry about things like that. In the higher echelons of fine cooking, a chef’s set of knives is part of the job interview process.
When you look at chef knives, you will notice they generally have a wide triangular blade which tapers to a “center tip”, meaning both the back of the knife and the blade are gently angled to meet in a point at the tip.
This blade shape is perfect for allowing the blade to rock back and forth on the tip (using it as a fulcrum) when you are chopping. It is a great all-around, all-purpose knife for most of your kitchen. They tend to be a bit heavy, 6 to 10 inches long with the most popular being 8 inches. If you have never purchased or handled on on a regular bases, start with an 8 inch chef’s knife and get used to how it feels before moving on to something bigger.
Another choice you will have to decide on is whether you want a French or German style chef’s knife. The French version has a longer and thinner blade that is better for slicing while the German style is shorter and wider and better for chopping. To help you make this decision, check your list of five dishes and see what you are going to be doing the most of. Make sure the knife has a secure grip and a good feel in your hand, you’re looking for balance. The handle should be riveted to the blade. Those would be real rivets, not the painted on kind.
The next items we are going to need are a good set of pans and pots. Which pots and pans can probably be decided by our list of five dishes we made before. However, the pans should be of good quality. We don’t want a poor ‘non-stick’ application flaking off and ruining our dinner. There are plenty of things we can do to ruin our own dinners, we don’t want to be required to worry about our Cookware.
You want pots and pans made of stainless steel or heavy-gauge aluminum with non-oxidizing surfaces. The base of the pan should be thick and flat on both the inside and out for better heat efficiency. You also want handles that are riveted to the pan not welded and certainly no plastic handles. The lids should fit snuggly. The most important aspect however is how they feel in your hands. Pick them up and handle them. Just because some bouncy gourmet said they were the best doesn’t mean you are going to enjoy using them.
You probably want a good spice grinder. You might already have an electric grinder for your coffee beans and these are great, but don’t use the same one for your spices. Mornings have enough surprises.
Once you have these basics, start going through your recipes and keep in mind the methods you have to use to get them prepared. The rest of your kitchen will fill out from there.
Jerry Powell is the Owner of a Popular site Know as Gourmet911.com. As you can see from our name, we are here to help you learn more about different kinds of Gourmet food and Wines, Coffees from all around the world. http://www.gourmet911.com
The Right Grill for Your Barbecue
July 15, 2008
Barbecue is a mix of talents. There is the choice of meat (or in some cases vegetables), the creation and choice of sauce, and of course the flame. Once the components are gathered together, then the real talent starts with the maintenance of the flame, smoke, turnings and sauce applications.
We are going to focus on the flame, and the types of flame sources for our barbecue. There are basically three main sources in use today: Wood, Charcoal, and Natural gas or propane.
Natural gas and propane
Gas grills are easy to light. The heat is easy to control (via knob-controlled gas valves on the burners), so the outcome is very predictable. They result in a very consistent and tasty result, although some charcoal purists argue it lacks the flavors available only from cooking with charcoal. Advocates of gas grills claim that gas cooking lets you “taste the meat, not the heat” because it is claimed that charcoal grills may deposit traces of coal tar on the food. Many grills are equipped with thermometers, further simplifying the barbecuing experience. However propane and natural gas produce a “wet” heat that can change the texture of foods cooked over such fuels.
Gas grills are significantly more expensive due to their added complexity, and higher heat. They are also considered much cleaner as they do not result in ashes (which must be disposed of) and also in terms of air pollution. Proper maintenance may further help reduce pollution.
Charcoal
This generally begins with purchasing a bag of processed charcoal briquettes. A charcoal chimney starter is a traditional (but generally underused) method for getting a consistent heat from your coals. Alternatively, they can be lit in a pyramid directly inside the charcoal grill after presoaking with lighter fluid.
After all coals are ashed-over (generally 15-25 minutes), they are spread around the perimeter of the grill, and the meat is placed in the center for indirect cooking. For additional flavor and attractive appearance, thicker cuts of meat may optionally be seared over direct heat (outer perimeter of grill) prior to indirect cooking in the center. Water-soaked wood chips (such as mesquite, hickory, or fruit trees) are often added atop the coals for an extra smoky flavor. The temperature of the grill is controlled by the amount and distribution of coal within the grill and through careful venting.
An alternative to charcoal briquettes is lump charcoal. Lump charcoal is wood that has been turned into charcoal but unlike briquettes it has not been ground and shaped. Lump charcoal is a pure form of charcoal and is preferred by many purists who fear that artificial binders may be used to hold briquettes in their shape.
Wood
The choice and combination of woods burned result in different flavors imparted to the meat. Different types of wood burn at different temperatures. The heat also varies by the amount of wood and controlling the rate of burn through careful venting.
The type of wood chosen is really what sets this method apart from the others. This is where the gourmet can really experiment. Let’s go through some of the woods available to get a feel for the differences we can expect.
Golden Birch is very delicate & slightly sweet, typically used with fish, pork, lamb, goat, poultry, and light-meat game birds. As a smoke source Golden birch would be used to smoke Salmon.
Wild Apple is slightly sweet with a fruity smoke flavor. Used mainly for beef, poultry, game birds, and pork (particularly hams).
Sugar Maple has a mild smoky, sweet flavor. Good with lamb, goat, pork, poultry, cheese, vegetables and small game birds.
White Cedar has a fine light smoke, and doesn’t add much in the way of other flavors. Ideal for cooking fish, beef, and pork.
Wild Black Cherry, is hard to get a hold of but offers a distinctively sweet and fruity smoke. Great with beef, poultry & game birds.
Jerry Powell is the Owner of a Popular site Know as Gourmet911.com. As you can see from our name, we are here to help you learn more about different kinds of Gourmet food and Wines, Coffees from all around the world. http://www.gourmet911.com
How to Peel Almost Anything
July 7, 2008
The great English cook Prue Leith once famously remarked "life’s too short to stuff a mushroom". I feel pretty much the same way about peeling a grape.
However there may come a time when you want to do such a thing and it’s handy to have a simple method standing by. Not that peeling a grape is all that difficult, just tedious. You simply do it.
The same cannot be said of such things as peaches, apricots and even small pickling onions. The trick in each case is to use hot water.
With just about all thin skinned fruit, including tomatoes, you simply make a cross shaped nick in the skin, put them in a bowl and cover them with a very hot water for about 30 seconds. This cooks the skin and makes it very easy to remove.
You can do the same thing with baby onions, but you may need to leave them in the water a bit longer. That’s not a problem because there is no real danger of cooking the onion owing to the toughness of the skin. That’s not the case with most soft fruit so be careful not to leave them in the water for too long.
Melons, pineapples, grapefruit etc
These require a different technique and one that involves using a knife. It follows, therefore, that the knife needs to be very sharp.
The technique in itself is very simple but does require a little practice.
Start by cutting the top and bottom off the fruit. Then the place it on a flat surface so that it is standing upright and using your favorite knife cut vertical slices of skin away, keeping the blade as close to the contour of the fruit as possible.
Using this method you will find it very easy, for example, to remove the segments from peeled fruit such as oranges and grapefruit. You simply slip a small bladed knife between the pieces of flesh and the membranes that separate them.
In this way you can quickly and easily prepare a fruit salad for example, a salsa or your favorite tomato sauce. In fact the possibilities are endless.
Speaking of tomatoes, once you have peeled them, you might as well go the whole hog and remove the seeds as well.
Why would you do this? Because the seeds are inedible anyway and the pulp they are in introduces a lot of water into anything they are added to. Anyway, who wants to get a tomato seed stuck in their teeth?
Did you know, by the way that tomato seeds are not only inedible, they are virtually indestructible? So much so that a number of coastal currents have been traced by tracking the progress of these little wonders once they escaped from the water treatment plant.
So why bother to eat something that neither you, the sewage plant, nor the sea can digest?
Vegetables in general
Why bother to peel them at all?
The main reason, I suppose, is for the sake of appearance. There is a tendency to believe that vegetables without their skins look better than those with their clothes on.
In the case of carrots, I would have to agree. The skin, especially in older carrots, tends to go a gray color when cooked. It also shrinks and distorts the shape of the vegetable.
But in most cases I can see no really good reason for going to all that trouble. Simply wash the vegetables thoroughly, using a small nail brush you keep for that purpose, and then cook them in any way you wish.
One added bonus for doing this is that you retain more of the nutrients of the vegetable, a large proportion of which are in the skin. Of course, if you prefer to add the vegetable skins to your compost heap, you will get nice fat, juicy, healthy worms instead!
No doubt the magpies (or whatever carnivorous birds you have in your area) will be very grateful.
Garlic
If you intend to eat the cloves either whole or as a paste, there is no need to peel them at all until after they are cooked, when the pulp will easily squeeze out of the skins like toothpaste from a tube.
Peeling a raw clove is just as easy, once you know how. I learnt this trick from a kitchen hand, by the way, whose main job was to clean cooking pots, scrub mussels and peel garlic!
Simply put the clove of garlic on to a flat surface and press down on it with your thumb. It will ‘give’ slightly and the paper-like skin will fall away in your hand.
Prawns
If you are an American (or Paul Hogan) you call these mighty wonders ’shrimp’. If you are British, ’shrimp’ will mean a tiny crustacean of the same species. There is no greater bond than the language which divides us.
Have you ever wondered how a restaurant manages to serve peeled prawns with the head still on? Like this, of course:
Hold the head in one hand and the tail in the other. Straighten the prawn out as much as you are able, push the head and tail firmly towards each other so that you are compressing the fish a bit like a concertina.
Pull apart and the shell should separate from the rest. Learn to laugh at your failures 
Wash your fruit and vegetables
This is so important that I’m going to say it again: wash your fruit and vegetables.
Do this, even if you intend to peel them. If there is any contamination, either through chemicals or soil dwelling bacteria, now is the time to get rid of it. You really do not want to get it either on your hands or your chopping board.
And while I am on this subject, a favorite hobby horse of mine, be careful not to chop up your peeled fruit or vegetables on a surface where unwashed items have been kept. You risk cross contamination if you do and I promise you that your family and guests will not thank you for it.
You will find a lot more details about cross contamination and how to avoid it in my free ebook, "Hygiene In The Kitchen".
Remember that chemical contamination has a cumulative effect which may take some time to reveal itself as the toxins build up. Why take the chance? Wash your fruit and vegetables before use.
And at least rinse your hands between handling unwashed veggies and any other kind of food. You’ll make a lot of enemies that way, but they’ll all be bacteria who never really thought that much of you in the first place!
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Michael Sheridan is an acknowledged authority and published writer on cooking matters. His website at http://thecoolcook.com contains a wealth of information, hints, tips and recipes for busy home cooks.
