Cooking Addict

Get your kids involved in your dinnertime routine – it’s a great skill to learn, and promotes family bonding. .

Take them shopping for groceries with you. Let them help you choose the foods you will eat this week. You can ask them what fruits and vegetables they would like to have this week, and see what they bring back.

You can also give them a list of simple things they can shop for on their own. Before you pay, be sure to look over the items your child has chosen and if they are unsuitable, give your kids a valid explanation on why it was the wrong item. Before you know it, they will be shopping like pros and really giving you a hand.

You can ask your children to each choose a family meal for the week. Allow them to help with the preparation of the meal and to pick out details such as the type of dressing to use on the salad or accompaniments for the table to give it a cheerier appearance. Give each child a day of the week, and have them stick with it.

Tell your children often that taste buds do change as we grow. Just because they didn’t like the taste of a certain food, if they try it again in the near future, they may find that they actually like it. Have your kids try different foods, even those that are not a normal part of their eating habits.  When you get your children involved in shopping and preparing healthy meals for the family, you are giving them a gift that will last a lifetime. Knowing how to shop and cook are life tools that will serve them in good stead as well as keep them healthy and happy for many years to come.

Nothing is worse than anticipating a mouth watering sandwich only to discover the bread is stale. Not only that, the chips you were going to eat along with your sandwich are stale too. There are ways to combat these types of problems when you learn some tips for storing foods to stay their healthiest and freshest.

Let’s Tackle the Bread

You bought a freshly baked loaf of bread yesterday, but today it seems to be getting harder and harder by the minute. What can you do to keep it feeling as fresh as the day you bought it? Most artisan and freshly baked breads come in paper wrapping. By wrapping the bread in a sheet of plastic before storing, you can keep your bread fresher for a longer period of time. It is also recommended that you put a stalk of celery in the bread bag as well.

Your Celery is Drooping

You may not use celery on a frequent basis, but you want it to stay crisp for as long as possible. Many times you may find yourself breaking off a stalk of celery only to watch it wilt pitifully in your grasp. You can avoid this scenario by taking your celery out of the plastic, and wrapping it up in tinfoil. Your celery will last for weeks using this technique.

If you need to serve a stalk of celery, simply put it in a container of water with ice and put it in the refrigerator for a few hours, and it will get its crispness back. It should be pretty snappy when you dry it off.

Storing Chips and Other Bagged Snacks

If you have spent dollars and dollars on buying those clips made to keep your pretzels and chips fresh, and every time you bring one home they seem to last for one bag of chips, you may be at a loss for a solution. You can take care of this annoyance in an economical way. Go to your local dollar or discount store and buy a bag of wooden clothespins. Put them where you store your snacks, and you will have a clip for your chips every time you need one.

Here are dozens of tips to help store food safely and inexpensively. 

Pork is a versatile meat. It can be served in a variety of ways and in various forms. One of the most popular ways to serve this delicious meat is in a ham. The definition of a ham is any pork that is from the pig’s hind leg. Ham that comes from the pig’s front leg is called a “shoulder picnic.”

You can buy a ham that is smoked, cured, fresh or ready cooked. Getting your ham ready for cooking depends on whether it is frozen or not. The safest ways to defrost your ham is to thaw it in the refrigerator or in water. It is not recommended that you defrost your ham or any type of meat on the counter.

If you buy your ham fully cooked and canned or vacuum packed, they can be eaten straight from their packaging. Most people choose to heat a cooked ham. Hams that are fully cooked need to be heated to an internal temperature of 140 degrees Fahrenheit for best results.

Some Cooking Dos and Don’ts for Hams

If you plan on trimming the fat, be sure you leave at least ¼ inch. Scoring the ham allows the glaze or basting juices to penetrate the meat, so score your ham in a diamond shaped pattern for best results. You can leave the ham at room temperature for an hour or two before you cook it. Remember, if you baste your ham with pan drippings, they have a tendency to be quite salty. If you are going to glaze your ham with honey or sugar, do it during the final sixty minutes of cooking. Usually one application of the glaze is sufficient. Finally, if your ham has a bone, don’t throw it away, save it for flavoring bean dishes or soups.

For those people who love all things cooking and food, visiting a website that offers you free cooking games can be lots of fun. Finding games that you can share with your kids can be tough, and finding cooking games that are available online may be just the answer you were searching for. Instead of learning how to beat your enemies, you can learn how to beat eggs and whip up some delicious treats.

Types of Games You Will Find

Take a moment and browse the web for free cooking games and you will find guessing games such as trying to guess how many jelly beans are in a jar. You will find many cyber jigsaw puzzles that have food and cooking as their theme. There are also image sliders that challenge you to put the picture together much like a jigsaw puzzle.

If you are a fan of the sort of game that dares you to spot the differences, you can play a version of this game using photos of yummy concoctions to compare. For lovers of word games, you can find crossword puzzles, find a word, a cooking version of hangman, and word scrambles that revolve around the world of food and its preparation. There are memory games that use candy bars to tickle your taste buds as you strive to match one candy bar with another.

Whether you are an experienced gamer or are playing with a toddler, you can find many games that will be fun and informative for every age level as well as experience. Using cooking games as a learning tool as well as a chance to spend quality time with your child is a smart idea for the parent who fancies himself or herself a chef. Check out this site for amusing games that you can play alone or with a friend.

Again time management is also what is necessary in this case.  A mixture of water and cornstarch along with the mixing of sauces is done well in advance. She also meticulously marinates the fish and the meat in egg white, sherry and soya sauce, and of course not to forget cornstarch. The whole thing is then heated on high temperatures along with oil coated inside the pan.

Then the garnish is added which is inclusive of garlic and minced ginger. After this the whole dish without plopping is put into the pan. Caution has to taken when you do no have to stir for a while to let the chicken or meat settle in the oil. After that flip the mixture to cook the other side also soon after which stirring can begin again. Always the vegetables are cooked later than the meat or fish cause they are less denser than the non vegetarian food. My friend added all vegetables at the same time while some can prefer to go one Read the rest of this entry »

Frying and stirring is one of the most fun loving job that a new learner can do in the kitchen. Though, seems quite simple it could be really complicated. It faster and very simple once you get the hang of it. The fun part of the whole exercise is that you can mix as many ingredients as you want. It’s a mathematical exercise, where you add, subtract ingredients as per the choice of the people eating the meal. In case of more vegetarian add extra vegetables and subtract the non vegetarians dishes. Even if u forget to add or subtract in the fry and stir way, the result is never very disastrous, there is a scope of good taste because every way is a new way. But this method of cooking is also not all that simple as it may seem. It comprises buying different kinds of ingredients and utensils etc.

The first experience that I had of stir and fry is a memorable one. The result was kind of a Chinese tasting dish but the Read the rest of this entry »

The next category of cakes are the foam or the sponge cakes. They are less dense and very light. They have a chewy flavor with a delightful taste. The batter is prepared by whipped eggs and sugar. The idea behind it being light is that that the whole mixture whips air into it. Tortes and Chiffon are the best example in this category.

Rolls are also a form of sponge cake. But it is used for jelly rolls and is baked in a very shallow pan.  They are rolled up in sugared tea after baking and obviously are immediately removed. After cooling they are filled with custard or icing and rolled again.

Next in the category are the Meringue Cakes. They are usually prepared from egg whites and sugar with meringue used as a leavening agent in the batter of few cakes or as a lightener in case of mousse. They can be served as family size or as an individual serving. The hurdle in case is that the eggs cannot be over beaten or under beaten. Underbeating of the eggs involves too less air and overbeating has too much of it which Read the rest of this entry »