Appetizers for New Year’s Eve

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Apr 082012
 
two slices of toasted white bread

two slices of toasted white bread (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We found a few days of New Year’s Eve and now it is time to start with the preparations for the dinner . If you are the host is likely to be chosen sabrosa option for the main dish. However, our task does not end there. Before the turkey, the chicken, the piglet or any other dish chosen as the central option comes to the table, it is necessary to offer them to the audience something that they open the appetite. The catalog entries for dinner New Year’s Eve is more than ample, and we find alternatives of all kinds. Then they tell you that it is the best.

Hams, are excellent choices, especially if it is an accompaniment with good varieties of cheese. It is an ideal dish for our relatives or friends open the appetite, but without a fill before it presents the main dish.

Couches: These little sandwiches are a great alternative as input for the dinner of the next Christmas. The best thing is that it comes from a lot of flavors, so it is ideal for when, in our family there are people who have different gastronomical tastes. The couches of fish is the most delicious. Continue reading »

Coconut Oil Recipes and ideas

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Feb 132012
 
Coconut Oil Recipes and ideas…
I want to start a thread that we can keep adding to to get everyone’s ideas and recipes for using coconut oil. I know a number of us are trying it out and it would be great to have all the info in one place.

Okay, I’ll start. Yesterday I made coconut mayonnaise and it turned out great. I used it to make my “faux-tato” salad (using cauliflower instead of potatoes) and it was freakin’ fantastic. I also made up some SF/LC 1000 Island dressing.

I used the expeller pressed coconut oil because I didn’t really want it to taste like coconuts.

Here’s the recipe I used (next time I think I will try to use only CO and no olive oil and see how it works). Continue reading »

Don’t Sleep on Boston Baked Beans

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Apr 072011
 

When was the last time you made Boston baked beans? It’s so easy to forget about the classics when brainstorming side dish options for regular weekday fare. You happily make these luscious legumes for those mid-summer picnics and potlucks, but why are they so seldom on the regular menu?

The beauty of serving a side dish of such renown is you can toss it next to some nondescript sausages, or slice of ham and still have what feels like a special meal. I’m sure most of us associate baked beans with pleasurable experiences, thus it passes the only real “comfort food” test of authenticity.

Get at Cuisine Schmidt

While some of you more cynical readers may think this post was just an easy way to test one of the classic American recipes going in the cookbook, and at the same time, a way to solicit some witty comments from Scott from Boston, well, okay…that’s just about right. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

1 pound dry navy beans
6 cups water
pinch of baking soda
1 bay leaf
6 strips bacon, cut in 1/2-inch pieces (traditionally salt pork is used, and if desired 4 ounces can be substituted for the bacon)
1 yellow onion, diced
1/3 cup molasses
1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste

Amazing Food Arts

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Mar 132011
 
By Marc in Gadgets & Geek Art

As the fear of the obesity epidemic rises, food is seen more an more as simply something one has to cut back on. Lunch is no longer a joyful time to cherish, but a disappointing time spent in front of a microwave. Not everyone has succumbed to this despair, however, and a lot of people are compensating for smaller, healthier, portions, with beautiful aesthetics. Here are 10 beautiful and mystifying artworks made out of cuisine:

 

(Images via modes4u, lostateminor, neatorama, twolia)

Bento boxes are single portion takeouts and home prepared meals that are extremely popular in Japanese culture. Some people take it very seriously, and love to turn an otherwise mundane preparation into an applause worthy artistic expression. One can only imagine how difficult it would be to start chowing down if your microwave meal was being oohed and aaahed as much as one of these preparations would be.

(Images via neatorama, slashfood, wonderhowto, cadbury)

Chocolate portraits are an increasingly popular artistic expression. The concentration here is on appearance, not taste, so they may not taste as great as you’d think, but they certainly are eye-catching. Chocolate has the advantage of coming in a variety of colors and hues, and being both malleable and hard enough to maintain its form. Through sculpture and careful pouring and manipulation, chocolate artists can create incredibly realistic depictions.

(Images via pixdaus, jorymon)

Nothing spices up a pot luck like strategically arraying your food into a classic painting or character portrait. Such simple and intriguing displays are a bit inspiring. How much harder would it be to add a few distinctive features to your otherwise mundane dish? You may not want to tackle the Mona Lisa the next time you set out cheese and crackers, but a nice smiley face never hurts.

(Images via obesityhelp, popfi, funnypictures, guardian)

Some believe that higher powers work in mysterious ways… whether these are examples of this, or just fortuitous coincidence, is hard to say. Regardless of the source of these inspirational portraits, nobody can deny they’re intriguing. The phenomenon of seeing Jesus’ face in random food products (like the cheeto, naan, potato chip, and fish stick pictured above), isn’t constrained to the food itself:

(Images via bitchspot, popfi)

Household items can showcase unearthly portraits as easily as a potato chip. Whether you find excitement over these occurrences ridiculous or spiritual, they’re definitely interesting. Pictures of food is an example how the food has own unique images

(Images via guardian, amandamorrow, popularasians, chilloutpoint)

Sushi is delicious, and no one will argue that the taste of a good sushi roll can be affected by the artistry of its creation, and its appearance on the plate. There are some who take this to an extreme. A portrait of President Obama and the face of a friendly panda may have been the inspiration for a sushi vinyl toy that does not look happy to be on the plate.

(Images via foundshit, geekologie, break4fun, insomniadiaries)

Meat is something a lot of people like to eat, and it’s also something a lot of people don’t like to think about. Whether you’re a meat lover or not, the above sculpted artworks are a bit nauseating, and very unique. After taking a look at this assemblage of strange sculptures, it will be hard to see a muscle car the same way again.

(Images via panric, pxleyes, saufnase)

For artists with a photographic and technological bent, food is more enjoyable to manipulate with photoshop. Mixing and matching different objects in entertaining and shocking ways is a great way to catch someone’s attention and show off your skills with photo manipulation.

(Images via rockstartemplate, humor-articles, unstructured musings, weirdspy)

Artists choose a variety of strange materials, and food is no exception. Some artists love taking the everyday and turning them into something more powerful. A good photo changes an otherwise temporary piece of art into something that can brighten up someone’s day for as long as the internet is around.

(Images via philagrafika, hackedgadgets, blisstree)

Toast is the foundation for any good breakfast, in television commercials, and in the average home. One might say toast is both the most common and most boring part of breakfast, but new technology aims to change that. Possibly inspired by the faces of Jesus that kept appearing on slices of bread, some engineers put together a toast printer that can imprint any image you’d like onto a piece of white or wheat. Some versions work like a real printer with the bread as paper, while others use an external tool to burn the decorations. However it’s done, it sure seems like a lot of fun!

American Rice

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Nov 202010
 
Pineapple Rice Recipe

Pineapple Rice Recipe

Ingredients:
1 cup rice
2 cups cubed pineapples
6 tablespoons butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup pineapple juice
Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F degrees.
Boil rice.
Place 1/3 of rice in bottom of buttered baking dish.
Cover with half of the pineapple, half the brown sugar, and half of the butter.
Repeat with next 1/3 of rice and second half of pineapple, brown sugar and butter.
cover with last 1/3 of rice and pour over pineapple juice.
Bake covered for 30 minutes.

Matthew Fallaize: a useful guide to choosing the right wine

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Nov 132010
 
The Semiotics of Wine Ordering
wine bottleSo, you’re in a restaurant, you’re presented with a wine list. You don’t actually know anything about wine, you have a passing interest, you quite like it. You know that Sauvignon Blanc is white, you have a vague idea that New World wines are consistently okay. You’re like most people. Well done you.
Sadly, however, you’re out for a meal with a first date. Goodness but they’re hot, they fulfil most of your basic tenets of what constitutes a good partner. you’d like to look impressive. Continue reading »

Macaroni and Cheese History and Recipe

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Oct 212010
 

macaroni and cheese

Some believe the dish was created by founding father Thomas Jefferson, known for his great interest in food, and in a 1996 “Restaurants & Institutions” article, Barbara Bell Matuszewski wrote that Jefferson served the dish in the White House in 1802. However, noted food historian Karen Hess claims Jefferson did not invent the dish, though he did return from a trip to Paris with a macaroni mold. In the Featured Recipes, you’ll find a recipe for the dish from Mary Randolph’s (Jefferson’s cousin) “The Virginia Housewife,” first published in 1824.

According to John Mariani, author of “The Dictionary of American Food and Drink,” macaroni and cheese was first made in the nineteenth century, but it took on a even greater popularity when Kraft Foods introduced the Kraft Dinner (macaroni and cheese) in 1937. According to a company spokesperson, Kraft now sells more than one million boxes of the dinners every day! The Kraft dinners are so popular, in fact, that children and some adults have been known to turn up their noses when offered a rich and delicious homemade version. Continue reading »

Bottled Beer Chronicle

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Oct 152010
 

Bottled beer was invented in Hertfordshire some 440 years ago, the most popular story says, by a forgetful Church of England rector and fishing fanatic called Dr Alexander Nowell.

While Nowell was parish priest at Much Hadham in Hertfordshire, around 20 miles north of London, in the early years of Elizabeth I, it is said that he went on a fishing expedition to the nearby River Ash, taking with him for refreshment a bottle filled with home brewed ale. When Nowell went home he left the full bottle behind in the river-bank grass. According to Thomas Fuller’s History of the Worthies of Britain, published a hundred years later, when Nowell returned to the river-bank a few days later and came across the still-full bottle, “he found no bottle, but a gun, such was the sound at the opening thereof; and this is believed (causality is mother of more inventions than industry) the original of bottled ale in England.”

The ale, of course, had undergone a secondary fermentation in the bottle, building up carbon dioxide pressure so that it gave a loud pop when Nowell pulled the cork out. Such high-condition ale must have been a novelty to Elizabethan drinkers, who knew only the much flatter cask ales and beers. However, Fuller’s story is fun, but it seems unlikely Nowell really was the person who invented beer: more likely brewers were experimenting generally with storing beer in glass bottles in the latter half of the 16th century, though there is no apparent evidence of commercial bottling until the second half of the 17th century, only bottling by domestic brewers.

Part of the problem was that the hand-blown glass bottles of the time could not take the strain of the CO2 pressure. Gervaise Markham, writing in 1615, advised housewife brewers that when bottling ale “you should put it into round bottles with narrow mouths, and then, stopping them close with corks, set them in a cold cellar up to the waist in sand, and be sure that the corks be fast tied with strong pack thread, for fear of rising out and taking vent, which is the utter spoil of the ale.”

white-shield-ipa

(There is, incidentally, a garbled version of the “bottle as gun” tale which seems to have materialised in the late 19th century, and which conflates the bottled ale story with another about Nowell fleeing England in a hurry in the reign of Queen Mary, after he received a warning that his enemy Bishop Bonner, known as “Bloody Bonner”, was out to arrest him for heresy. For some reason, in this version of the story Nowell is called “Newell”.)

Despite the introduction of a tax on glass in 1645 (it was removed in 1699 and re-imposed in 1746), bottled ale did become increasingly available. Samuel Pepys recorded drinking “several bottles of Hull ale” with friends at an inn called the Bell in London in November 1660. (This was very likely ale from somewhere like Derby or Burton upon Trent, shipped via Hull to London). The household accounts of the Cecil family, earls of Salisbury, in 1634 suggest the nobility and gentry, who brewed their own ale and beer on their country estates for themselves and their staff, servants and workers, would drink strong bottled beer when they came to London. This was probably bottled in the country and brought up to the capital when necessary: Wheatley Hall, Doncaster, home of the Cooke family, had a bottle room in 1683, Holkham Hall in Norfolk in 1671 had two bottled beer stores leading off the “small beer cellar” (that is, cellar for small beer), and in 1676 the Earl of Bedford’s household accounts show the purchase from a brewer near the family seat at Woburn of ale “to bottle for my lord’s drinking”. Continue reading »