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Ah Apples!

Ah apples! I love their crunch. I love their tang. I love how refreshing they are. To me they are a perfect food: lovely to look at, healthy for the body, delicious by themselves or in dishes. I think Benjamin Franklin was right when he said, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

Here’s a small list of some of the more popular apples and their characteristics:

Fuji–red, sweet, slightly crisp. Great eating apple. Gala–red, a bit tart. Great eating apple. Jonathan–red, crunchy texture, sweet-tart flavor that holds up in cooking. Great eating apple. Flavor holds up in cooking. Golden Delicious–yellow, more tart than the Red Delicious, not too crunchy. Red Delicious–red, sweet with barely a hint of tartness, mealy texture. Doesn’t hold up too well as a cooking apple. Granny Smith–green, crunchy, tart, holds its shape well. Excellent for pies, crumbles, and crisps. Continue reading “Ah Apples!”

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iPhone TV Online

The iPhone continues to amaze millions with its capabilities. The most recent trend has been with online video.

While it is true that some video does not work on the iPhone (i.e. Flash), the important thing to note is that H.264 and Quicktime based streaming video does.

With that well understood, a variety of major studios have placed video content online for the iPhone.

Full episodes include 30 Rock, Beverly Hills 90210, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Crusoe, Days of our Lives, Heroes, Kath & Kim, Knight Rider, Life, Lipstick Jungle, MacGyver, My Own Worst Enemy, The Office, Smart Girls at the Party, Star Trek, and The Young and the Restless. Continue reading “iPhone TV Online”

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Interesting Facts About Culinary Arts

Want to know some interesting facts about culinary arts? Well, as most people know, the culinary arts revolve around culinary arts and food, and they include everything from restaurant management and hospitality management to food science and food safety. Someone who works in any of these areas is called a “culinarian,” and that includes everyone from food service workers to creators of the fantastic pastry arts.

Historical Facts

The history of the culinary arts is a rather long one. Some historical facts about culinary include these interesting facts about culinary arts. In the U.S., the first culinary school opened in the 1800s, but culinary arts were well under way in Europe from Medieval times onward. There were many cookbooks published or handwritten from Medieval times to more modern history, and Le Cordon Blue Schools, one of the most renowned in the world, opened in Paris in 1895, after a long history of collecting recipes and publishing a food recipe magazine. Cookbooks and cooking schools have continued to be popular into modern times, and there is a surge of interest in the culinary arts right now. Continue reading “Interesting Facts About Culinary Arts”

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Laugh Away Calories – Funny Weight Loss Tips & Quotes

Did you know you could burn calories by laughing? A study at Vanderbilt University showed you could lose up to 50 calories by laughing 10-15 minutes a day.  When laughing, people burned 20% more calories. Laughter has other health benefits that include stress reduction, immune system boosting, natural pain relief and increased blood flow (good for the heart) – no joking either.

Sadly your sense of humor is one of the first things that you lose on a diet. Let’s try to remedy that. Enjoy some humorous thoughts and do a little laughercising. Continue reading “Laugh Away Calories – Funny Weight Loss Tips & Quotes”

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Kohls Review

Kohls is your virtual mega retail mall that brings to you a wide variety of lifestyle products from some of the leading brands of the world.

At Kohls, you can “expect great things” as their shopping directory features a mammoth selection of products ranging from kitchen & dining, bed and bath, luggage and backpacks, electronics, shoes, jewellery, beauty products, women’s and men’s apparel, home care products, furniture and home decor to baby products and home care equipment/products.

With Kohls, customers get access to the best brands in the world and store frequently runs deals and discounts on most of their products. Customers get to choose from awide variety of brands including Adidas, AB studio, Elle, Fila Sport, Hanes, Levis, Dockers, Chaps, Angels, Candie’s, Vera Wang, Croft&Barrow, Sonoma, Carters, Skechers, Reebok, Conair, yankee candle, food network, KitchenAid, Rival, Hoover, Black and Decker, Samsonite, Ricardo, Wenger, Motorola, Excalibur and many more. Continue reading “Kohls Review”

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A Few Tips and Tricks For Using Vanilla Beans

If you watch any of the cooking shows on the Food Network, you’ve probably seen chefs on these shows scraping a vanilla bean to use in some fanciful dish. The process of scraping the bean looks so simple when they do it. They take a very sharp knife and slit the bean lengthwise, then scrape out the tiny seeds from the pod. These “seeds” stick together (like a paste since they’re moist and clingy) as the knife is run through the pod.

Continue reading “A Few Tips and Tricks For Using Vanilla Beans”

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Local Farming: Should It Be Supported By Food Retailers?

This week, I spent a couple of hours working at my CSA farm. I harvested two rows of fingerling potatoes before the thunderstorms set in and I was shooed out of the field by the farmer, Mary LaFrance. I am a member of Lakeplain Prairie Organic Farm; the only certified organic CSA in Wayne County, Michigan. For those of you who aren’t familiar with CSA farms, they offer a subscription based service for fresh, good tasting, local and organic food. Subscribers to this service pay a seasonal fee and agree to work a specified number of hours over the course of the growing season. Continue reading “Local Farming: Should It Be Supported By Food Retailers?”

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What’s Right With This Picture?

Lunch at a restaurant with a friend, live and in person. A restaurant with indoor seating, no masks required for the vaccinated. OMG, After the long year of home-cooking (not much variety there), take-out (fun from time to time, not all the time), and lusting in front of Food Network re-runs, the trip to the restaurant was more than a welcome event. It was Nirvana.

I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation of the couple behind us. “They don’t have anything I want,” the woman moaned. “I thought you liked salmon,” her friend replied. “Not grilled like that, it’ll be all dry,” the woman said. “Maybe you can ask them to poach it,” her friend suggested. “Fat chance,” the woman said. “And what’s with the waiter?” she continued, “we’ve been here at least 15 minutes, and haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since he plunked the water down. Which he spilled on the table, by the way – look at that!” Continue reading “What’s Right With This Picture?”

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Kitchen Hierarchy: Who’s On First?

Food network aficionados know that some of their favorite celebrity chefs operate and cook in their own restaurants, and you can be sure they run their kitchens with military precision from their own position as executive chef on down to the dishwashers and busboys. Each position has definite duties, which are learned in culinary school or on the job, and one best not deviate if one wants to stay employed. In very busy crowded kitchens, the hierarchy is especially important to prevent chaos and keep those meals rolling out to the customers in a timely manner.

Let’s examine those positions in finely-tuned and well-run commercial establishments. Leave it to those French chefs to have established what is taught and followed in all well-run kitchens, which is called, appropriately, “The French Brigade system:”

Executive Chef (Group Chef) –
this is the top person who is usually responsible for the operation of multiple jobs, and might do very little cooking himself; Continue reading “Kitchen Hierarchy: Who’s On First?”

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The Seafood and Cheese Food Myth

What’s wrong with seafood and cheese appearing together in the same dish? Does cheese really make seafood taste funky? Food Network star, and Italian chef extraordinaire, Scott Conant appears to have a pet peeve about this, but is he right? If cheese really does make seafood taste funky, a lot of famous dishes shouldn’t have been invented, mush less become famous. A case in point would be lobster thermidor. In his second battle, Iron Chef Japanese Komei Nakamura made a version using blue cheese; the tasters loved it, and Nakamura won. Celebrity chef Bobby Flay asserted on TV that he likes mussels with blue cheese, and on Triple D, Guy Fieri enjoyed linguini clams sprinkled with parmesan (an Italian dish, Scott). And what about the following famous dishes: seafood gratin, seafood risotto, and seafood fondue? OK, so maybe Chef Conant is really talking about cheese and, specifically, fish. For that I have Iron Chef Cat Cora making baracuda chips for fondue, and fish with marscapone in Paris on Anthony Bourdain’s 100th episode. Continue reading “The Seafood and Cheese Food Myth”