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Food Fight! Battle of the Bulge, Caveman Style

Whenever I hear the phrase “food fight,” I am instantly transported back to the dining hall at Faber College. John Belushi, “Pluto,” is stuffing his face while being told that he is a “P-I-G pig.” In response he asks, “See if you can guess what I am now?” John stuffs a rounded ball of mashed potatoes in to his mouth and proceeds to smash his cheeks together with his two clenched fists. As white, clumpy matter explodes all over everyone, he yells, “I’m a zit. Get it?” Chaos erupts. John is chased all over the dining hall and in the end he yells, “Food Fight!” Without hesitation there is more food in the air than on the tables. Yes, a classic scene from the movie Animal House. But, this is not the type of food fight that I’m alluding to in the title. We are now in the fight of our lives against food, bad food; food that is making us fat and physically and psychologically troubled. This is our modern food fight. Continue reading “Food Fight! Battle of the Bulge, Caveman Style”

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Insect Cuisine – Maeng Da Water Beetle Dip With Catfish & Roasted Chilli – Regional Thai Food

This one is my version of “The Beetles greatest hits” as I actually fell in love with this dish a few weeks ago and I’ve been pestering to see it made ever since. I am pretending that I am doing this for posterity – for you, the reader. In actual fact it is selfish. I just like it and want to know how to make it so I can show off in front of my Thai chef friends and colleagues;-)

I have to admit that there is something a bit disconcerting about shoving a creature into your mouth that looks very much like a giant cockroach. You wouldn’t imagine it from my writing, but I am actually just like you. If someone had suggested ten years ago that I would rock up to a street vendor, hand over 10 baht, and chug a massive crawly thing with wings and half a dozen crunchy legs semi tucked under its shiny carapace, the expletives would have flown from my lips like a plague of (un-fried) locusts heading across Egypt. Laugh? I would have shat.

Continue reading “Insect Cuisine – Maeng Da Water Beetle Dip With Catfish & Roasted Chilli – Regional Thai Food”

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Top 10 Tips for Sensitive Stomachs How to Avoid Foods that Fight

The moment people put food in their mouths everything changes and they start to think that they have done their duty regarding nutrition, and that the process of digestion is automatic and completely beyond their control and therefore no need for concern. This thought of course is a huge mistake. As a chef please allow me to tell you to eat properly, you need to understand a little something about the digestive process.

Let me begin by explaining a few key points I think you should know right from the beginning. First the alimentary canal is a fascinating, miraculous mechanism, which can deal simultaneously with different foods, subjecting them to various and sometimes very opposing processes. Continue reading “Top 10 Tips for Sensitive Stomachs How to Avoid Foods that Fight”

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The Restaurant U-Turn: Reverse a Restaurants Poor Reputation With an Action Plan That Works!

Have you ever used a GPS and passed your destination? Does the voice tell you to make a “legal U-turn as soon as possible?” Or does it direct you to go around the next block? I know that this has happened to me. Sometimes you just go down the wrong path. It doesn’t mean you can’t turn around and get back on track to where you need to be. It’s the same in the restaurant industry. Maybe you made some wrong turns or missed some opportunities, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up. You can get back on track. It requires a great deal of work and determination, but you can manage it.

A restaurant that has a poor reputation has a unique opportunity to redeem themselves in their community. Simply because your restaurant has a negative standing in the community does not mean you can’t turn things around for the better. Continue reading “The Restaurant U-Turn: Reverse a Restaurants Poor Reputation With an Action Plan That Works!”

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Helping Children Develop an Intelligent Relationship With Food

A few weeks ago, as I was leaving my local Post Office, I passed a young mom and her little girl. The little girl, who looked to be about five, was whining about something. The mother said to her, “If you’ll stop crying, I’ll give you a cupcake when we get home.”

On the surface of it, the mother’s remark seemed innocuous enough. And maybe the remark had no connection at all to the fact that both the mom and the little girl were overweight. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder: What was that mom inadvertently teaching her daughter?

Was she teaching her that sweets are a reward for good behavior? Was she teaching her that sweets are a way to assuage difficult emotions? If the child was learning either or both of these messages, she could be in for a lifetime struggle with issues around weight based on a dysfunctional relationship with food. Continue reading “Helping Children Develop an Intelligent Relationship With Food”

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Vegetarian/Vegan Food for Your Wedding in Tuscany

As you know Italians love their food so you can imagine in an Italian wedding menu there will be more dishes than in your standard wedding menu.

Tuscan Wedding menus are usually structured as follows:

– canapés -a spread out of several starters

– two first courses ( usually pasta, rice or ravioli)

– two main courses

– side orders

– wedding cake

– coffee and Tuscan digestive liqueurs

Continue reading “Vegetarian/Vegan Food for Your Wedding in Tuscany”

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Four Tips on Getting Help Around the Home

My hubby quietly came in the kitchen and began scraping food from a large bowl into a smaller one. He found tops to cover the leftovers and put them into the refrigerator. I glanced at him and smiled, then turned quickly back to my dishwashing lest I somehow stop this miracle in progress.

He doesn’t like doing the dishes. He doesn’t cook on the grill. This area is almost foreign to him-his kitchen knowledge is limited to taking out the trash or coming in for meals.

He said almost apologetically, “I don’t know if I’m doing this right.”

I thanked him with a smile and washed off the counter. We finished our work and took a second cup of coffee to the deck to cool off and rest a bit. I needed to take time to tell him once more how much his help meant to me. I also reminded him that I liked his company.

Continue reading “Four Tips on Getting Help Around the Home”

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The Budgie – A Sensitive Soul

My mother passed away in February and I took on responsibility for her budgerigar Sky. He is a lovely little bird – very noisy and feisty – isn’t hand tamed and doesn’t like to be touched. Heaven help you if you try! He is approximately 5 years old – give or take.

Mum used to bring Sky with her when she visited, so I was aware of how to look after him, but other than that I really didn’t have a clue about budgies. I remember one we had as a family pet when I was a teenager and that was about it.

Sky and I got into a routine for the first 5 months – I opened his cage door every morning but he never left it. He was happy to flap his wings inside his cage which is large enough to do so with room to spare.

Then came the day about a month ago when he ventured out and the problems started. On the few times that he started to fly around he flew into the walls and had a nasty fall when he misjudged a shelf – this had never happened to him before and he went into shock.

Continue reading “The Budgie – A Sensitive Soul”

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Even the Tiniest Hand Can Hold a Diamond

I recently attended a circus wedding. I’m referring to a circus-themed wedding, not a wedding “under the big top,” though there were a great deal of fanciful shenanigans and enough clowning around that one might have difficulty differentiating the two.

Near the tented entrance stood a table replete with circus-oriented curiosities presented as tokens for the enjoyment of the guests. One could enthusiastically snatch up an adhesive Dudley Do-Right mustache or enjoy a taste of pure spun, sugar candy. Or, perhaps the more pragmatic guest (with December being right ’round the corner) might choose one of the red foam noses, making it doubly useful for Christmastime. But for me, it seemed a risky temptation of fate to choose the mustache as I had recently seen tiny hairs sprouting from my upper lip where there’d once been none. And, although easily tempted by candy, I admit to being somewhat of a cotton candy snob by believing that consuming it from a pre-packaged bucket robbed it of all the delights of its intended fluffy purpose and sticky intentions. My lack of pragmatism (but to my credit, my knowledge of that lack) eschewed me from the red foam nose as I would never be able to locate it in its time of need. Surely it would reappear one day from behind a dresser or from under a pile of books during a cleaning spree, probably around Easter, thereby making it a moot point at the end of my nose.

Continue reading “Even the Tiniest Hand Can Hold a Diamond”

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Hypertension – Telling My Spouse The Bad News And The Good News

I left my doctors office two hours after arriving. I decided I would drive to my wife’s work and tell her in person the bad news and the good news about my health. Rather than just sitting around and talking we went for a walk and talk.

Honey I have some good news and some bad news, Let me give you the short version during our walk starting with the bad news;

I have high blood pressure that is off the charts.

My food consumption can not have more than 1500 mg a day of sodium.

Dining out at restaurants is history for me.

Dried spices have sodium so I can’t use them anymore. Continue reading “Hypertension – Telling My Spouse The Bad News And The Good News”