Cooking Tips & More
Cooking Tools & Ingredients
Holiday Cooking!
Time to start preparing all those rich and tasty foods. You can make them more healthy and sacrifice the
rich flavors and crispiness, or you can just go for perfection with everything and use the best ingredients.
If you are serving people with health problems, you should tone down the calories and richness. If you are
serving people who are perhaps younger and healthier, you can go for the rich flavors and textures.
For cookies - you won't get the same effect unless you use real butter (not even margarine) - but to make a
healthy substitute, you can use some fruit based shortening substitute. Try to make rich spice flavors stand out
more if you use a substitute, so the cookies won't taste "flat." Using butter gives you the right rich flavor, and
the correct crispiness - but you can try to enhance flavors rather than texture or richness.
Sugar in the cookies and sweets - you can try to use honey or brown sugar instead of processed white sugar, but that won't cut the
calories. You can use fruit based sweeteners (not sugar substitutes such as Sweet 'n Low, etc. - you can't
really bake well with them), or fruit juice to help sweeten.
Browning effect - try pasting some egg whites (whipped with a bit of water) on top.
For turkeys, boil the giblets and neck in water for about 1/2 hour, then use the broth that comes from
that to baste the turkey with - no need to add butter or other oils.
See how I arranged my cabinet? This cabinet was pretty thin, and the shelves were split in the middle - so I took
out the moveable shelf and placed it higher, so I could vertically place my baking pans and my cutting boards, plus
long foil wrapper boxes. We keep mugs on the top - rarely used ones in the back of the shelf, since it's far to dig
for them, and you cannot lift anything over front mugs. My daughter keeps her own mugs right there - easy for her to
grab them.
I put my spices in a drawer. One glance at the alphabetically arranged spices
and it's easy to find anything in there! Lay the bottles or cans down so you can easily read what
is in them.
Don't let your canned foods sit for very long - cycle them out so nothing goes bad. Over time,
the cans build up pressure and can explode, but before that, the flavor of the metal can gets into the
food and it is bad. Use canned goods and buy new cans - don't keep anything for years, because in most
cases, it just doesn't last.
Keep certain foods around that you can easily make a meal with - keep these in your kitchen pretty much all the time, with
variations according to what foods you normally eat (you might prefer certain pasta types to rice, etc.).
canola and olive oil
fresh onion, garlic
salt, pepper
spices (dry - buy fresh right before you use them) - powdered garlic, cinnamon, thyme, bay leaves, oregano, poultry seasoning,
dry parsley, rosemary, sage, paprika, nutmeg, dill weed, cilantro, chives, chili powder,
Cajun seasoning. Add more of your favorites, but with the prior list you can create so many dishes.
eggs
butter, milk
lemon juice, lime juice
baking soda and baking powder
white or brown rice, pasta
canned tomato sauce and paste
chicken and beef broth
sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, flour (some unbleached white - also whole wheat and others you would use)
There are lots of ways you can prepare a nice meal fast - by winging it! You don't have to follow a specific recipe
to make something decent. All you need is a minimum of spices and certain items in the fridge, and you can
work with almost anything else you have sitting around. The other night I had a cut of elk meat - so when
I saw sour cream and mushrooms in the refrigerator, I figured I'd make stroganoff. I'll give you a quick recipe below.
Meat Stroganoff
Cut the meat into small chunks or strips, then sprinkle them with salt and some white pepper. Fry them quickly
in butter. While frying, slice the mushrooms and dice up some onion. Once the meat is pretty well done, you can remove the
the meat and then put a bit more butter in, and saute the onions and mushrooms for 3-5 minutes, add the meat back in. Add
a little white wine and a sprinkle of nutmeg, then add sour cream. And it's done - simple!
Prior to making it, you might want to start cooking some rice (for a more elegant meal, cook brown and wild rice) or
macaroni, or noodles. Throw on any vegetable you have, as well, to round out the meal.
The main thing to remember is not to get panicked about amounts. Just "wing it" and don't add too much of
anything - get a clean spoon and drop samples on it to test the tast refer this issue to a friend
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Relief for your back & neck when using a laptop
Laptops are ergonomically awful - the screen and keyboard aren't in the right places to keep yourself
healthy - you have to lean over to work with it, and then there is the problem of heat - which can and does
cause other health problems. One wonderful invention is the LapGenie
- it is an adjustable desk to set your
laptop into the best position it can be. It folds up for easy travel, and has many other uses. Check it out. It's made a huge difference to
me and a lot of people. Use it to prop your cookbooks on in the kitchen, too!
