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If you are accustomed to eating only store bought bread, baking your own from scratch can be a very satisfying alternative in terms of both freshness and taste. Another advantage to this method is that through experimentation you can come up with a practically infinite number of flavors and varieties, such as this relatively healthy version of apple cinnamon bread created by David Hamilton. It is designed to reduce unnecessary calories and fat while retaining a sufficient amount of sweetness and taste.

This is a delicious and healthy version of traditional apple cinnamon bread. We completely eliminate the oil, and use whole wheat flour to replace most of the white flour. We also cut back on the eggs to reduce the cholesterol. For the carb conscious, the recipe works well with sugar substitutes.

This versatile recipe can be made into loaves for healthy but decadent tasting dessert slices, or formed into muffins for a sweet breakfast treat. Either way, the resulting bread is rich and satisfying with just the right amount of sweetness.

Ingredients:

1. 2 cups all purpose flour
2. 1 cup whole wheat flour
3. 1 ½ tsp cinnamon
4. 1 tsp baking soda
5. 1 tsp salt
6. 1 egg
7. 1 cup applesauce
8. ½ cup egg substitute
9. 3/4 cup sugar (or equivalent sugar substitute)
10. ½ cup brown sugar
11. 2 cups apples (diced without skins)
12. ½ cup walnuts (chopped)

Preparation:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare two loaf pans (or a muffin pan)
• Combine the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, salt and mix completely.
• In a separate bowl, mix together the applesauce, egg, egg substitute and sugars (or the brown sugar and sugar substitute).
• Combine the wet and dry ingredients and mix in the walnuts.
• Separate into two loaf pans and bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes. If using a sugar substitute, be sure to check after 25 to 30 minutes as this will tend to decrease cooking time.

If making muffins, the yield is approximately 16 standard size muffins. Muffins should be checked after 15 minutes.

Although wine making can be a tricky process, using grapes or other fruits to make vinegar is actually pretty easy, as this article by Kristie Leong points out. As long as you can obtain some kind of unpasteurized vinegar solution to use as a starter culture, a suitable container, some fruit juice, and any other ingredients you might want to add for flavoring, you’re good to go.

The only difficult part might be the waiting time required to allow the vinegar to oxidize to the desired strength, but you can compensate for this by making larger quantities to store for later use. Meanwhile, the chemical formula and molecular bonding structure for acetic acid, the active ingredient in vinegar, can be found in the upper left corner of the post.

Why settle for store bought vinegar when you can make it fresh in your own home? The chemical reaction needed to make vinegar is the oxidation of an alcohol (oxidation is simply the addition of oxygen to a chemical group). The simplest way to do this is to convert a sugar into alcohol and then oxidize the alcohol to create vinegar. One of the easiest sources of sugar to use for the fermentation process is fruit juice. Here are easy instructions on how to make vinegar in your own kitchen at home:

Things You’ll Need:

1. A large glass container with a wide mouth. Don’t use metal or plastic as the acid can interact with these materials and ruin your vinegar.
2. Fresh fruit juice. The fruit juice you select should be free of additives or preservatives. Fresh apple or grape juice are good choices.
3. A bottle of unfiltered vinegar. (You can purchase this at a health food store.) This is a source of bacteria for the fermentation process.

How to Make:

• Lay your clean, glass container on the table.
• Pour about a quart of the unpasteurized, unfiltered vinegar into the glass jar.
• Add an equal amount of your chosen fresh fruit juice.
• Mix the two ingredients thoroughly and place the container into a warm, dark place. The temperature should be between 75 and 85 degrees in the storage area.
• Taste your vinegar periodically until it’s the appropriate strength for your particular taste. This process may take up to 4-6 months to be complete, but remember to check it periodically to assess its taste.
• Once the appropriate vinegar strength is achieved, you can package it into bottles.

What could be easier than this? Plus, you’ll have the thrill of knowing you made it yourself.

What kind of fruit juice works best for making vinegar? This depends on the type of flavor you want your vinegar to have. By using grapes or grape juice, you create wine vinegar. If you use apple juice, you’ll end up with cider vinegar.

Once you know how to make basic vinegar, you can take it a step further and create delicious gourmet vinegars using a variety of herbs, spices, and fruits. These gourmet vinegars add delicious flavors to foods without adding a significant quantity of calories or fat. Plus, they make wonderful hostess gifts or Christmas gifts.

Once you get started making gourmet vinegars, you won’t be able to stop! Plus, these vinegars really transform the taste of your salads and fresh vegetable dishes. It’s a great way to motivate yourself to eat more salad!

Now that you know how to make vinegar, why not try your hand at it in your own home? It’ll taste delicious on your next salad!

This article by Stephanie Dray explains the technique of slicing zucchini in a julienne style cut so that it can be used in place of pasta for various low carb recipe ideas. Although not diabetic or even much of a dieter, I have had good results with using zucchini as a meat substitute of sorts in vegetarian lasagna dishes. Much like eggplant, this vegetable has a certain consistency to it that allows for its use as a good “filler food” that still tastes good without adding the extra calories found in meat or pasta.

For diabetics and low carb dieters, pasta is probably off your menu. Even so, you likely find yourself pining for a good old-fashioned bowl of spaghetti. Perhaps you’ve even tried the low carb noodles on the market and found them not to your liking. Luckily, there is another option. You can serve zucchini pasta for dinner!

Zucchini is a delicious low carb vegetable that is healthy for diabetics because of its glycemic index. But while generally inoffensive, in large chunks, zucchini can be overpowering. Certainly, this green veggie isn’t likely to fill your mind with thoughts of a great Italian feast. But when you cut zucchini into thin, pasta-like strands, it fades into the background and becomes a neutral conveyor of your favorite sauces.

The technique of cutting zucchini into matchstick lengths is also known as a julienne cut. The best way to make zucchini pasta is to use a julienne peeler (you can pick one up from Bed, Bath & Beyond for about seven bucks). A julienne peeler looks like a potato peeler turned on its side, and has very sharp blades to cut your zucchini into low carb pasta-like strips.

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In contrast to the earlier article about party food appetizers, this list of “little eats” compiled by Kristie Leong gives us some suggestions for healthier alternatives to typical “junk food” kinds of snacks. The list is primarily targeted toward school-age children, but adults who need something to serve as a light snack between meals might like some of these ideas as well.

We all know that childhood obesity is becoming more and more of a problem in this country. If your kids come home from school ravenous for an after school snack, you can satisfy their hunger by giving them a variety of healthy snack options that won’t pack on the pounds. Plus, these snacks taste so delicious, your kids will never know that it’s actually good for them.

Here are some quick and healthy snack ideas for your hungry crew:

1. Make a healthy snack mix.

Try mixing some dried fruit with several varieties of nuts to create a healthy and tasty snack mix that’s perfect for the kid on the go. You can even add some low sugar cereal to the snack mix to make it more interesting. Kids love the variety of different tastes in this homemade snack mix.

2. Add a touch of peanut butter to a fresh apple.

We all know kids need to eat more fruits and vegetables. To make a high protein, healthy snack, serve sliced fresh apples with a thin layer of peanut butter. This snack is filling and will earn rave reviews from your kids.

3. Kids love to dip.

Make a low calorie dip using low fat cream cheese or sour cream. Add a bit of sugar free fruit jelly to make it sweet and delicious. Serve with whole grain crackers for a low calorie, heart healthy snack.

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When selecting fresh vegetables for your favorite recipes, this brief article by Katina Mooneyham provides a few common sense tips that you can use to make sure that purchased produce is not spoiled, damaged, or otherwise unusable for cooking. While most of these things will seem pretty obvious to those of us who have fully developed brains, after watching videos like these, I have learned that one should not always assume that common sense is in ample supply.

Next time you go produce shopping, watch as people start thumping melons and smelling tomatoes. Why do they start this seemingly odd behavior? It’s because they’ve learned to look and test before they buy. It’s always pleasant to get a tomato that may last a little longer than others. Here are some tips for buying fresh vegetables at a store or farmer’s market.

1. Check for obvious problems, marks or otherwise unhealthy looking vegetables. Avoid fresh produce that has scratch marks or obvious bad marks on it.

2. Give produce the smell test. Over ripe fruits and vegetables have a very strong smell to them. They are sometimes overbearing. You want the produce to smell. But you don’t want it so powerful that you can smell it from three aisles away.

3. Give melons a light thump. It’s been rumored that it isn’t a surefire way to tell if a melon is ripe but it works for many people most of the time. If the melon is ripe, it will have an echo. If it is a dull sound, then it might not be ripe. But you don’t want the melon over ripe either. Do the smell test on melons.

4. Don’t buy things that are wilting. You most likely can’t save them even by putting them in cold water.

5. Make sure the fruit you buy doesn’t have any mold. Even if one or two have some mold, you may be tempted to just discard them once you get home. But if you forget to discard the bad ones right away, the whole package will spoil within days.

Teach the kids to be watchful for bad produce too. Tell them not to pick up produce that has been on the floor and put it back with the clean food items. Just remember that if you think it’s bad, then skip over it. Trust your nose and eyes.

If you wind up having to host a dinner party or plan for some other event where food will need to be prepared for multiple guests, you will probably want something that is relatively easy to prepare and that most people will like. This article by Janna Rock provides three simple party food ideas and explains their ingredients and preparation.

After reading the article, I should probably point out one important caveat: these foods are fairly high in calories and definitely NOT for vegetarians! But if your guests don’t mind some “nutritionally incorrect” cuisine, they might as well dig in…

If you have birthdays, holidays, or other special occasions coming right around the corner, the likelihood of you having to throw a party or attend a party is probably pretty high. Here are three simple but tasty party foods that are easy to prepare, relatively cheap to make, and will be enjoyed by everyone.

Sausage Balls

Sausage balls are an all time favorite party food. They are relatively fattening and most people find it difficult to eat only one! The ingredients you will need are: 1 pound of Jimmy Dean Sausage, 4 cups of your favorite cheese, (Kraft’s Crackle Barrel Extra Sharp Cheddar seems to work best), and 3 cups of Bisquick flour.

You will need to preheat your oven to 400 degrees and either grease your cookie sheet or line it with foil because this particular party food will stick to the cookie sheet! In a large bowl mix the sausage with the cheese until well blended. You can use your hands to mix and knead the sausage and cheese together. Next slowly add the flour. If you add the flour too quickly you won’t get the correct consistency. After all of your ingredients have been mixed together, you will want to form small balls, about the size of a boiled egg yolk, and place them on your cookie sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes. For best results, serve them while they are still fairly warm.

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After a fairly long dry spell, Travis Sago of bum marketing fame sent out a “happy holidays” email today and shared with us one of his traditional Christmas recipes that I have not yet tried. Judging by the ingredients and my own experience, it is essentially a chocolate fudge syrup that can be used as a topping for various kinds of desserts or snacks. Apparently Travis uses it on biscuits and likes the taste quite well:

HO! HO! HO!…H-a-p-p-y Holidays.

This is my favorite morning of the year! Doesn’t everything just feel cleaner, more peaceful and beautiful this morning?

I l-o-v-e Christmas morning and I wanted to share with you one of my very favorite southern recipes.

Has been in our family…at least 100 years as it was made by my Great Grandmother…who made it for my Dad’s Mother… who made it for my Dad…who made it for me and my brother and two sisters.

I warn you though…

It is very Southern and when anyone first hears of it they crinkle their nose and say “Eeeew”…

But when they TASTE IT…

The recipe is for a divine “chocolate gravy”…you serve it over piping hot biscuits…for a dessert or for a very special breakfast (like Christmas morning). I tell ya now… that there is absolutely NO FOOD VALUE : )

It is just one of those “guilty pleasures”…

Here it is and I hope you give it a try! It’s really simple:

********************
Southern Chocolate Gravy
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1/2 Cup Sugar
4 Tablespoons flour
3 Tablespoons Powdered Cocoa
2 Cups Milk
1 1/2 Teaspoons Butter

Mix sugar, flour and cocoa. Then add your milk. Put in a sauce pan. Heat on a medium to high setting constantly stirring until your gravy thickens (I like mine really thick). Once thick then mix in your butter.

Serve over piping hot biscuits and be prepared to be loved and remembered forever : )
**********************

Happy holidays to you and your family!

Sincerely,
Travis

Since I have not done a recipe post for a while, I might as well share with you my formula for making delicious iced tea. I have been using the same method and ingredient proportions for the past 20 years or so, and I have yet to find an iced tea that tastes better than this one.

On the surface, there is nothing particularly special about the beverage; it’s basically just a standard black tea solution, with some sugar and lemon added for flavor. However, there are three things that make it somewhat different from most of the other varieties:

1) I use fewer tea bags but let them steep for a longer time, then dilute the mixture to just the right strength. This is not only more economical, but it also reduces the amount of bitterness and caffeine content per unit of volume.

2) When adding sugar, I seem to use less than most other people (except for those who like unsweetened tea, but I usually find this rather bitter), but by “aging” the final mixture in the refrigerator, it seems to develop a sweeter and stronger taste over time.

3) Something about the particular proportions of tea, water, sugar, and lemon that are used, when combined with the standing time, make this beverage especially delicious and refreshing. But then again, this could be just an individual preference. You’ll have to try it and see if you can taste the difference. Here is the actual recipe:

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This article by Jessica Roop provides some convenient time management ideas for Thanksgiving dinner preparations. The date for this year’s 2007 Thanksgiving is steadily approaching and will occur on November 22.

Survive the Thanksgiving frenzy and preserve the season’s spirit with these time-saving tips designed to make Thanksgiving dinner preparation an absolute breeze for you.

The List Power

Have you noticed how others can stay calm and composed despite all the buzz about Thanksgiving? The secret actually lies in making lists! Start your game plan with a list of the things that you have to do. Keep your list always with you so that you can consult it or otherwise add items to it anytime you want, and at the same time, tick off certain items as you go along.

Go For Meals In Minutes

As everybody seems to be busy during the Thanksgiving holidays, it is always wise to keep easy-to-prepare meals on hand. Remember, you need not do all the holiday preparations in one whole day. You can opt for fast and easy preparations.

Pop Then Serve

No need to slave over the turkey and all the giblets all day. You can always consider the oven-ready bird from Jennie-O Turkey Store that will save you time, cleaning, and seasoning. Just push the turkey inside the oven and it will be done in minutes. Some grocery stores, such as Whole Foods Market, offer pre-cooked side dishes as well, including mashed potatoes, grilled asparagus, and bread stuffing.

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Most of us who have done any serious amount of cooking understand the culinary benefits of thyme. It adds a wonderful flavor to a wide variety of sauces and seasoning mixtures, and can also function well when added to marinades or used as a rub. But what many people may not know is that it also has some medicinal uses, many of which were discovered in ancient times and have been passed down to us from other cultures. This article by Joanne Rawson briefly describes some of thyme’s lesser known uses and explains how to make an infusion of the herb that can be used for medicinal purposes.

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Yesterday as I was clicking through the mails from the Owl Post PTR, I noticed that one of the ads had a brief notation at the top of the page from the program owner. This message was informing us that we should not speed through the mail and take a serious look at the site being advertised because the program owner had bookmarked it. As I slowed down to look at the site, I discovered that it was a relatively new Malaysian recipe site called FoodNet.

Although the site only has about a dozen recipes listed at present, the webmaster here is hoping to gather many more from other people all over the world. The overall plan is to build a comprehensive resource for authentic local cuisine to serve a guide for international travelers. Meanwhile, the recipes that have been posted so far look pretty good and are representative of popular dishes from Malaysia and Singapore.

There is also a place under the heading “Food Spy Wanted” for us to submit our own foods for inclusion on the site. After I have a chance to try some of these exotic Malaysian foods, I may return to the site later and send in a few of my favorite recipes to help them build up their collection.

As I was going through some of my old office supplies to clear out space and remove unnecessary items, I noticed a dust-covered recipe sitting on top of an old stapler that I had not used in several years. The recipe was a small cutout from the back of a bag of King Arthur whole wheat flour from about three years ago. After remembering that I really liked this recipe, I figured that I might as well share it with you here.

I have made the brownies several times according to this formula and noted that it is an excellent alternative to the typical prepackaged brownie mixes found on the store shelves. The main advantage to using this method is that you can control the amount of chocolate and sugar that goes into the final mix in order to suit your individual taste. Since I tend to like dark chocolate more than the sweeter, creamier varieties, I usually increase the amount of cocoa slightly while decreasing the amount of sugar. You can also substitute a small amount of brewed coffee for the vanilla extract, which adds an interesting twist of flavor.
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If you’re a libertarian who is tired of paying taxes for Congressional pork barrel spending, you can still go whole hog with this hearty recipe without having to worry about breaking the budget. I found this recipe a few months ago in one of those “master cookbook” collections, and it has turned out to be the best formula for pulled pork sandwiches that I have tasted so far.

The only disadvantage to this method is that it takes a significant amount of time to prepare because you need to set up the barbecue and assemble a rather long list of sauce ingredients. However, some of the tasks can be done simultaneously, especially if you have more than one person helping with the cooking. I usually begin putting together the sauce ingredients in a deep skillet while waiting for the pork to finish cooking outside. By the time the pork is done, the flavors in the sauce have had enough time to blend well and mature, significantly enhancing the overall taste.

For a special treat, I like to place the sauce and the pork (after it has already been barbecued and pulled apart into small strips) into a slow cooker and let the meat tenderize for another 4 to 6 hours. This requires some patience after doing all of the prior preparations, but the delicious taste of the final product is well worth it. Because of the time requirements, I have found that it is also a good idea to make a large enough quantity of food to last for two or more days if possible. The final mixture can be preserved in the refrigerator for several days after cooking, and the quantities of ingredients in the recipe can be adjusted proportionally as needed.
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If you have ever tried Coca-Cola Blak, then you probably know that it has a certain coffee flavor to it, and is also rather expensive. I happen to have some special experience with this particular product; I was one of a small group of people who had the opportunity to sample this beverage approximately six months before it was ever available for sale in the stores by participating in a paid market research survey.

After answering some basic screening questions that let the company know that I was a regular consumer of cola-flavored soda drinks, they showed us several previews of what this new Coke product would look like, and even had us choose between two tentative names for the product. Besides “BlaK”, the other name that Coke was considering at the time was “Maqio”. Apparently, “BlaK” eventually received more votes from the survey participants. We also got to vote on the design of the packaging and even had some input regarding the suggested retail price of the final product. I tried to get them to lower their price somewhat from the amount they were suggesting, but even the lowest amount that they let us choose in the online survey seemed a little high.

Upon completion of this paid online market research survey, the company sent us two samples of the product for testing and then had us take another online survey so that we could give them our opinions about the flavor, taste, and perceived value of the product. The product that they shipped to us was contained in two unlabeled glass bottles with letter codes stamped on them. We used the letter codes in the second online survey to confirm that we had actually received the product. As I remember it, the product that I tasted at the time was very similar to the Coca Cola Blak that is in the stores now; it is quite possibly the exact same formula. About one week after completing the second online survey, I received a check the mail for $15 as an honorarium for my time and participation. Not bad for 30 minutes of “work”- I got two free bottles of Coke AND got paid for it!

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This is one of my favorite recipes; I might as well post it here just in case anyone wants to try it. I like to cook this one for lunch and/or dinner quite regularly. I got the idea of trying to make my own version of General Tso Chicken back in 1998 when I worked as a dishwasher at a Chinese restaurant.

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