Showing posts with label Cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cooking. Show all posts

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Joy of Cooking Recipes

Joy of Cooking recipes are still some of the most popular throughout the whole of America. The book "Joy of Cooking" was first released way back in 1931 by Irma Rombauer and since then it has been updated many times. It is one of the most talked about cookbooks because its recipes are easy to make and simple to follow. It has many sections which other cookbooks just don't deal with.

The Joy of Cooking book made a massive change about 13 years ago. It was the first time that they allowed recipes in there that were from other chefs and cooks. This didn't go down very well with the regular purchasers of the book. They said it had now become less friendly and some of the most popular recipes had been removed completely.

So taking this on board, the creator released another version very recently, which reverts back to her own unique style. This was to celebrate a whole 75 years since the book was first introduced and all the favourite sections were brought back too. Joy of Cooking recipes can be followed quite easily yet again in this new version, which brought satisfaction to many people.

You can grab a copy of the book from your local book store or shop online at places such as Amazon or even buy a copy from EBay if someone wants to sell their own copy. Joy of Cooking really brings good old fashioned home cooked recipes to you in a very easy to follow manner. That is why it has become so popular and will continue to do so in the future.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Break The Routine With Some Cooking Games

Cooking games are gaining in popularity at bridal showers, home parties for direct sellers like The Pampered Chef and Tastefully Simple and other such get-togethers when people do want to cook or see someone cook but don't want it to be boring.

Here are some cooking games you can try at your next girl's night out or even a couple's dinner so that you all get to eat homemade food while having fun at the same time.

Cooking in Reverse

This is a popular cooking game as instead of cooking something from a list of ingredients provided to you, you actually have to write down the ingredients from the dish served. You can obviously tell the main things like whether it is chicken with broccoli served with noodles. But the sauces and seasonings used and how everything was put together can be a challenge. Depending on the skill and interest level of your friends, you can take it up a notch by even asking them to provide the quantity of the ingredients used and giving a prize to the person who ends up being closes to the original recipe.

Mixing Courses

Mixing courses is a fun cooking game because it lets you really think out of the box. It basically means finding innovative ways to serve breakfast staples at dinner and salads instead of dessert. How you whip up pancakes and waffles as a dinner entrée and how you can make your dessert the first thing on the table and a salad the last is up to you. That is what the cooking game is all about. It even gets people thinking of creative ways of incorporating cereal on pizza and orange juice with filet mignon.

Blind Tasting

This is a very old but still popular cooking game and is very simple. You basically blindfold the testers and ask them to guess what they are sampling. Always be sure of allergies anyone may have as you wouldn't want to ruin your party with someone being rushed to the emergency room as they were allergic to strawberries, peanuts or shellfish. Also, some people may have religious or other dietary restriction such a being a vegetarian so always be sure you know your guests likes and preferences. You could add a fun twist to this by getting a blindfolded friend chew on a jalapeño or some other spicy thing and see him clench his teeth!

The possibilities are endless when you have fun food and friends in the equation. Have fun!

you can as that is a very good antioxidant.

Monday, May 24, 2010

The Benefits of Homeschool Cooking

If you've taken on the challenge of homeschooling your children, you probably already know the importance of finding interesting and unique ways to teach them new concepts and to give them a chance to practice old ones. But you may not have realized the answer is as close as your family kitchen. Below are some of the benefits your little students can get from learning via cooking.

Math and Cooking
Anyone who can cook can do math - it's that simple. So much of what you do in the kitchen involves doing math and that's why children can learn through following simple recipes. Take, for example, the dreaded math topic of adding fractions. When kids have to learn it by looking at numbers on a page, it can be difficult. However, if you decide you're going to make a double batch of chocolate chip cookies and all of those ingredients (most of which are written as fractions) need to be doubled, your son or daughter can find great motivation in learning how to add those fractions together. They wouldn't want to come up short on the chocolate chips, would they?

Science and Cooking
If you've watched many cooking programs, you may have already become familiar with the magic of science that is at work daily in your kitchen. Helping your students see that science and giving them the okay to experiment with it can be a great learning experience. It will also make for fun lessons they won't soon forget. For example, you could teach the children about the three stages of matter: gas, solids, and liquids. You could boil water and watch it evaporate. You could freeze water to make it into a solid. And you could use water in its liquid form as part of cooking. If you have several students, ask them to predict how long it would take for an ice cube to become water vapor on the stove top.

You can design experiments that show what happens to cookies if you leave out the baking soda or the flour. My daughter got first hand experience with this very thing last weekend when we ran out of flour and I was too lazy to run to the store. Pancake mix is not a good substitute.

Literature and Cooking
Another fun way to use cooking in your homeschooling lessons is by incorporating it into your studies of literature. For many years, schools across the country have been serving green eggs and ham to celebrate the Dr. Seuss classic. Your child could prepare the same thing with a little bit of food coloring.

When your kids are reading stories about children in different lands, find recipes for the foods that kids eat in those countries. You can create a whole unit study revolving around a foreign country, and cooking up the native food is a educational winner.

Another idea is to set aside a certain part of the day for literature discussion. You and your students can prepare a snack while discussing the book your kids are reading. It's a good way to get them used to discussing books.

Art and Cooking
One of the other nice things about the kitchen is that it's a great place for kids to show off their creativity. Children can use traditional food items, such as uncooked macaroni, to create artwork.
They can also make pancakes to look like a butterfly or a mouse. Ask your kids to create a sugar cookie then decorate it so that it serves as a model of a human cell.