Recipes Food Cooking

When you arrive home, after a long day at work, you do not want to spend two long hours in the kitchen, cooking a complex meal. Your better option, is to use simple ingredients that will cook quickly and create a delicious and healthy 30 minute meal.

One way to create a quick and healthy meal, is to cut down the preparation time. Before you leave for work in the morning, you should line up your ingredients, ready to cook when you arrive home. Any ingredients you do not have, you can buy them at the food store on the way home.

For example, you can buy pre cut vegetables in many food stores and small pieces of meat including lamb, unskinned chicken and beef. The smaller pieces of meat cook much quicker.

You can add a small amount of herbs to improve the flavour, but you now have the basic ingredients of a 30 minute meal.

To read more The Basic Ingredients Of A 30 Minute Meal

Chanukkah (also commonly spelled as Hanukkah) is a Jewish holiday established to commemorate the lighting of the menorah at the Holy Temple in Jerusalem by the victorious Jews led by Judah Maccabee in 165 B.C.

The festival lasts for eight days, beginning on the 25th day of the Hebrew month Kislev. The duration of the festival corresponds to the number of days the menorah was kept miraculously alight by the oil which was meant to last for only one day.

Hence, today, Jews celebrate the Hanukkah tradition by lighting the candles in a menorah for eight days.

Jews in various parts of the world enjoy traditional foods during Chanukkah, usually with oil ingredients in remembrance of the miraculous oil in the temple at Jerusalem. Jewish Americans have latkes, which are a type of potato pancakes, yet while in Israel, Jews partake of sufganiya, a kind of pastry filled with jelly that has been cooked in oil.

Dairy products such as cheese are also popular fares. For children, there are traditional Jewish games that they can play as part of the Jewish Hanukkah holiday.

One of them is Spin the Dreidel; the dreidel is a four-sided top with an engraving of a Hebrew letter on each side, which are initials of the words in the sentence “A great miracle happened there.” As well as games, traditional Hanukkah songs are sung.

Despite being a relatively minor holiday in the Jewish calendar, Chanukkah enjoys a degree of prominence, especially in North America. In view of the sizeable population, secular Jews wanted a Jewish alternative to Christmas gift-giving, which is also celebrated at roughly the same period.

Though giving “gelt” or coins to Jewish children remains a Hanukkah tradition, many Jewish children are also being given other gifts so that they do not feel being left out of the Christmas gift giving merriment.

To read more Chanukkah Food Traditions

Making your own fresh bread or buying fresh bread from the hot bread shop down the road, allows you to eat fresh delicious bead with your meals. If you want to maintain your fresh bread and stop it from going stale or moldy, then you should keep it in a ceramic bread box, away from sunlight and water.

I make my own bread in the morning with a bread machine and then place the fresh bread in the ceramic bread box. The bread is still hot and delicious, even an hour later. I like to bake my own fresh bread every morning and my family looks forward to eating fresh bread every day.

If I have to leave early in the morning, I cook the bread overnight and it is ready to eat by the time the whole family is ready for breakfast. We usually finish the whole bread by the end of dinner. If we have guests, we can make a number of loaves of bread and place them in ceramic bread boxes, until the guests arrive.

To read more Maintaining Your Fresh Bread With A Ceramic Bread Box

Norwegian cookies are rather delicious with your morning coffee. You may be thinking about the day ahead, looking at the ray of sunshine sneaking through your curtains. Pick up a Norwegian cookie, feel it crumble in your mouth and wash it down with your favourite freshly brewed coffee.

Baking is one of the skills practiced and perfected over the centuries, by many Scandinavians. This is why the Norwegian cookies are easy to bake. All you need are almonds, butter and cardamom. If you do not have the time to make the cookies yourself, you can buy them from many gourmet food stores.

For the best cookies, I always ask for the decorated Norwegian cookies.

To read more Freshly Brewed Morning Coffee With Norwegian Cookies

A family favourite as an after dinner dessert, is strawberry shortcake. As it is easy to make and often eaten rather quickly and there are never pieces left over the next day.

The best way to make strawberry shortcake, is to use fresh strawberries from your garden, add some light cake and whipped cream and you have a delicious shortcake. There are no complexities in making this dessert. You may want to make slight changes to the ingredients if you have special diet requirements, otherwise the time taken to create this shortcake is relatively short.

If you want to avoid the complexities of a rising souffle, then you can take the easier route and make a strawberry shortcake with fresh strawberries. If strawberries are not in season, then use strawberry syrup, which is often available in many gourmet food stores.

To read more Delight Your Dinner Guests With Strawberry Shortcake

Many people like to eat potato chips as a side dish, to enhance the main meal. The potatoes can be hot chips, with added flavors like oregano, hot peppers and a pinch of salt, although I like to make my chips without salt altogether.

You can enhance your main meal with a side dish of hot potato chips, when you may not have fresh vegetables to make a salad, or there is a shortage of vegetables, like in a cold winter time. Potatoes seem to be available all year around, as other vegetables seem to come and go, depending on the favorable growing conditions.

I like to slice my own potatoes to make hot potato chips, as the taste and flavor is so much better. I have tried using frozen chips, but there was no natural flavours and I had to enhance the chips by adding more hot pepper sauce, oregano and basil.

These are some of the many ways you can enhance your main meal, with a side serving of hot potato chips.

To read more A Side Dish Of Potato Chips

Traditional Mexican foods are easy to prepare with ingredients available in many food stores. Mexican recipes are rather easy to use and you do not need complicated processes with difficult to obtain ingredients in order to make a delicious meal based on a Mexican recipe.

You can start by making your own Mexican coffee, just by adding half a tablespoon of cinnamon to your coffee. Next, you may look at making a meal for your family lunch. Here is a recipe to make chile rellenos.

Whip up a pan of chile rellenos with just four eggs, a little milk, a cup of grated cheddar cheese and several fresh or canned Jalapeno peppers. Rinse and core the peppers, remove the seeds and the bitter pith. Grease a 9-inch square baking dish.

In a separate bowl, scramble the eggs, add a quarter cup of milk. Pour half the egg mixture into the pan, distribute the peppers evenly and cover with the remaining egg and all of the cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until the eggs are firm.

Now you have delicious lunch for all the family to enjoy, made with traditional Mexican foods.

To read more Easy To Cook With Traditional Mexican Foods

Here are a few ideas to make iced coffee in the comfort of your own home. Start with your freshly brewed coffee, remove your pot and allow the coffee to cool down a little. Once it has cooled, empty the coffee into one or two juice containers and refrigerate.

Now here is where you create ice cubes with coffee instead of water. Make a fresh pot of coffee, allow to cool, and then pour the unsweetened coffee into ice cube trays and place the trays in your freezer. Once frozen, you can place the ice cubes in a large freeze bag. Just like using water to make ice cubes, here you use cool unsweetened coffee. The coffee ice cubes cuts down on the dilution of your coffee with water.

When making iced coffee, you can make your average coffee, by using the coffee in your refrigerator and adding the coffee ice cubes. Alternatively, you can make a more delicious coffee by adding 1/2 a teaspoon of cinnamon for an iced Mexican coffee.

To read more Make Iced Coffee In The Comfort Of Your Home

A simple and quick macaroni salad recipe allows you to create a delicious side dish to complement the main meal. Your main meal may be barbecue ribs and you need a side dish to balance the strong taste of the meat.

You can use the standard ingredients for making a macaroni salad, or if you wish to make a low fat or a low calorie version, you can switch to alternative ingredients. For example, rather than using the high calorie mayonnaise, you can switch to a low calorie mayonnaise or use olive oil instead. I like the taste of olive oil, much more than the mayonnaise. You can also replace the cheddar cheese with low fat cheese.

There may be a slightly different taste, but the overall flavour should be close to the same.

To read the recipe Making A Better Side Dish With A Macaroni Salad Recipe

Some people do not like vegetables and if they do eat any, they make a small side salad. Often, they include a high calorie salad dressing, just to increase the taste. Including a high calorie salad dressing defeats the purpose of eating a salad. Alternatively you can include a low calorie salad dressing or replace the salad dressing with olive oil.

People who do not eat vegetables may have health problems, as they need the nutrients that vegetable recipes will provide. For example, your body needs fibre to help with digestion, anti-oxidants to fight cancer and many vitamins and minerals help to keep your body in peak condition.

All of these nutrients are available in vegetable and fruits you can use when cooking your meals. You can get many of these essential nutrients in a magic pill, but as any good medical doctor would tell you, it is better to eat your greens than to take another pill.

If you want to lose weight, then you should eat more vegetables, as eating vegetables helps to boost your metabolism and most vegetables do not contain fat. You can include meat with your vegetable recipes, but ensure it is lean meat. For example, if you want to add a few pieces of chicken to your meal, then remove the skin, as most of the fat in chicken is on the skin.

To read more Improving Your Health With Vegetable Recipes