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
These days of increasing food prices, many people are taking the option of maintaining a fruit and vegetable garden. With your own garden, you can grow herbs, vegetables and fruit, allowing you to pick fresh produce from your garden and cook on the same day.
Your meals and salads would taste so much better, when you can taste all the natural flavours of freshly picked garden produce. Once you start to include freshly picked garden produce in your salads and cooked meals, you will never want to go back to buying the tasteless produce you buy from the food store.
If you do not have enough room for a garden in your yard, you can grow a few plants in containers around your home. You can even have a herb garden in a metal box just outside your kitchen window. That is where I grow my delicious herbs! Every time I need some fresh herbs, I just open the window and voila! Freshly picked herbs for cooking!
To read more: Improving Your Meals With A Herb, Fruit And Vegetable Garden
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
In most home kitchens, you see closed cupboards for all the shelves. More people these days, like to have open kitchen shelving, making it easier to reach for cooking utensils, and locate all you need in a home kitchen.
There is one disadvantage with open shelves. Your cooking tools may get covered with grease, dust and grime. If you know how to keep your kitchen clean, then you should not have a problem in keeping your kitchen tools clean. I always like to clean most of my cooking tools, at least once a week, to ensure they are clean and ready when I need to cook a meal.
Another way to ensure your cooking utensils on the open shelves are not covered with cooking oil, is to ensure that cooking oil does not reach your open kitchen shelving. For example, if you are frying in a pan, then cover your pan while you are cooking, to stop cooking oil flying about.
To read more Finding All You Need With Open Kitchen Shelving
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
There are plenty of fruit and vegetables you can include with a vegetable salad recipe. A variety of vegetable ingredients can be added, depending on availability due to seasonal fluctuations.
If you are looking to balance your meal, with a nice side salad and you do not have the time to prepare a quick salad, then you can stop at a food store and buy pre-sliced vegetables. When you arrive home, all you have to do is empty out your vegetables in a salad bowl, give the ingredients a quick wash, and then make your quick salad.
You may like to add a high calorie salad dressing, to add more flavour to your salad. If you want to maintain your weight, you may look at using a low calorie salad dressing or use olive oil instead.
There are many ways to enjoy your favourite meal with a vegetable salad recipe.
To read more Making A Delicious Side Salad With A Vegetable Salad Recipe
