Make Healthy Meals

I won’t deny it. Juice is a bit better for you than soda. But the calories you take in from it don’t do as much as fresh fruits do. In fact, many juices do little more than give you a bit of vitamin C or beta carotene. The way juice is made means that in many cases the best parts aren’t included.

But if you don’t mind making your own, it’s not that hard to get healthier juice.

All you need is a good juicer or blender. You can throw the whole thing in or cut it up to remove the seeds if you like, but make sure to include the skins, which have the most nutritional value. You can use a touch of honey if you want to sweeten your drink, but overall homemade juice tastes wonderful.

Technorati Tags: homemade juice, juicer

The microwave is a hugely popular way to reheat food. However, it appears that it is not the safest way, and microwave reheating has been associated with some cases of food poisoning.

This is very important for you to consider when you reheat your food. As you probably know, microwaves do not heat food evenly. It is these colder sections that allow bacteria to thrive. Read the rest of this entry »

Summer is a great time to decide to eat healthy. There’s plenty of fresh produce, and the added inducement of wanting to look good in your summertime wardrobe can only help matters.

Start out with drinking more water. If you can learn to replace any soda intake you have with water, you’ve made a big step. Regular sodas have tons of calories. Diet sodas may be associated with increased appetite. The artificial sweeteners are generally not good for you. Read the rest of this entry »

1 – 7 ounce package cheese tortellini
1 cup broccoli florets
½ cup chopped fresh parsley
1 – 6 ounce jar marinated artichokes, drained
2 green onions, chopped
½ cup Italian salad dressing
2 ½ tsp. chopped fresh basil or cilantro
3 tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese
6 cherry tomatoes, halved Read the rest of this entry »

1/2 cup olive oil
3/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup mustard
1-1/2 tsp black pepper
2 cloves minced garlic

Chop preferred meat into sizes appropriate for kebobs. Mix all ingredients together in a resealable plastic bag and add meat. Marinate for 4 or more hours, up to overnight.

This marinade is really wonderful on beef. Like any marinade, half the fun is playing with the ingredient list and seeing what you can come up with. As summer approaches, barbequeing will be more fun and a great way to keep your home cooler.

One of the fun things about cooking is all the toys you can have in your kitchen. A good breadmaker, a mixer and so forth make cooking more fun and allow you to express your creativity.

A Bosch mixer may suit your needs quite well. It has a variety of options, and you can choose one that has dough hooks, gourmet whisks and more. It is particularly helpful if you don’t want to have too many appliances, since it can mix bread dough quite well. Sometimes it’s really nice to not need to buy a lot of different appliances when one will do the job.

I can tell you that any machine that will do a good job of mixing bread dough is to be treasured, especially if you love homemade bread as much as I do. It saves all the trouble of mixing dough by hand, which is one of the few tedious things about making bread. The Bosch mixer is one of the best options out there.

All this has me thinking… time for a pizza dinner tonight! Just can’t stand sitting here thinking about all the things I could be mixing up without actually doing something! Time for some fresh pizza dough!

One of my favorite things to do is make enough food that I can freeze the leftovers. It’s great for those days when I’d really rather not cook. So nice to not have to go for fast food just because I don’t want to do anything for dinner.

But freezing food can be a little tricky. Not everything freezes well, and other things need a little special care. But pretty much anything aside from canned foods or eggs can be frozen. However, some things won’t defrost well.

Leafy vegetables don’t defrost well, for example. Neither do mayonnaise and cream sauces. Read the rest of this entry »

Who doesn’t need more recipes? I know I’m hooked on searching for them. Which makes me happy to find sites such as CookingSpot.com which offer a good range of recipes.

You can sign up to take full advantage of the site or just browse and enjoy. You can join the forums as well if you want to talk over recipes or ask questions about cooking.

The recipes aren’t arranged perfectly; I clicked on the apple pie category on the Home page and got all kinds of pies, but in most areas I didn’t see a lot of problems.

1-1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1-1/2 tablespoons butter, melted
1-1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup honey
2 cups bread flour
2-1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 (.25 ounce) packages active dry yeast
1 tablespoon butter, melted Read the rest of this entry »

What kinds of drinks do you enjoy? Coffee, tea, milk, soda? What you drink can have a large impact on how healthy you are eating overall. Choose the wrong drinks and you get a lot more sugar and calories than you really need.

Decaf tea is wonderful, especially for those who want to have less caffeine in their diet. A good drink of tea really doesn’t require all the caffeine to be good. Sure, caffeine can give you a short term boost, but after that comes the energy crash. There are better ways to build your energy.

Tea is a much healthier choice than soda, especially if you add little or no sugar to it. There are many healthy qualities that people ascribe to the various kinds of tea. Depending on the type of tea you get some antioxidants. Some feel that different kinds of tea can help with weight loss, make you feel healthier and so forth.

I like the selection of decaf teas over at Tea Avenue. It’s small, but the types they have should be quite good. They also have herbal teas which are naturally free of caffeine.

The great part about tea is that there is such a huge range of flavors. You don’t have to assume that you don’t like tea just because the kinds you’ve had before weren’t to your taste. There are all kinds of flavors and potential healthy benefits.