blockhead's Blog

To get the svelte figure, start in the kitchen. Slimming down is about taking in less calories, while you burn more calories through exercise.

For a food lover, the dieting part is tough. Exercise is easy, using the stairs instead of the elevator, getting off a stop or two before your actual destination and walking the rest of the way, all these add up helping you burn the calories.

Dieting, or consuming less calories requires discipline, or does it?

My mom is svelte. She eats what she likes. I was slim too, when I lived with her. Her style of cooking made all the difference.

Dieting is not about denying yourself your favourite food. Sooner or later, you'll feel so deprived, you end up binging.

A smarter way to go about this is to take a look at how you prepare your food.

Do you deep fry your food? Do you love crispy, oily fried stuff?

That could be part of the problem.

Maybe you have been dieting by eating lots of salad, heaping your favourite salad cream on it. Salad is great but salad cream contains so much hidden fat. With all the calories in most salad creams, you might as well have a full 5 course dinner instead.

Do you binge on ice cream? Sweet, delectable desserts that are oh so creamy?

Let's start with crispy foods. If you absolutely love dining on crispy meat, try roasting the meat instead. The oil in the meat itself is enough to cook the food with. No need for additional oil.

My mom had a turbo broiler. That was excellent for for cooking chicken wings. Our toaster was used to give food that crispy effect you can't get from microwave ovens. Now there are ovens that do both. A great way to make food crispy without resorting to deep frying it.

Grilled food is yummy. Again, by grilling, the meats cook in their own juices. No need for additional oils that characterize deep frying. We use an oven with grill functions to grill chicken wings, roast meat, the works. Again, no frying needed. Use an oven to do that.

If you must have a crispy snack, the latest snacks in the supermarket feature freeze dried slices of fruit and vegetables which are just like potato crisps. Or go for unbuttered pop corn, freshly popped in the kitchen. Make your own using a popcorn machine but skip the butter. Use salt or herbs to season it instead. Or if you must, sprinkle honey or cocoa powder on it before eating.

On to the issue of salads. Salads are good, if you pay attention to the dressing you put on it. Avoid mayonnaise. Try a herbal vinegar instead. Or if you can't stomach a salad without the cream, try steaming your vegetables instead. Steamed corn tastes great. Sprinkle a little salt on it and avoid the butter. Actually, steamers are vital in the kitchen of anyone who wants to lose weight. A steamer makes preparing a healthy, slimming, tasty meal so easy.

A svelte 60 year old told me how she stayed so slim and healthy. She has steamed fish and rice for most meals. Fish contains less fat than meat. Chicken meat itself is ok, but the chicken skin is laden with fat. Regular meals based on steamed fish are an excellent way to slim down. All you have to do is to season the fish with soya sauce, a slice of ginger, sesame oil and steam it. Eaten with steamed vegetables and steam rice, you have a tasty, healthy, low fat meal.

If you absolutely love ice cream, switch to low fat frozen yogurt instead. You can buy that at the supermarket or make your own using a yogurt maker. The great thing about making your own yogurt is you decide exactly what goes into it. You could use low fat milk, and all your favourite fresh fruit, then freeze the yogurt when it is done, for a creamy, fruity treat. You could add cocoa powder and honey to it. Just use your imagination for a really yummy, healthy treat.

Please note that when you switch to healthy, lower calorie foods, avoid increasing the amount you eat, no matter how yummy the food. 10 helpings of a 100 calorie snack is 1000 calories, so watch how much you eat.

Invest in these equipment to revamp your kitchen for a slimmer you.

The writer is the webmaster of Kitchen which helps you find your kitchen essentials online, easily.

Foil is easy to use to cook over the campfire. It is light-weight, inexpensive, widely available, can be used to cook a variety of meals, and cleanup is extremely easy. Just roll the foil up and toss in the garbage. You can even eat right out of the foil packet if you want.

Here are some tips for using foil to cook campfire meals:

1. Use heavy-duty foil. While a bit more expensive, the extra thickness will help keep your food from burning and will conduct the heat better. Two layers are best. While a common suggestion is to put the shiny side of the foil to the inside of the packet (to reflect heat better, I suppose), Reynolds says that it doesn't matter which side of the aluminum foil you use. Both sides do the same job. Even so, I have always put the shiny side in and I suspect most of you do the same.

2. Foil cooking depends on moisture inside the foil packet, so make sure that the folds of your foil packet are tight and that the food you are cooking has sufficient moisture. If not, add some by folding the packet up except for one end, and then add a tablespoon or two of water, broth, salad dressing, or butter before you seal the packet. Sliced onions can also be used to add moisture.

3. Cooking time will vary depending on the temperature of the coals. Make sure to cook your meal sufficiently. Check one packet for doneness before pulling all of them out of the fire. That way you will only have to rewrap up one packet if they still need more time. Remember that some vegetables (potatoes and carrots, for example), may take more time to cook through.

4. You can also put newspaper between the layers of aluminum foil to help keep the food from burning.

5. For quick foil meals, microwave the food before wrapping in aluminum foil. Then when you get to camp, you only have to warm up the foil packets instead of cooking them completely, which will shorten your cooking time considerably.

6. If you need to warm something up, wrap it in foil and put it near the edge of the fire, turning occasionally (I have warmed up tortillas for burritos this way, for example).

Do you love Japanese food? The funny thing about Japanese food is that you either love it or you hate it. There is no in-between. And chances are, if you hate it, you probably haven’t really tasted Japanese food yet or haven’t given yourself a chance to sample it enough. Japanese food is hard to appreciate after only one bite. And sometimes, the idea that you are tasting raw food just won’t escape your mind that you are already predisposed to hating Japanese food even before you actually taste it.

Personally, I love Japanese food. There really is no other cuisine like it in the world in terms of its unique taste and presentation. Who would believe that something so raw could be so delicious? For those of you who have not yet discovered the pleasures of Japanese food, allow me to present the following primer.

The standard Japanese meal always involves a bowl of white rice as well as soup and side dishes such as pickles, vegetables, meat and fish. Japanese food is classified by the number of viands or “okazu” that are served with the rice, soup and side dishes. A meal with one okazu is called ichiju-issai and a prime example of this is the traditional Japanese breakfast which consists of miso soup, rice, grilled fish and one pickled vegetable.

The regular Japanese meal usually involves three okazu to go along with the soup, rice and pickles. Traditionally, each of these three okazu are cooked in a different way from the others. They can either be served raw or grilled, simmered, steamed or deep fried.

Another hallmark of Japanese food is seafood, which is the most popular and most widely consumed food in Japan. The most popular dishes include all types of fish as well as shellfish, squid and octopus. Crab is another favorite delicacy and so are whale and seaweed. Despite the fact that Japanese are not heavy meat eaters, you will hardly find any vegetarians among them either probably owing to their deep fashion for seafood. Beef and chicken are also popular among the Japanese.

Are you the fruit cake in your family? Before you raise your eyebrow, I would suggest you read on to know what I mean.

The fruit cake has tantalized the world for centuries. When you take a lip smacking bite, you will experience the taste of culture and valued traditions. The fruit cake which I would love to offer you will be an ideal one, with a high content of fruits and nuts in proportion to the batter. You will taste the rich content of French cherries, almonds, California nuts, pineapple, orange peel and lemon. To make it more mouthwatering how about a dash of brand and liquor added to it…hmmm, expensive and irresistible, isn’t it?

If you want to go for a stronger aroma and sharper flavor, then relish the darker version of the fruit cake. The dark fruit cake contains prunes, dates, cherries, walnuts, brown sugar and molasses.

If you love the subtle taste, then you can go for the light fruit cake. The delicate taste is attributed to the presence of granulated sugar, golden raisins, pineapple, apricots and light corn syrup.

When you go for your treks and campaigns, tuck in a pack of fruit cakes. Your friends will love you for this. The best thing about the fruit cake is that it has a tendency to last for months and still retain its intrinsic flavor. You will be pleased to know that the fruit cake has a tendency to freeze very well. However it is ideal to have a time gap of a month before freezing.

Enough of preaching about it. Now let me treat you with a fruit cake.

Whoever said ‘take your own sweet time’ must have said it with reference to the fruit cake. First I will prepare the nuts and fruits. Then I will pour the liquor to be used over them. Let me keep the mixture well covered for two or three days. Sorry to keep you waiting, but then if you want it sweet and nice; you will have to kill time. Okay then, I will prepare the batter and bake your cake. I need to remember that the fruit cake should be baked at a low temperature. I will coat the pan with waxed paper so that the sides of the cake do not get burned. You see the fruit cake involves long baking time. When I am done, you can take the cake tester and insert it in the center of the cake. If you see that it is moist and not doughy, then you are ready to pop a piece into your mouth.

You may think of the fruit cake as a typical Christmas dish. But as I told you before, the fruit cake has a centuries old tradition behind it. Did you know that during the 13th century, dried fruit began to arrive to England from Portugal and the east Mediterranean? During the later half of 1700s, England distributed fruit cake slices to women who sang Christmas carols. The fruit cakes were frequently used in celebrations from the turn of the 18th century. It remains a custom in England for unmarried wedding guests to put a slice of dark fruitcake under their pillow at night so they could dream of the person they will marry.

If you want to know the oldest fruit cake company in the United States, then I would suggest you visit the Collin Street Bakery, Corsicana, Texas. It was set up in the year 1896. So much has been the impact of the fruit cake through out the years, that the oldest family in the household is called the fruit cake.

So now you decide, who is the lovable and respected fruit cake in your home?

Nina Romanov

Would you like to learn more about cakes? Do you need wedding cake ideas, pictures, cake toppers or other supplies? Visit CakeChannel.com

While some people really seem to have a knack for barbequing – always grilling up a perfect meal – for the rest of us, it is something that must be learned, not something that just comes naturally. Believe it or not, there is technique involved. It’s not just a matter of following your cooking instincts.

One of the main secrets of knowing exactly how to make a beautiful, tasty meal every time is knowing how and when to use high heat or very hot coals.

Though you may have heard the term 'seal in the juices' when it came to barbequing, you may even have tried some techniques every now and then, but unless you’re doing it properly, you won’t be getting it right. For the best results, many barbeque chefs cook vegetables and medium-rare steaks by first using a high heat in order to sear the outside of the food and seal both the juices and the flavors inside.

Though this technique is good for foods that you don’t want to cook thoroughly, it shouldn’t be overused. If you’re cooking a meat such as hamburgers or pork ribs, they must be cooked all the way through in order to avoid bacterial contamination. Therefore, searing them to seal in the juices doesn’t do anything but give you dry, or charred food.

This can be explained by understanding the way that meat cooks on a barbeque. As it is heated, the cells and the fibers of the meat will tighten, squeezing out much of the juices. Therefore, if you’re only cooking a meat partially, searing it will help to seal in the juices by quickly cooking the outer layers of the food. However, if you should leave the food on this high heat, the inner layers will cook too quickly, vaporizing all of your precious and tasty juices. Try the technique a few times until you get it right. Pay attention to what you’re doing, so that when you do accomplish the right technique, you know how to repeat it.

When you are using high heat, the rule of thumb is to cook on each side for a maximum of five minutes (a total of ten minutes). After ten minutes, anything that you’re cooking should be moved aside to a medium heat so that it can finish cooking at that lower temperature.

There are many ways to recognize how hot your fire really is, to make sure that it’s always perfect for any kind of food that you’re cooking on your barbeque. One of the most common tests is simply to hold your hand a couple of inches away from the grill. If you’re only able to keep it there for about a second, your grill is at a high heat (that is, over 600?F). If you’re able to hold your hand there fore a few seconds, it’s at a medium heat (around 400?F). At a lower heat, you’ll be able to hold your hand there for over five seconds.

Remember, when it comes to high heat, practice makes perfect, and the perfect is well worth the practice!

Richard Cussons is a prolific and diverse writer. You can find out more about the origins of barbecues at Barbeque Grills Expert