food beverage

BOOKS

A Spoonful of Ginger : Irresistible Health-Giving Recipes from Asian Kitchens

Mario Batali's Simple Italian Food : Recipes from My Two Villages

DID YOU KNOW ....

... what Thousand Island Salad Sauce is made of? Ketchup and mayonnaise, simple isn't it. You can add some spices to give it a little oomph.

... the difference between black and white pepper? They come from the same berries. The black pepper is harvested green and sun dried, white pepper is harvested red ripened and then dried. Black is tastier than the white pepper.

In Germany people have the habit of celebrating the arrival of white asparagus during the month of May. The season is approximate 4 weeks per year. To keep it white, the asparagus must be under the sandy soil and cut before sunrise, otherwise it turns purple. Popular dishes are

Asparagus with:

fresh potatoes, sauce hollandaise or melted butter
you can add on ham or salmon or a steak.

NEWS

Consumer: fitness news

FOOD

ESSENTIALS & GOOD TO KNOW

Food and drinks make us survive. At the same they can make us very sick. Not only due to deceases, but as much due to what we eat and how much of it. Allergies are very often food based. Food and drinks do interact. The Chinese do call that heating and cooling of the body. Westerners would call it heavy and light. The best probably is to keep your diet balanced. We don't want do go to deep in it as so many others do it already and make money by confusing you. One day certain food is good for you, next day somebody claims it is the worst you can eat and drink. Let's approach it from a different view.

HYGENE & WATER
	Hygiene, is one of the most important factors when it comes to food. Fresh from the market, proper washed, cleaned and prepared in your kitchen within a short time and consumed shortly after is the very best. Keeping leftovers start creating the problems.
Some food like stews taste better next day, if you store it proper. Most food starts to deteriorate even in the fridge or freezer. In general you have however the leftover syndrome, same stuff again. So it gets a day older and older until somebody throws it away. The surrounding in the fridge doesn't get better and other food might well be effected.

STORAGE
Food storage has had quite an influence on eating habits. The northern part of the world has seasons and natural storage in the ground called cellars, which were perfect to store potatoes, dried meat, fish and vegetables. The southern part of the world does not have cellars so they had to preserve the food in a different way. Chilli based products where the ideal way to do it. The most famous dishes coming from this are the curries or similar dishes you'll find in Asia, Middle East and South America. Big areas in the world don't have electricity to run refrigerators, so the market is the "supermarket" in the south. The refrigerator was one of the most important inventions in the world of eating. Hygiene as described above is most important. Chilled food in the fridge last longer as long as you keep the proper temperature and the doors closed. Frozen food last even longer, but creates certain risks. You cant store it forever. Try not to pass 4 weeks in your home fridge. Industrial fridges have a much lower temperature and can store food much longer. Once defrosted you should prepare it and eat. Defrosted food should never be put back into the freezer without being first cooked. Canned food should be taken out of the can as soon as opened. Never leave it in an open can, it looses flavor and gets quick bad.
SPICES
,	Spices are pure natural flavorings either fresh or in dried form, full size or ground. Salt, sugar and pepper are probably the most famous one. By far the majority of all spices come from the
Tropics. Historically spices made people rich through trade and other were fighting wars. Nations flourished on it, the Dutch, English, French and Portuguese. Today we enjoy spices due the industrial harvesting and distributions by big food companies. Recipes tell you what to use and how much. A guideline should be use rather less as you can always add more. Once you used to much its to late.
ADDITIVES
Additives are in most cases artificial. Flavorings, to enhance flavors, preservatives to do exactly what the name says, preserving, enhancers to enhance flavors, tenderizers to to pretend to improve the quality of meat. The list is pretty long. Can you live without them, do it.
RECIPES


LINKS


BEVERAGES
ESSENTIALS & GOOD TO KNOW


FRUIT & VEGETABLE JUICES

SOFT DRINKS
	Most soft drinks are flavored and carbonated. Sugar content is often very high. Quite few brands do use artificial sweeteners to make them sound more healthy. Most of them are artificial flavored.
MILK & YOGHURT
	When you skim off the fat from the fresh milk, the remain is milk. The fat is the basis for butter. The basic milk is full cream milk containing % of fat.
COFFEE
Coffee comes from a large variety of beans and geographical regions. Coffee originates from Ethiopia round 570 AD and its name is of Arabian origin. There are three main categories of coffee beans, arabica, liberica and robusta. Arabica grows on hills whereby the other two prefer more the lowlands. Cultivation started round 1500 and spread to Europe round 1650 and to Middle and South America around 1800. Each category of beans has a variety of beans. Some of the more famous beans come from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Kenya and Sumatra in Indonesia. Famous coffee flavors are Mocha, Espresso and Vienna. Coffee can be prepared in different ways. Turkish and Brazilian coffee is course ground coffee and water, slowly boiled to a thick brew. Espresso is very fine ground coffee powder penetrated by hot steam to produce the thick strong flavor. Many other brews are made by filtering fine ground coffee with boiled water. The filter was previously a socks looking fabric. Today's modern coffee machine use paper bags.
TEA
Tea is produced from leaves growing on bushes. These bushes are actually trimmed as they otherwise would grow to large trees. Tea is after water the most popular drink in the world. The origin is probably India but became more popular in China round 200 AD. Tea reached Europe earlier than coffee at the beginning of the 16th century through the Dutch and not the English as many believe. The tea leaf is more or less the same. Differences come from the geographical origin and the type of processing. You got black and green tea. Our tea bags are normally contain black tea. Chinese and Japanese tea represent mainly green teas. It is very common to flavor tea during the process of maturing and fermenting. In some countries tea has a spiritual or cultural aspect. tea is claimed to have a variety of health aspects.
BEER


WINE


SPIRITS