cdkitchen > feeddaily blog
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Super Bowl food is not exactly known for being healthy. Abundant yes, but healthy not so much. Least of all for vegetarians. If you are off the meat--for good, for a diet, or just for the day--avoiding meat at Super Bowl parties can leave you listless come half time and perhaps driven to gnaw on a giant foam finger by the final score. Whether you are off meat for good, or on meat, but hoping not to derail New Year's wellness resolutions, there are still celebratory, football ready foods at your disposal to get you through a long afternoon of drinking light beer and...
by
In this time starved era, we are always looking for ways to get all that we need to get done finished with ever more efficiency. But we don't want to stop making home cooked meals just because our schedules are too busy. Well I recently found out about one solution to this dilemma. I had the opportunity to attend a party at a store called Dream Dinners with a bunch of ladies from my neighborhood. The concept of the store is really neat: you walk in, claim a shelf in the refrigerator, and get to work constructing a couple of week's worth of dinners with an easy to...
by
Super Bowl Sunday is just around the corner. It's a great time to invite your friends over for a casual get together and indulge in some heavy duty snacking as you cheer your favorite team onto victory. The challenge with Super Bowl Party menus is that they generally don't lend themselves well to healthy eating themes. But with a little forethought and creativity, you can strike a happy compromise with a menu somewhere between double crust pepperoni pizzas and beer and raw veggies with low cal dip and diet sodas. Here are some suggestions for making your Super Bowl Party buffet hearty...
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Few things are more satisfying than a nice meal and time spent around the table with a group of friends. Recently I had the good fortune to be invited to a dinner that was planned and cooked by a Hungarian American friend (His parents are first generation Hungarian immigrants). The menu was centered around his traditional favorite dishes with the recipes coming straight from his mother's collection, starting with a delicious earthy mushroom soup, followed by a main course of chicken with sour cream paprika sauce (Chicken Paprikash), flour dumplings (nokedli or galuska), cucumber salad...
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How would you like to be able to serve your family a hot, healthy, delicious evening meal and save money and time in the process? Too good to be true? Not according to Mary Tennant and Becki Visser, founders and owners of Cooking Among Friends. As working moms, they were desperate to find a way to avoid the convenient fast food evening meal and replace it with a home cooked, nutritious, and tasty meal. But busy schedules left little time for meal planning, grocery shopping, and preparation. As she tried to find solutions to her family dinner time dilemma, Mary decided...
by
Once upon a time in the Land of Earthquakes (California), young children were asked to bring canned goods to school to put in a classroom kit for earthquake preparedness. From across this small town, children asked their mothers for cans of tuna fish, corn, and pinto beans. One child (me), asked her mother for a jumbo sized can of her favorite canned food at the time, hominy. On the great can collection day, as kids are apt to do, there was much comparison and hushed judgment of each canned contribution. The winner by far, as determined by the fast flow of gossip, was
by
Congratulations my ambitious Home Cook, you have almost made it through an entire month of pushing yourself to rethink your approach to consistently getting dinner on the table... from scratch. A month of trying out time-saving tips, meal planning, and making breakfast for dinner may have left you with a refrigerator full of bits and pieces of your previous nights' efforts. And as any lover of the Thanksgiving holiday knows, there is nothing better than the meal itself except for maybe digging into its remnants the day after. One man's refrigerator full of leftovers is another...
by
Now that we're heading back to cover some of the basics in our house, I've been reminded that there are quite a few terms used in cooking that may be taken for granted when beginning to cook. Therefore, I thought it would be fun to have a basic prep class. If you have some veggies and fruits languishing in your refrigerator, go ahead and pull them out. Remember that it's smart to wash fruits and veggies well. Rinse them under cool water and pat them dry - that helps to keep them from slipping out from under your fingers (or knife!) when cutting. It also helps...
by
Beans are not one of those foods that you find people writing sonnets about. Aside from the well known children's verse, "Beans, beans, the musical fruit", only the story of Jack and the Beanstalk seem to give much credit to the legume. And yet, for all the general literary disregard, beans have one of the richest histories of cultivation as a crop and remain a staple food in many parts of the world today. A closer examination of this diverse food might just reveal that the bean deserves a promotion from supporting character to starring role at the dinner table. The...
by
I was chatting with some friends the other day about what we would want to have if we were stuck on a desert island and could only eat a few foods for the rest of our lives. This all started when we were at a restaurant where in lieu of bread they served the most addictive wasabi popcorn. Our waitress insisted that if she could only have one food for the rest of her life, on this imaginary deserted island, it would be just that, popcorn. It takes a rather intense love of a food to think you could eat it every day if you had to. As I posed this question later on to a...
by
Fun fact: What is a bunch of bananas called? A hand. And how about each piece of fruit? A finger! Go ahead: Tell your kids to have some fingers for a snack and watch their reaction. And yet, seriously, what's not to love about a banana? It's simple, nutritious, and easy to carry and peel. And who doesn't love banana bread? Yet perhaps like me, you're looking for ways to enjoy this fruit without the fat and calories of granny's favorite dessert?
by
Several months ago we had a surprise leftover: cans and cans of whipped cream - those dessert partials that generous friends bring to picnics and parties to share but end up not getting used. Gosh, having those handed over was no hardship at all, for we just love whipped cream at our house. On jello. On pudding. On cookies, cake, ice cream. What the heck: just spray it on a spoon. No need to have a dessert first - plenty have been known to eat it straight off the utensil. What the heck, save the silverware and do the straight-into-the-mouth-dealie (kids love that!).
by
What do boy scouts and fine cooks have in common? They both employ a method of folding meals into packets with delicious results. The boy scouts have their simple foil pouch cooking, while French and Italian chefs have cooking in parchment paper, or en papillote or in cartoccio, respectively. There are many different methods for this technique but the basic premise is that the food will be sealed in and steam in its own juices. It makes for a memorable dining experience. One of my most vivid food memories is while on a trip to Italy while eating in a small...
by
It's the end of a busy week and everyone's burnt out. We're all in the mood for a dinner that's quick, easy, and super yummy. So almost every week we go for the natural Friday night choice: pizza! Since pizza happens to be one of the foods my family agrees upon as a top favorite, it's an easy choice. But it's also a traditional one in the fact that I am resurrecting a Friday night ritual from my own childhood. We continue the tradition by ordering a couple pies with a mix of different toppings and then sit down to watch a video together (well, DVD now, but...
by
I confess I am a secret singing sensation. I sing in the car, in the shower, when I'm on hold with the cable company. I have to bite my tongue to stop myself from singing out loud with my headphones on while trotting down the street. And of course I sing when I bake. Working by yourself can be a real downer sometimes. Without the company of fellow humans during the day, sometimes I tune into my favorite talk radio stations. And sometimes I talk to my cats. But honestly, they're not the best conversationalists. It drives me crazy that they never actually can answer a question directly!
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Even though I use and write about my crockpot all the time, it's easy for me to forget just how cool crockpot cooking is. I remember my mom's crockpot. The outside was scarred with burnt food and nicks from being crammed into a low kitchen cupboard. The deep brown, almost adobe-colored liner was heavy and old-fashioned looking. She cooked just about everything and anything in that crockpot: chicken with carrots and red onions, meat stew with chunks of white potatoes, and chili, thick and saucy and warm. When she made roasts in that crockpot, they came out...
From The Editors At CDKitchen: Feed Daily
by
Super Bowl food is not exactly known for being healthy. Abundant yes, but healthy not so much. Least of all for vegetarians. If you are off the meat--for good, for a diet, or just for the day--avoiding meat at Super Bowl parties can leave you listless come half time and perhaps driven to gnaw on a giant foam finger by the final score. Whether you are off meat for good, or on meat, but hoping not to derail New Year's wellness resolutions, there are still celebratory, football ready foods at your disposal to get you through a long afternoon of drinking light beer and...
by
In this time starved era, we are always looking for ways to get all that we need to get done finished with ever more efficiency. But we don't want to stop making home cooked meals just because our schedules are too busy. Well I recently found out about one solution to this dilemma. I had the opportunity to attend a party at a store called Dream Dinners with a bunch of ladies from my neighborhood. The concept of the store is really neat: you walk in, claim a shelf in the refrigerator, and get to work constructing a couple of week's worth of dinners with an easy to...
by
Super Bowl Sunday is just around the corner. It's a great time to invite your friends over for a casual get together and indulge in some heavy duty snacking as you cheer your favorite team onto victory. The challenge with Super Bowl Party menus is that they generally don't lend themselves well to healthy eating themes. But with a little forethought and creativity, you can strike a happy compromise with a menu somewhere between double crust pepperoni pizzas and beer and raw veggies with low cal dip and diet sodas. Here are some suggestions for making your Super Bowl Party buffet hearty...
by
Few things are more satisfying than a nice meal and time spent around the table with a group of friends. Recently I had the good fortune to be invited to a dinner that was planned and cooked by a Hungarian American friend (His parents are first generation Hungarian immigrants). The menu was centered around his traditional favorite dishes with the recipes coming straight from his mother's collection, starting with a delicious earthy mushroom soup, followed by a main course of chicken with sour cream paprika sauce (Chicken Paprikash), flour dumplings (nokedli or galuska), cucumber salad...
by
How would you like to be able to serve your family a hot, healthy, delicious evening meal and save money and time in the process? Too good to be true? Not according to Mary Tennant and Becki Visser, founders and owners of Cooking Among Friends. As working moms, they were desperate to find a way to avoid the convenient fast food evening meal and replace it with a home cooked, nutritious, and tasty meal. But busy schedules left little time for meal planning, grocery shopping, and preparation. As she tried to find solutions to her family dinner time dilemma, Mary decided...
by
Once upon a time in the Land of Earthquakes (California), young children were asked to bring canned goods to school to put in a classroom kit for earthquake preparedness. From across this small town, children asked their mothers for cans of tuna fish, corn, and pinto beans. One child (me), asked her mother for a jumbo sized can of her favorite canned food at the time, hominy. On the great can collection day, as kids are apt to do, there was much comparison and hushed judgment of each canned contribution. The winner by far, as determined by the fast flow of gossip, was
by
Congratulations my ambitious Home Cook, you have almost made it through an entire month of pushing yourself to rethink your approach to consistently getting dinner on the table... from scratch. A month of trying out time-saving tips, meal planning, and making breakfast for dinner may have left you with a refrigerator full of bits and pieces of your previous nights' efforts. And as any lover of the Thanksgiving holiday knows, there is nothing better than the meal itself except for maybe digging into its remnants the day after. One man's refrigerator full of leftovers is another...
by
Now that we're heading back to cover some of the basics in our house, I've been reminded that there are quite a few terms used in cooking that may be taken for granted when beginning to cook. Therefore, I thought it would be fun to have a basic prep class. If you have some veggies and fruits languishing in your refrigerator, go ahead and pull them out. Remember that it's smart to wash fruits and veggies well. Rinse them under cool water and pat them dry - that helps to keep them from slipping out from under your fingers (or knife!) when cutting. It also helps...
by
Beans are not one of those foods that you find people writing sonnets about. Aside from the well known children's verse, "Beans, beans, the musical fruit", only the story of Jack and the Beanstalk seem to give much credit to the legume. And yet, for all the general literary disregard, beans have one of the richest histories of cultivation as a crop and remain a staple food in many parts of the world today. A closer examination of this diverse food might just reveal that the bean deserves a promotion from supporting character to starring role at the dinner table. The...
by
I was chatting with some friends the other day about what we would want to have if we were stuck on a desert island and could only eat a few foods for the rest of our lives. This all started when we were at a restaurant where in lieu of bread they served the most addictive wasabi popcorn. Our waitress insisted that if she could only have one food for the rest of her life, on this imaginary deserted island, it would be just that, popcorn. It takes a rather intense love of a food to think you could eat it every day if you had to. As I posed this question later on to a...
by
Fun fact: What is a bunch of bananas called? A hand. And how about each piece of fruit? A finger! Go ahead: Tell your kids to have some fingers for a snack and watch their reaction. And yet, seriously, what's not to love about a banana? It's simple, nutritious, and easy to carry and peel. And who doesn't love banana bread? Yet perhaps like me, you're looking for ways to enjoy this fruit without the fat and calories of granny's favorite dessert?
by
Several months ago we had a surprise leftover: cans and cans of whipped cream - those dessert partials that generous friends bring to picnics and parties to share but end up not getting used. Gosh, having those handed over was no hardship at all, for we just love whipped cream at our house. On jello. On pudding. On cookies, cake, ice cream. What the heck: just spray it on a spoon. No need to have a dessert first - plenty have been known to eat it straight off the utensil. What the heck, save the silverware and do the straight-into-the-mouth-dealie (kids love that!).
by
What do boy scouts and fine cooks have in common? They both employ a method of folding meals into packets with delicious results. The boy scouts have their simple foil pouch cooking, while French and Italian chefs have cooking in parchment paper, or en papillote or in cartoccio, respectively. There are many different methods for this technique but the basic premise is that the food will be sealed in and steam in its own juices. It makes for a memorable dining experience. One of my most vivid food memories is while on a trip to Italy while eating in a small...
by
It's the end of a busy week and everyone's burnt out. We're all in the mood for a dinner that's quick, easy, and super yummy. So almost every week we go for the natural Friday night choice: pizza! Since pizza happens to be one of the foods my family agrees upon as a top favorite, it's an easy choice. But it's also a traditional one in the fact that I am resurrecting a Friday night ritual from my own childhood. We continue the tradition by ordering a couple pies with a mix of different toppings and then sit down to watch a video together (well, DVD now, but...
by
I confess I am a secret singing sensation. I sing in the car, in the shower, when I'm on hold with the cable company. I have to bite my tongue to stop myself from singing out loud with my headphones on while trotting down the street. And of course I sing when I bake. Working by yourself can be a real downer sometimes. Without the company of fellow humans during the day, sometimes I tune into my favorite talk radio stations. And sometimes I talk to my cats. But honestly, they're not the best conversationalists. It drives me crazy that they never actually can answer a question directly!
by
Even though I use and write about my crockpot all the time, it's easy for me to forget just how cool crockpot cooking is. I remember my mom's crockpot. The outside was scarred with burnt food and nicks from being crammed into a low kitchen cupboard. The deep brown, almost adobe-colored liner was heavy and old-fashioned looking. She cooked just about everything and anything in that crockpot: chicken with carrots and red onions, meat stew with chunks of white potatoes, and chili, thick and saucy and warm. When she made roasts in that crockpot, they came out...