Posts filed under 'Food'
Pep up your taste buds with a dash of mustard. If mustard seeds are not your cup of tea, have mustard sauce instead. Spread it on your grilled meats, dip those crunchy French fries in it or crown your hamburger with a liberal dose of mustard sauce. Have it anyway you like. The tangy, pungent flavored mustard will make a delicacy out of even the plain old bread and butter sandwich.
The mustard sauce is a hot sauce with a mild temperament. While it is spicy enough to add a zing to your food, it does not exactly cause your tongue to go up in flames. So you don’t need to be a fire-eater to savor its taste.
Big Bob Gibson’s Backyard brand of barbecue mustard sauce happily blends the best of both worlds. The sharpness of the onions, garlic, and hot sauces are tempered to comfort by the molasses, sugar and caramel.
It is actually hard to fathom that the staple fixture that mustard sauces are in today’s dinner tables, had a relatively low-key debut in America. Though mustard in its raw form was not much popular, the Americans gradually warmed up to the mild mustard sauces that were prepared with white mustard seeds. Now, “Pass the mustard” is probably the most uttered phrase during any meal.
Once gaining a foothold, the mustard sauces have blossomed with time, innovating while simultaneously adhering to the taste appeals of the average American. Thus, you have Honey Dijon, a delectable combination of honey and mustard, which enjoys cult status among the foodies.
The mustard sauces lend themselves well to innovations and customizations. Thus those who would love to heat up things a bit more can add peppers to their mustard sauces. Ass Kickin Mustard would suit them to a hilt. Containing the fiercely hot Habanero peppers, ground mustard and also whole mustard seeds, mustard sauces of this variety command considerable awe.
The mustard sauce, as a food additive, dipper and accompaniment, can any day give the ketchup a run for its money. Those tiny mustard seeds do pack in quite a punch.
Mustard Fact Sheet
Mustard seeds were used both for flavoring and for medication by the ancient Greeks and Romans. By 800 AD, France was already using the stuff to enhance salted meats and plain meals. Mustard was also one of the many spices brought during Spanish explorations in the 1400s. It was originally considered as a medicinal plant and only later took on a culinary character.
Actually, mustard seeds aren’t hot at all. They only get “fired up” when cracked and mixed with cold water. Mustard gets its heat from the oils which are released from the seeds when crushed. The mustard oils contain enzymes and chemicals that when mixed with water, liberates compounds known as isothiocyanates, that give mustard the heat.
Mustard varieties differ mainly in strength of flavor. The relative heat packed by mustard depends on the proportion of brown or black (strong) to yellow (mild) mustard seeds. The flavor of black and brown mustard is more intense and lasts longer than that of the white mustards.
By Chris McCarthy
March 25th, 2006
Pure ethyl alcohol has seven calories per gram (see the Alcohol Calories Factbox). Alcohol is therefore almost as high in calories as pure fat, so it will tend to slow down weight loss. Pure alcohol provides no other nutrients. This means that alcohol does not help you lose weight on a diet. But you can still drink alcohol (in moderation) while on a diet if you know what you are doing..
Alcohol Calories Factbox:
Pure alcohol has 7 Calories per gram. This compares to:
* Pure fat - 9 Calories per gram
* Pure protein - 4 Calories per gram (average) and
* Pure carbohydrate - 4 Calories per gram (average)
Most light beers have about 100 calories per 12 ounces.
Most regular beer has between 120 -150 calories (average) per 12 ounces.
Most table wine has about 100 calories per 5 ounce glass.
One ounce of typical distilled alcoholic beverages — gin, rum, vodka, whiskey — (mixers add calories) have :
100 proof:
82 Calories and
11.8 grams alcohol and
16 grams water
80 proof
64 Calories and
9.3 grams alcohol and
18.5 grams water
Source: USDA Nutrient Database
Dieters, of course, have plenty of calories stored in their fat cells — so they don’t need to get more calories from food or alcohol.
However, in order to avoid triggering hunger, dieters do still need to get all of the other nutrients that come from food; and they need to get these nutrients in normal amounts. This can be difficult to do when they are not eating much food in order to try to lose weight.
Can you drink alcoholic beverages and still lose weight when you are on a diet?
The answer is yes — but there is a technique involved.
First, make sure you are on a diet that provides at least normal (DRI) amounts of all needed nutrients. Normal amounts of nutrients are necessary to prevent hunger. Most popular weight loss diets are not very good at this. (Here is why normal amounts of nutrient are necessary and why most diets fail.)
Second, make sure that your diet does NOT give you enough calories to maintain your current weight.
(Effective diets must do both of the above or they cannot be effective for long.)
How does this technique make drinking alcoholic beverages possible?
A properly designed weight loss diet, using ordinary supermarket foods and supplements, will be able to provide all necessary nutrients in the right amounts to prevent hunger — and at the same time it will provide only about 1200 calories.
Almost anyone will lose weight steadily if they eat less than 1500 calories per day. That leaves up to about 300 calories that you can use for wine, beer, or mixed drinks without destroying your diet.
Obviously, any alcohol calories are unnecessary and will slow your rate of weight loss. But sometimes this can be an acceptable trade-off.
March 19th, 2006
Monounsaturated fats are considered to be the healthiest type of fat you can eat. They are found in nuts, olives, peanuts, avocados, and olive and canola oils. Similar to Omega-3 fatty acids, monounsaturated fats aid in reducing cholesterol levels and reduce the risk of heart disease.
However, recent studies have also linked monounsaturated fats to increased weight loss. Specifically, one study has shown that the body burns more fat in 4 hours following a meal high in monos than after a meal rich in saturated fats. Also, Monounsaturates, like the fat found in olives and olive oil, can help lower (bad) LDL-cholesterol while maintaining or raising the (good) HDL-cholesterol.
Good sources of monounsaturated fats:
- Olive oil (73 per cent)
- rapeseed oil (60 per cent)
- hazelnuts (50 per cent)
- almonds (35 per cent)
- Brazil nuts (26 per cent)
- cashews (28 per cent)
- avocado (12 per cent)
- sesame seeds (20 per cent)
- pumpkin seeds (16 per cent)
March 16th, 2006
The easiest place to affect our health is through our eating habits; in fact it’s the most effective solution to better health, sharing the spotlight with exercise. What about our food intake? What choices do we have to make eating a healthier occurrence?
Vegetables are a great place to start. There are so many choices in the filed of vegetables, being picky isn’t even a problem here. It does not matter where your location, the time of the year, or the method of preparation, there are vegetables to suit the most discriminating taste
As a teen, most of us don’t even care if we’re eating right, or begin to understand the implications of poor eating habits. As we age, however, we do begin to notice the effects of improper exercise, poor eating habits, and how they affect our health. Today, as the baby boomers begin their retirement years, health concerns and questions are on the rise. These aging boomers are more concerned than any previous generations about their good health, their ability to keep their good health, and how their diet affects their health.
The choices in vegetables run the gamut in color preference, leafy versus bean, fresh and raw, or freshly picked and cooked. There are vegetables high in beta-carotene, high in flavonoids, anti-oxidants, or just plain high in flavor.
What about as a snack? Do vegetables meet the snack requirement for taste? We already know that vegetables are good for us, but if we’re going to snack, we want something that tastes really good.
There are vegetables that fill that bill, quite successfully. What about celery? Celery with pimento or peanut butter is quite delicious. Or, you have the broccoli and cauliflower combination with ranch dip. That’s a snack that any other snack would be hard pressed to surpass.
Then you have the dill pickle. This is such a successful snack that manufacturer’s put it in little plastic bags with juice and sell it. The dill pickle can be found in convenience stores everywhere. Past the pickle, you have carrots, sweet potatoes, and onions. These wonderful vegetables can be fixed in so many different ways to snack on, that it would take several papers to touch on all the possibilities.
One of a southerner’s favorite snacks would be baked sweet potato. Now, this is normally consumed with large amounts of butter, but doesn’t have to be, in order to be good. The baked sweet potato can simply be peeled and eaten straight from the oven and it’s still delicious.
Onions can be fried whole as blooming onions, or cut into rings, battered, and served with dip as a snack or appetizer. Many restaurants carry them as a staple on their menus. Jalapeno peppers are often stuffed with cheese and served in this way.
Then you have the little carrot. This wonderful little finger food is full of beta-carotene, flavonoids, and anti-oxidants that make it one of the most healthful snacks we can consume.
You should have enough options now for snacking, that healthful snacking can become a standard, not an exception for you. These ideas do not by any means encompass all vegetable options; these are just simply the most popular local favorites if you live in the South and in Alabama.
Contributed by Michael Bens.
March 11th, 2006
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