Posted by: Janet Schlarbaum

By Richard Heap

Modern culinary recipes normally comprise of several components, they start with the name and often the place or provenance of the dish, how much time it will take to prepare the dish, the desired ingredients along with their quantities or proportions, equipment and conditions needed to prepare the dish, also an ordered list of preparation steps with the number of servings that the recipe will provide.

There are many tasty and healthy salads you can prepare. You could try a courgette salad with mint, garlic, red chili, lemon and extra virgin olive oil crunchy raw beetroot salad with feta and pear salad, or maybe a quick summer salad is a light yet filling summer staple. This simple composed salad is a great way to allow your kids to express their creativity, let them arrange the ingredients on every ones plate while you whip up the creamy, herbed buttermilk dressing.

Become a member of a cooking recipes internet site and share your recipes, including pictures, in your own blog. You can select meal types, choose special dietary requirements and use the interactive shopping list to create a list of ingredients you need from any of their healthy recipes. If you’re counting carbs, search on the internet by the key word low-carb in A Google search engine to find recipes with less than 20 grams of carbohydrate per serving. The Spice House recipe database has close to 600 recipes submitted by customers, staff, professional chefs, and cookbook authors.

There are all kinds of recipes that are full of nourishment yet easy on your budget, you can find simple recipes on the internet for some favorite meals that are quick to prepare and will help you on your way to eating 5 small meals a day, the ideal diet.

Recipe Collected by: Janet Schlarbaum

By Cedrick White

There are a endless supply of cheesecake recipes on the internet which makes for convenient access for any cheesecake lover. Given the large supply, you can literally bake a different cheesecake each day for a year and still have lots more to chose from.

Considering that there’s such a large selection of cheesecake recipes out there, it’s convenient to think of them in terms of categories. Some of the more popular categories are chocolate and fruit flavored ( apple, blueberry, blackberry, cherry, lemon, orange and more) recipes.

Some of your more exotic cheesecakes include mango, papaya and even kiwi. You even got coffee flavored recipes and with the wide range of coffee flavors to choose from just imagine the range of tastes you could create with your cheesecake.

You not only have recipes for conventional cheesecakes, but you also have specialty recipes such as no bake, low carb, low fat and even vegan cheesecakes recipes. There’s literary a recipe to satisfy just about any dietary requirement.

And the flavoring you can add to a recipe is also only limited by your imagination as vanilla and lemon extracts are just the tip of the iceberg. You also have recipes that use banana, almond, blueberry, butterscotch, orange and strawberry to name a few. And if you got the taste for something a little stronger, there are cheesecake recipes that that use liqueurs like amaretto, cognac and rum.

A gratifying quality about these recipes is that if you can follow a recipe, it’s almost impossible to bake a bad cheesecake. The worse thing that can happen is it cracks when you bake it. Though not as lovely, they’re still just as sweet. And if looks are really your thing, just add some icing on top. Your family and friends will never know.

So what are you waiting for. Come check out and enjoy a delicious cheesecake today

Suggested by: Janet Schlarbaum

By Mike Selvon

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It is what fuels your body. It provides you the nutrition, calories and required carbohydrates that help your brain and body perform at their peak.

Most people are on the go from the moment they wake up until they stop for a mandatory and much needed lunch. Do not let time play a factor in whether or not you eat a healthy breakfast. There are breakfast recipes that are fast, can be made ahead of time and are easy to take with you.

Great pancake recipes are an absolute must in the kitchen. They are super easy to prepare and you can take them with you if you are in a hurry. You do not even have to make them that morning. If you have some free time over the weekend, you can make a big batch of pancakes and freeze them.

Simply reheat them in the microwave or the toaster and presto; you have a quick, hot breakfast ready to eat in minutes. Another great idea is to find scone recipes and prepare them. They also freeze well and can be reheated when needed.

Just because you do not have time to fix a huge breakfast does not mean that you have to go without food. Breakfast is more than just biscuit recipes. It can include scone recipes, roll recipes and sweet bread recipes. Whatever you feel like eating. The most important thing is that you are consuming the proper amount of food to fuel your body. For quick and easy breakfast recipes, visit “All Recipes”.

There are plenty of great breakfast recipes to chose from that are easily portable. There is one called Scotch eggs that may quickly become your favorite breakfast delight. It is simply a hard-boiled egg with a sausage patty wrapped around it.

The sausage/egg combination is then rolled in toasted bread crumbs and baked in a 350 degree oven until the sausage is done. It is that easy to have a nutritious meal to break your fast.

Posted by: Janet Schlarbaum

By Mike Selvon

Just imagine a piping hot muffin, fresh from the oven and gooey with butter. Blueberries, strawberries or chocolate chips just add to the overwhelming taste sensation. Your mouth will be in heaven. Muffin recipes are out there for you to make.

There are some great websites to visit that can give you all the recipes that you will need in order to make your very own homemade muffins. There are a variety of flavors to choose from and they are sure to be a big hit at breakfast.

You can find all sorts of delicious recipes on the internet. Pancake recipes, roll recipes, sweet bread recipes and even free bread recipes are all just a click away. But let’s concentrate on your muffins. One great website for recipe ideas is “Muffin Recipes”.

They offer a wide selection of recipes for muffins and a wide palate to fit every taste bud and flavor desire you may be craving. A popular muffin on many people’s baking list is blueberry. They are easy to make and you can even wrap them up and freeze for later.

Do not waste your time with recipes from a boxed package. You can find great homemade blueberry muffin recipes online along with a variety of other pancake recipes or sweet bread recipes. It is a great way to satisfy those blueberry cravings.

A great tip is to always buy fresh. You can use frozen or naturally canned blueberries as long as they are not designed for cobblers or pies, since they are way too sweet. When mixing, make sure not to over work the batter.

The next step is to fold in your blueberries. Use a gentle folding technique that is basically a swoop, scoop and repeat. That is what folding into a batter means. Spray your muffin tins with a non-stick spray. Add enough batter to fill the muffin tins half-way. Then place in an oven that is preheated to 350 degrees.

Note that some muffin recipes call for you to butter and flower the muffin tins. You can either do this or just use the non-stick spray. Bake for thirty minutes and then enjoy fresh hot blueberry muffins anytime of day.

By Kevin Hinkston

If you are looking for an easier way to delight in a healthy lifestyle for you and your loved ones, one of the most effective ways is to prepare home-cooked meals using Easy Healthy Recipes.

You can drastically improve the health benefits by staying in to eat. Between work, errands, and children’s after-school activities, it’s not easy to find time to make a sit-down dinner. But before you head out to a restaurant for dinner, consider the advantages of eating together at home. With the rising costs of food and fuel putting a pinch on everyone’s pocketbook these days, one way to ease the pain is to eat out less and make more meals at home.

Home-cooked meals provides benefits that help you save money and are healthier for you and your family.

Once you decide to do more cooking at home, pick out some favorite easy healthy recipes and then get creative. A home-cooked meal offers the following benefits:

* Reduces the amount of processed foods you eat. Freshly prepared meals are better for you than the typical grab-and-go snack. You can help ensure your family eats healthfully.

* Is time well invested. If you sit down to dinner, you’ll probably eat more slowly and take time to enjoy it. This will help prevent overeating.

* Offers fewer distractions. If you serve dinner at the table, away from the television set and other distractions, you’re likely to pay more attention to your food choices and portions.

* Gives you the chance to be a role model. When you eat at the dinner table, your children will have the opportunity to eat what you eat, in the atmosphere you create. This is an opportunity to instill good eating habits and manners.

* Allows you to try new foods. Use your family meal to prepare new foods as well as old favorites. You can find new ideas by checking out easy healthy recipes.

One guide that that I think every family should have is the “Everyday with Rachael Ray”. This is a monthly subscription magazine that has easy healthy recipes for 30 minute meals, breakfast, starters and sides, soups and stews, salads &vegetables, pasta & pizza, etc.

The content is pretty impressive with wonderful recipes, ideas and food stories. Of course, once you try the recipes to see if they are any good, you will be amazed at the quality and variety. You will be able to make Grilled Beer Chicken with Potato Slabs, Orange Beef with Cilantro Rice, Turkey Kebabs, Roasted-Potato Pennette, Greek Style Tuna Salads, Posole (I was always looking for a good recipe for this - and this is the best one I have come across not to mention easy), Beef Wellingtons (simple) Chicken Curry and more!

Some of the recipes are from her many books, but there is lots of new stuff here as well. I really like the dessert recipes by contributor Silvana Nardone. Other cooks are featured here as well - so this is not strictly a “Rachael Ray” magazine.

Every issue comes with a handy ‘mini cookbook’ complete with grocery list - you can take this right out of the book and bring it to the store. Talk about convenient and clever! Wow! It boasts a week of 30 minute meals. Very nice for the busy home cook.

Overall, I am seriously impressed with this magazine - great content, supremely Easy Healthy Recipes, good variety, lots of pictures, nice layout and a sense of fun that is absent in many of the other cooking magazines. I recommend this magazine to everyone who loves to cook - not just those looking for cooking in a flash. Stunning!!!

By Sunil Tanna

The region that is today Iran has a very long history. Urban settelements have existed in the country since at least 4000 BCE, and of course most people have heard of the Persian empires. The country of Persia, officially changed its name to Iran in 1935 at the direction of then ruler, Reza Shah, but in 1953, Mohammad Reza Shah (the son of Reza Shah) announced that both names, “Iran” and “Persia”, were acceptable.

Persian cuisine is known for its subtle and delicate mixtures of spices. You will also find that Persian recipes use many interesting ingredients including apricots, artichokes, eggplant, lemon, lime, oranges, pistachios, spinach, saffron and tarragon.

All Persian meals are traditionally served with tea (”chai”). Tea is in fact drank throughout the day, as well as with breakfast, and before and after both lunch and dinner. You should also look out for the side dishes (”mokhalafat”), containing various accompaniments which are served with Persian meals, as they form an important part of the experience.

Additionally, rice is often eaten with Iranian meals. Although the rice may be prepared in a variety of different ways, the best known is “chelow”, in which rice is partially boiled, then drained and finally steamed. This results in a fluffy texture for the rice, with a golden crust at the bottom of the cooking pot.

Popular Persian main dishes include:

* Chelo Kabab - This is probably the most famous of Persian dishes. It is marinated lamb, cooked over a charcoal grill, and served with rice.

* Fesenjan - Fesenjan is a stew made from chicken or duck. It contains walnut and pomegranate, and has a sweet and sour flavor.

* Abgousht - This is vegetable and beef stew.

* Shirin Polo - Shirin Polo is traditionally eaten at Iranian weddings. It is rice with slivered almonds, orange peel and pistachio nuts.

Some mokhalafat side plates may accompany Iranian meals include:

* Naan - Persian unleavened flat bread.

* Panir - A type of cheese that is reminescent of feta.

* Khiyarshur - Pickles.

* Torshi - Relishes.

* Sabzi - Mixed herbs.

Recipe selected by: Janet Schlarbaum
Author: Tony Buel
Fast foods may have been the meal of choice for many busy families through the last couple of decades. But now the slow cooked, home-prepared meals are gaining in popularity! Crock pots, with their wafting aromas and ‘ready to eat’ meals, entice health-conscious, busy people.

And it doesn’t take super human talent, skill, or effort to make a delicious meal in a crockpot - in fact there are quite a few crockpot recipes that require 5 or less ingredients! And crockpot cooking can be as simple as tossing a few ingredients into the pot before everyone leaves for the day. In the evening, the smell of slow cooked food fills the house and whets the appetite. There’s no more last minute trip to the grocery store, or the endless ‘what’s for dinner’ questions.

Rising food costs and shrinking household budgets have helped bring many nostalgic foods back to the forefront. Time stressed families, tired of eating prepackaged foods, have begun to crave the aroma of savory nutritious meals.

Pot roast, beef stew, chicken and noodles can utilize less expensive cuts of meat, which taste tender and moist after slow cooking.

Our grandmothers knew how to manage a frugal, yet efficient and productive home — and they didn’t need expensive gadgets either! Many slow cookers sell in the range of $20 to $35, and the cost is soon made up by the thriftiness of eating at home.

On the market now are the programmable crockpot slow cooker. No stirring or supervision is necessary, and once cook time has expired the smart-pot automatically shifts to a warm setting. Want a side dish with your stew? Try the dual cooker. It allows cooking of two different dishes at the same time. Worried about little hands reaching up to the counter? Try the ‘cool touch’ slow cooker. These can be up to 25% cooler than other slow cookers.

Although crockpots are a relatively new invention, making hearty foods that simmer all day has been around for quite a while. Whether you’re cooking for just two people or a large family, make your own convenience food! Dig out some old recipes or find a new one, and enjoy flavorful foods without the hardship.

Submitted by: Janet Schlarbaum
Author: DEV DAAS

Three years ago I decided to go “meatless.” It wasn’t a difficult decision as I wasn’t a voracious carnivore to begin with, however there were a few dishes that I missed that contained meat and wondered how I was going to live without these favorites.

Rather than resign myself to the notion that these dishes could never be converted over to a meatless status, I decided to pull myself up by my vegetarian boot strings (cotton, of course), and see if I could find a way to convert these meat-is to meatless.

The first was my Grammy’s recipe for American Chop Suey, actually, almost everyone’s Grammy made this or some variation of it. I tried different ways but this one comes the closest:

Meatless American Chop Suey

1 vidalia onion chopped
1-2 tbsp. butter
1/2 pkg Quorn (brand name) veggie grounds frozen
2 cans Campbellâs Tomato Soup
1 tblsp. catsup (yes catsup, you can’t really taste it, it just adds a rich color to the sauce)
sea salt and pepper to taste

1 lb of your favorite fancy pasta in its rigati form, that means with lines, or something like gemelli or rotini

Melt butter in a medium sized skillet over low heat. Add vidalia onion and gently saute until translucent. Add frozen Quorn grounds and heat till thawed. Add 2 cans soup and cook over low heat for 5-7 minutes. Add catsup salt and pepper and cook an additional 102 minutes.

Bring 4 quarts of water to a boil. Add pasta and cook until al dente. Drain thoroughly and add sauce to pasta. Stir to incorporate completely. Serve. Serves 4-6 people as a side.

This next one is an adaptation of a Greek-Middle-Eastern recipe for Dolma. I loved this dish as a youngster summering on Cape Cod. A wonderful Lebanese family “turned me on” to this dish and I have finally found a way to make it meatless and spectacular!

Veggie Dolmas

1 jar of Grapeleaves in brine

Filling:
2 cup basmati rice cooked
1/2 cup currants
1/2 cup of pine nuts ground
1/2 cup quorn grounds thawed
2 tbsp. dried mint (or 1/4 cup fresh mint chopped fine)
1 tbsp. dried parsely (or 1/4 cup fresh parsely chopped fine)
1 tsp dried oregano (or 1/8 cup fresh oregano chopped fine)
1 tsp. sea salt
2 tsp pepper
1 small can tomato paste

Juice of 2 lemons

Remove the grape leaves from the jar, rinse and unfold carefully and rinse again. Lay paper towels and pat dry. Gently remove any stems that are still on the leaves.

In a large bowl mix the filling ingredients together till they are well incorporated.

Carefully separate a few of the leaves and line the bottom of a 1-2 gallon stock pot.

To roll take a leaf, place 1 heaping tsp of filling in the center of the leaf about 1/2 inch up from the bottom edge. Fold 1/2 inch up over the filling, fold each side toward the middle, then beginning at the bottom again roll the whole package up till you have a 1-2″ “log.

Continue with the rolling process till you use up all the filling.

Line the rolled leaves up in a circular pattern in the stock pot till all are in. Pour the juice of both lemons gently over the rolled leaves. Place a dinner plate on top with a stone in the middle to keep in place. Gradually add cold water till it just covers the leaves.

Bring contents to a boil then reduce and simmer for abount 1/2 hour till tender. Drain water by holding on to stone to keep plate in place and gently pour out cooking water. Leave plate on till almost cool.

By Natalie Schloesser

Cooking is truly an experiment; what foods work with what spices, how much, the variables go on and on. For many, cooking without a recipe or even altering a recipe is a scary thing. They follow recipes exactly, worried that the cooking police might come find them if they don’t.

And so, I offer you my Spicy Shrimp Chowder recipe. You will notice the ingredients are in two categories – what you can alter and what you can’t. (Please notice which list is longer and that even the necessary ingredients have options.) What I have offered you is a choice, a sort of “experiment with a guide”. I have it listed the way I make it (although I often think my husband sneaks in more red pepper when I’m not looking) but please feel free to add or subtract, increase or decrease amounts, or whatever else you want to please your palate. For some altering hints, I’ve added a list below the recipe instructions. Enjoy!

Necessary ingredients

2- 14.5 ounce cans of diced tomatoes, undrained

2 cups eight vegetable or tomato juice

1 cup white wine or water

½ cup rice

Other ingredients

2 cups celery, chopped

1 green or red bell pepper, chopped

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp ground red pepper

1 pound pre-cooked, tail off shrimp

Spray 5-6 quart crock pot with cooking spray. Mix all ingredients except shrimp and rice in slow cooker, cover and cook on low 7-8 hours or high 3-4 hours. Stir in fish and rice. Cover and cook on high an additional 45 minutes.

Hints for alteration

- For soupier chowder, add an additional 1 cup juice and/or ½ cup wine.

- Make with any firm fish such as tuna steak, halibut, or haddock cut into 1 inch cubes.

- Increase or decrease celery, bell peppers, and onion according to your tastes.

- For a spicier chowder, increase garlic, Worcestershire sauce, and/or ground red pepper. You could also add some hot sauce if desired.

By Suzanne Webb-Brikas

These crockpot recipes will keep your kitchen cool in the summer heat. Bring any of these delights to your summer parties, and your friends will be delighted, drooling, and lining up for the recipe, - and seconds…

Appetizer:

PIZZA DIP

1 large cream cheese softened

1 jar pizza sauce

1 small can chopped olives

1 medium onion chopped

1 pkg. sliced pepperoni

(and what ever else your pizza loving heart desires!)

1 pkg. grated cheese for pizza

Spread cream cheese in the bottom of slow cooker/Crock Pot. Then mix up the pizza sauce, onion, olives and pepperoni and spread on top of the cream cheese. Sprinkle with the pizza cheese and cook on low until the cheese on top melts. Serve with tortilla chips.

Entree

CHICKEN WINGS IN TERIYAKI SAUCE

* 3 pounds chicken wings (16 wings)

* 1 large onion, chopped

* 1 cup soy sauce

* 1 cup brown sugar

* 2 teaspoons ground ginger

* 2 cloves garlic, minced

* 1/4 cup dry cooking sherry

Rinse chicken and pat dry. Cut off and discard wing tips. Cut each wing at joint to make two sections. Place wing parts on broiler pan. Broil 4-5 inches from the heat for 20 minutes, 10 minutes for each side or until chicken is brown. Transfer chicken to slow cooker/Crock Pot. Mix together onion, soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, garlic and cooking sherry in bowl. Pour over chicken wings. Cover and cook on Low 5-6 hours or on HIGH 2-3 hours. Stir chicken wings once to ensure wings are evenly coated with sauce. Serve from Slow Cooker. Makes about 32 pieces.

Dessert:

DECADENT CHOCOLATE DELIGHT

1 (18.25 ounce) box chocolate cake mix

8 ounces sour cream

1 cup chocolate chips

1 cup water

4 eggs

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1 small box chocolate flavor instant pudding and pie filling mix

Lightly grease inside of crockpot. Combine all ingredients in large bowl. Pour into crockpot. Cover and cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours or on HIGH for 3 to 4 hours.

Serve hot or warm with ice cream.

These recipes practically make themselves. Isn’t that the beauty of crockpot cooking? So get out of the kitchen, and back to your life. Haven’t you worked hard enough today?