Healthy Living Cuisine Recipes and Articles

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Real men don’t eat quiche? Try some of these imaginative quiche recipes to debunk that myth!

Quiche recipes are made for the non-cook. The French version of the Italian Frittata, quiche is a dish that allows you to roll up your sleeves and let your creativity flow! If you can beat eggs, you can make any number of delightful quiche recipes. As a matter of fact, once you’ve followed a couple of quiche recipes, from a website or cook book, you’ll see that making quiche is like falling off a log … you don’t even need a formal recipe! Follow the basic process, using your favorite foods, and become a quiche expert.

The only difference between a Frittata and quiche is that quiche is made with a crust, while a Frittata is like an omelet, but baked in the oven in a baking dish. When you make an omelet, it’s simply a matter of beating a quantity of eggs, pouring them into a frying pan and adding the goodies. You fold the omelet, turn and serve.

Most men love a well put together omelet. The elegant quiche has just gotten a bad rap. Some men hear

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Adopting a Dog Can Be Very Rewarding

There are three basic elements you

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Looking for weight loss help? You may be surprised to find your most effective resource!

Some of us seem to be on a diet more often than not, which can be quite discouraging. Lose ten, gain ten. This never ending merry-go-round of dieting can drive you crazy

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Coping with stress is an almost universal concern: doing so effectively is the secret!

If it’s not one thing, it’s another. If you managed to meet your financial obligations this month, that’s probably when your car breaks down. When it rains, it pours, is likely a sentiment we can all relate to these days. Stress is a fact of life, unless your last name is Rockefeller. Knowing this doesn’t make it easier. What you do need to know are the tricks and techniques of coping with stress effectively. Once you get a handle on dealing with stress, the daily grind of stressful situations is eased, to a degree. The less stressed out you are, the more able you are to make good decisions and make the best use of what you’ve got to work with.

Just in case you need convincing, let’s take a look at just a few of the common outcomes of stress, in terms of your physical and mental responses. When you’re under stress, your body responds with an adrenalin rush, triggering that ‘fight or flight’ response. Many of us are under pressure from some outside stimulus on a more or less ongoing basis. Finances, health, family issues, job concerns and just plain worry can keep you on edge. This is a recipe for anxiety, insomnia and high blood pressure. Living in a constant state of stress will result in health problems and also reduce your ability to be effective in coping with stress. It’s a vicious cycle. Here we provide a few pointers on coping with stress in little steps that add up to a healthier, more relaxed perspective, allowing you to make better, more considered decisions, which result in less stress!

The first step in devising a plan for coping with stress is to sit down with a notebook and make a very specific, prioritized list of things that get you in the stress mode. Do you feel you’re running all day long, with your time eaten up in bits and pieces, putting the virtual fires out as you go along? Is your income insufficient to meet your obligations? Does worry interfere with your sleep? Perhaps your work load preempts any possibility of ‘quality time’ with your kids. This makes you feel guilty, which only adds to your stress. This brief list doesn’t even begin to cover the bases of individual life circumstances. No matter what causes your stress, make an honest and detailed list.

Now that you’ve determined the specific sources of your stresses, divide your list into two groups: those which are out of your control and those which you can do something to alleviate. Reorganizing your time slots such that you get bigger chunks of uninterrupted work time can result in more tasks accomplished and a little time for pure relaxation. Delegating some of those time eaters to other members of the family is another way of coping with stress. Let the kids make their lunches for tomorrow. Have them strip their beds, toss the sheets in the laundry and make their beds with fresh sheets. Don’t feel guilty and don’t stress out for delegating! These types of tasks are ones kids need to learn to prepare them for real life. This way of coping with stress is good for them and good for you!

By narrowing your list of stresses to a short list of factors over which you don’t have control, you’ve made progress. Use the time saved in not dealing with tomorrow’s lunches and changing beds to settle down in a hot tub with a cup of herbal tea or hot chocolate. Relax. Set worrisome thoughts aside for the time. Bring a book in to the tub and divert your attention from the merry-go-round of endless stress.

Making small periods of absolute relaxation is the key to coping with stress. Setting aside a half hour of scheduled time for exercise, kicking back with some music or simply meditating or praying are other ways to ease your stress levels. You’ll reap the benefits in terms of better health, more quality time with your family members and a better outlook on life in general!

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Disgusting recipes? Halloween is the time to dust off your disgusting recipes book!

The celebration of Halloween is marked by children, going out at dusk and in to the evening, making the rounds of the neighborhood to search out treats. Parents host Halloween parties, with a pizza or hot dogs for dinner, to offset the anticipated large amounts of sugary sweets, coming home in the kid’s full Halloween baskets, for dessert.

While there’s got to be some appealing and nutritious food, part of the Halloween fun comes in serving some food items from your ‘disgusting recipes’ repertoire. Don’t have any disgusting recipes? Well, we do! While these dishes are perfectly good to eat, they are intentionally revolting in appearance. Typically, kids dare one another to partake of one of these … all part of the celebration. Try these out, one more revolting than the next!

Each of these disgusting Halloween recipe ideas are easy to make. All you’ll need are a box of assorted food colorings, a visit to the Halloween decorations section of the drug store or supermarket, for a few ‘garnishes’, and a package or two of ready to bake cookie dough. The rest of your disgusting recipe ingredients are probably already in the frig or cupboards.

I was introduced to green milk one Halloween by a friend’s Mom. She was really into the Halloween trickery. She served up a plate of cookies and got a carton of milk and clear glasses. Imagine our horror when the milk came out of the carton, green! We were just 12 and we thought this was some festering science project. Her secret? Just a few drops of green food coloring. For best effect, don’t lace the milk too heavily with the coloring. You want it to look genuinely bad.

Blue tapioca pudding cups, garnished with a plastic ‘bloody eyeball’ meets all of the criteria for Halloween disgusting recipes. Some kids, who aren’t fans of normal tapioca pudding, usually object to the tapioca’s ‘fish eyes’. The blue tint and garnish will probably put off the rest of the kids who normally enjoy this treat.

Our next idea: bake up a batch of (or buy) some plain sugar cookies. With a tube of red cake decorating gel, paint the cookies with ‘drops of blood’, allowing some of the drops to slide down the edge of the cookie. This enhances the effect, as the kids will have to pick up the cookie by its edge.

Punch: made with a combination of orange and yellow juices, this punch tastes great! Once you cook up a package of fine Japanese rice noodles (look in the Oriental food section), divide them into three portions, using your food coloring to dye these threadlike noodles a fire-engine red, a deep green and vibrant blue, your lovely punch recipe is transformed. These noodles are somewhat transparent and tend to float eerily around and through the liquid, like little worms. Toss in blue dyed ice cubes and stir the punch well and often, with each serving. A couple of plastic eyeballs and spiders floating on top completes this disgusting recipe.

As easy Halloween party food goes, these disgusting recipes can’t be beat. They’re all safe to eat and provide the right Halloween spirit to your party. The plastic eyeballs, spiders and such double as party favors. Happy Halloween!

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Do your cookbook recipes leave you baffled as to what the directions mean? Get a cook’s glossary!

Some of us who enjoy cooking are always looking for new cookbook recipes to increase our repertoire of dishes. The avid cook is always up for a new dish to wow the family with

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The secrets to authentic Italian pizza dough recipes are easy, fast and delicious!

I can’t say that I’ve met an American who doesn’t enjoy pizza, although there’s probably a few somewhere. We buy pizza crusts at the supermarket and add the sauce and toppings, or make it simple with the take-out. The American style version of pizza is a heavy affair, loaded up with layer after layer of meats, veggies and cheese, sometimes a couple of inches thick! Not a dieter’s dream, except for perhaps the taste! In any case, pizza is a dish the whole family can love and which we enjoy often.

Some adventurous cooks rely on home made pizza dough recipes, but many of us shy away from this economical option as a foreign cooking skill we can’t master and should leave to the professionals. Authentic pizza dough recipes are easy, quick and inexpensive to prepare. Try the pizza dough recipes given below, one generic, with a number of variations, and I’ll bet you’ll never use the commercially available crusts again.

First, a little background on the differences between the authentic Italian pizza and its American style counterpart. The Italian pizza is usually sparsely topped, (by American standards), with just a few, choice ingredients, baked quickly, at a high temperature, in a wood fired stove which produces that distinctive, very thin and crusty bread, with a savory flavor which is the standard by which good pizza dough recipes are judged. Ask any Italian

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Cooking vegetables properly to get the maximum nutritive value on your table

We’ve all heard so much about eating those 5-9 servings of produce each day. Smart physicians have been promoting this for decades, but it’s only been in the last few years that the government has made this healthy recommendation official. Many of us gasped at the idea, wondering if it were even possible to consume so much produce and have any room left over for anything else!

Now, we’re getting used to increasing the amounts we serve and have become more aware of the many health benefits. With the rise in the incidence of cancer and heart disease, it only makes sense. Much of the fruit and fruit products we eat are eaten fresh, or as juice. In the case of vegetables, the reverse is true. Most of our vegetables are cooked before serving. The method used for cooking vegetables makes a world of difference in the nutrition derived from that serving of broccoli, carrots or potatoes

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Lose unwanted pounds and gain sustained energy with these easy, quick breakfast recipes!

One of the first, most common of casualties in the modern daily American diet is breakfast. Both kids and adults are guilty of neglecting this important first meal of the day. Not having eaten for close to twelve hours, our bodies are in dire need of some energy to get started for the day.

Lacking breakfast, your mind doesn’t work as well as it might, had you ingested a little protein, along with various nutrients your body needs. Come mid-morning, you might also develop a headache, or come across as less than your usual enchanting self. Without a good breakfast, you’re more apt to reach for a pastry, soda or other fattening food, because you crave a pick-me-up. Incidentally, sugary foods and coffee on the fly, can contribute to a headache, putting on weight in all the wrong places and, for the final insult, produce a ’sugar crash’ an hour or two later.

Granted, we all lead busy lives. Here we have some quick, but nutrition packed breakfast recipes that can be prepared in just a few minutes, or even as do-aheads you can freeze, grab and nuke, eating on your way to work.

1.Trail mix supplies many of the nutrients that get you off to a good start. Pour a cup of milk and you’re on your way. A piece of fresh fruit makes this ‘breakfast recipe’ a recipe for health, with no preparation required.

2.Just about any kid or adult thinks they’re having a treat when they get a smoothie. Again, this breakfast recipe requires almost zero preparation. Keep a few bags of your favorite frozen fruits in the freezer. Toss a handful of each of these fruits in to the blender, along with some milk or yogurt, put the lid on and press the button. You’ve got breakfast and a filling one at that. Each member of the family can make their own combination, one after another, so you don’t even need to wash the blender until everyone’s got their take-out smoothie.

3.Now for an easy do-ahead breakfast recipe: Raid you frozen fruit bags the night before, placing in a medium sized bowl in the frig to thaw overnight. In the morning, slice a banana or two into the bowl, along with a can of fruit cocktail, drained. Mix it all up and serve in small fruit bowls. There’s a few variations you might try. Put a shortcake cup in the bottom of the bowl, pile in the fruit and eat. A fancier version might come with a little non-dairy whipped topping. Or, you might also mix your favorite yogurt in with the fruit and sprinkle with a teaspoon of wheat germ to make a simple power breakfast recipe.

4.Feeling like something a bit more substantial? When you have more time, such as on a lazy weekend morning, make a quiche. Quiche, like an omelet is one of those breakfast recipes that hardly requires a recipe! Used a prepared pastry crust. Beat six to eight eggs (depending on the size of the pie

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