Ways To Keep Mold Off Of Your Food

By Aydan Corkern

Mold can cause allergies, which affect our bodies. In fact, the allergens from the mold are one of the main health problems that we have, and there are 12 kinds of mold that can cause serious allergies. The rest of the molds, which number in the thousands, do not cause allergies, but it causes other health problems in your bodies. The molds that grow on your foods are green, black, and white. The mold will look like bunches of fur or spots, and it grows on the surfaces. It will have a very bad smell to it that can make you get sick to your stomach, and it is so strong that it is overwhelming. Fruits can get mold on them fast because the fruits release gases that make them rot whether they are covered in the refrigerator or not.

When it starts to rot, it will bring bugs, such as gnats, and they will be all over your kitchen, getting in all the food that is on the counters. The gnats are little tiny bugs that have wings and they love rotten fruit. The way to get them out of your house is to get the fruits outside and put it in the trash. Don”t put anything on the counter; put them in the refrigerator. When it gets on bread, you will see tiny spots of black or green mold and if it sits for a long time, it will spread through the whole bag. You will have nothing but a big pile of mold on your hands. You need to keep it in a dry place or in a container to make sure that no mold can get in it. That will keep the mold out and it will last for a long time.

Don”t keep food in your refrigerator for longer than three days because bacteria will set in and mold will start to grow. Clean out your refrigerator every three days to prevent this from happening and so it will not get on the other food in there. When food begins to spoil, mold and bacteria will start to develop, and it will change the color, odor, and the texture of the food, which will make it look gross. You need to get all of your food vacuum-sealed so the mold and the bacteria cannot get in your food. It removes the air from the bags and keeps it fresh so you don”t waste any food.

About The Author

Aydan Corkern is a writer of many topics, visit some of her sites, like
water damage orlando and water damage restoration.

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5 Health Benefits of Tibetan Goji Berries

By Paul Fitzgerald

Envisage a completely natural organic food without any harmful side effects loaded with nutrients and powerful antioxidants, 18 Amino Acids, more Beta Carotene than carrots, 21 Trace Minerals, more Iron than spinach, 500 times more Vitamin C by weight than oranges, 13 % protein and many other vitamins and minerals including Calcium, Magnesium, Vitamins B1, B2, B6, and Vitamin E. This nutritional powerhouse is the Tibetan Goji Berry.

The Tibetan Goji berry (Lycium Eleganus) is considered to be the most potent of the many varieties of the botanical Lycium. It grows in the hills and valleys of Tibet and Mongolia untouched by pollution in extremely rich soil without chemicals or pesticides and has the highest nutrient content of all the 80 varieties of Lycium.

The various constituents of Goji Berries offer tremendous health benefits:

Flavanoids – They are extremely high in antioxidants and are essential for the absorption and utilization of other nutrients, especially vitamin C.
Polysaccharides – They fortify the immune system. Polysaccharides are very large, long-chain sugar molecules that are nourishment for macrophages (large white blood cells) in the walls of the intestines.

The macrophages are then transported to other immune cells, setting off a chain of beneficial defensive events in our body. ORAC units (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity scale) is a measure of the ability of antioxidants to absorb free radicals. While 3000 units is considered a good standard for a healthy food, the Goji Berry is rated 25,300 units!

Essential fatty acids They are essential for the production of hormones and for smooth functioning of the brain and nervous system.
Carotenoids – natural fat-soluble pigments that play a critical role in vitamin A activity in human beings.

Some of the traditional health properties of the Goji berry are its ability to improve vision and to benefit skin complexion. It has been recently also found useful for burns, ulcers, bedsores and frostbite, for dietary control of diabetes and for countering the toxic side effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

These delicious berries are very widely consumed in Mongolia and Tibet. Their consumption is traditionally believed to lead to a long, vigorous and happy life. These red berries are cherished and revered by the natives with celebrations that last for two weeks every year. Goji Berries have been used since ages in Tibet and throughout the Himalayas and are known to have no harmful side effects.

The Goji Berry is also known as the happy berry as it creates a sense of well-being and optimism. So eat your way through a long, happy and healthy life full of vigor and vitality with the Goji Berry and also get a yummy treat in the process!

About The Author

Get Your Free Ebook , 14 Superfood Secrets Unleashed. Learn about the greatest selection of Superfoods on The Planet. Please visit our site at Superfood living and learn about Raw Chocolate Cocao, Marine Phytoplankton, Noni, Goji Berries, Maca, Sacred Chocolate, and more

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How To Make Your Wine Last Longer

By Matt Chang

Wine is the most used drink on occasions, lunches and dinner parties. It is one of the main ingredients in celebration and get togethers. However, once you open a bottle of wine and it remains half used, how do you preserve the wine, till you use it again, without it losing its flavor?

If you are like me, you can”t finish the bottle yourself, and my wife doesn”t drink wine. For me, a way to enjoy wine is finding a way to make a full bottle last. Here are some tips on how to preserve wine.

Once you open a bottle of wine, air gets into the bottle. When you have a half-used bottle, you need to close it by removing the air out. How do you do this? Put the stopper on top of the wine bottle ad simply pump out the air using a pump. The stopper will close in on the mouth and will become an airtight seal blocking out air into the bottle.

These pumps are easily available at most wine shops, and they are very economical. When you visit a restaurant, and you see all those open bottles, the better restaurants use a pump system.

Wine should always be stored in a refrigerator. Heat deteriorates wine because it oxidizes wine. When you place the wine in a refrigerator this oxidation process slows down. Re-corked wine an lasts for about two to three days in the refrigerator. Oxidized wine taste different.

The cold wine is stabilized. When you have a glass of wine, just let the wine temper to the right temperature, and you will have a wonderful glass of wine. You can keep the wine toward the bottom of the refrigerator and it will be less cold.

You can buy preservative gas and spray it into the bottle of open wine and close it up quickly. When this is done, it pulls out air in the bottle, sealing the wine with its flavor intact. While this is a valid method, you will spend more money on buying more gas. The pump is free once you buy the pump.

You can freeze the bottle of one wine. Simply put it in the freezer compartment and melt is slow when you want to use it again. While this works, the thing you should really try to do is drink the wine within a week from opening.

Add some glass beads or marble to the open wine bottle, the wine level raises. Now re-cork it and store in a cool place, the wine flavor is maintained. Again, this is to keep as much air out of the bottle.

By using these small tips to preserve left over wine, you do not have to waste wine which is left over. You can re-use it without the wine tasting funny or different. So don”t worry about things when you get that next bottle. You can have one or two glasses at a time, and still enjoy it until the bottle is gone.

About The Author

Learn more about wine at Washington Wine Club. Visit epicureanwineclub.com to get more info on Washington State wine clubs.

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Would You Eat At This Restaurant?

By Shawn Wilson

Residents of Ontario Canada have had a slew of bad news recently relating to food quality. The biggest story concerned the listeriosis contamination at the Maple Leaf processing plant in Toronto. According to CBC News, as of September 5, 2008 “13 deaths are directly linked to listeriosis found in meat from the Toronto plant”.

The source of the contamination was found to be deep inside two slicing machines. So deep in fact that regular cleaning procedures failed to touch it. It wasn”t until the plant was shut down and the machinery dismantled so that each machine component could be cleaned individually that the source of the contamination was found.

Another incident that made the front page was the e coli outbreak that was traced to a fast food restaurant located in North Bay, Ontario. The Toronto Star newspaper reported yesterday that this restaurant is scheduled to reopen today, November 12, 2008 after being shut down since October 12th. This particular outbreak is suspected to have sickened just over 250 people, with one child still listed in serious condition in hospital. Besides the number of people affected, the most disturbing aspect of this case is the fact that the source of the e coli has not been identified.

These two occurrences raise several questions; would you eat at this restaurant, or any other food establishment, that has been shut down by the health department for whatever reason, and then reopened? And the second; would you purchase product from a facility, such as the one mentioned above, even after a deep cleaning?

It”s a really tough decision. On the one hand, food contamination can just as easily happen in your own kitchen as it can in a restaurant or food processing plant. The bacteria involved are microscopic and will not appear visible to the naked eye. On the other hand there is the issue of trust. By patronizing a restaurant, or buying ready to eat foods from a processing plant through our local grocer, we are placing our own health and safety and that of our family, in the hands of strangers and government regulations.

In the case of a restaurant, it”s pretty black and white. Your answer may be influenced by your personal knowledge of the owners and staff of the establishment, and it may be a difficult decision. But at the end of the day, you either decide yes, you will continue to eat there, or no, you won”t.

The answer as it related to the food processing plant is more difficult and full of unknowns. This particular plant processes foods under a myriad of different labels. I had no idea of the existence of some of the brands, and also had no idea that some of the brands came from this particular processor. Even careful scrutiny of the packaging did not reveal that these brands were processed and packaged at this plant. The best way to reach an answer is to educate yourself about the source of the food. Ask the people behind the deli counter. If they can”t, or in some cases won”t, answer your question, you may to switch brands or stop buying that particular food altogether.

We can no longer leave food safety in the hands of government and regulators. Simply put, know where what you”re eating comes from. Educate yourself.

About The Author

This article was written by Shawn Wilson, a member of the customer support team at Datepad, where internet dating is always free. Datepad has a massive directory of informative dating articles along with a great list of dating site reviews on their dating blog.

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A Few Thanksgiving Meal Tips

By Debbie Ray

Food is the center of attention at Thanksgiving. It”s a celebration of the Pilgrim”s early successes in America, won through hard work to tame the land in what was for them a new world. Every year it”s a traditional meal. Pumpkin pie ends a turkey dinner that includes all the extras. It”s also a time when families get together to celebrate history. The food may be similar, but Thanksgiving dinner recipes have as much variety as the colors of the leaves on the November trees.

Food and healthy cooking, even during the holiday season, can be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be. A sure recipe for disaster is to attempt a new recipe while under time constraints or feeling pressured by the other holiday stresses. The greatest cooking tips anyone can give are ones that let you know that mistakes are inevitable but nothing is impossible so let”s check out a few below.

How about this recipe for a delicious appetizer? It”s a pretty simple Pumpkin soup. Add butter and oil to a pan over medium heat. Add leaks to saute, only the white portion, until soft. Now throw in some pumpkin puree along with cloves, cinnamon, ground ginger and some salt. Now stir in some vegetable broth. Add brown sugar. Use low heat to simmer it for 10 minutes. If desired pour a tsp or so of cream or half and half into the bowl before adding soup and a dash of cinnamon. That soup is a real treat.

Fried turkey is also good. Don”t worry, fried turkey isn”t greasy. The oil is so hot it sears the skin, thus the oil can”t penetrate it. Get a big drum and a propane burner, otherwise known as a deep fryer. You”ll need two thermometers, one for the meat and one for the oil. Fry outside in a large open area. Get that oil hot, up to 350F. Cook it for 3 minutes per pound, until the breast is 170F. Dressing isn”t fried inside the turkey, but spices can be injected into it.

People who love to cook soon develop their own ways of doing things – that includes holiday cooking as well. Almost every recipe we come across, we tweak after we have tried it a couple of times to fit our taste buds. It keeps the food we cook more interesting and more appealing to our family. It also keeps the food we make fresh and the people we feed happy. Try it for yourself. A good cook always experiments with new things.

For some other soup ideas try curried pumpkin apple soup, butternut squash soup, or pumpkin and sausage soup. But there are other good appetizers for the meal. Give cheese wrapped asparagus a try. Both sliced and spread cheese go into this one. One idea is swiss cheese slices with a softer blue cheese spread. Spread the soft cheese on the slices, wrap it around a few asparagus spears, then cook in a 230 degree C oven for about 15 minutes, or until the asparagus is soft. Okay, this way asparagus isn”t healthy. But Thanksgiving isn”t a time for a diet. Live a little!

About The Author

Did you know it takes the average family over an hour to create a regular meal? Who has the time? Learn the Secret Recipes Of America”s Favorite Restaurants and cook them in your own home now.

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A Few Meal Planning Tips for Busy Moms Everywhere

By Debbie Ray

Many people don”t have a lot of time to cook. And here”s one reason: a lot of people simply don”t cook well (or at all). Not really surprising when you take into account that they have a lot of other things to do. Sometimes fast food is their only alternative in the midst of a busy day.

Quick, healthy, inexpensive meals aren”t easy to plan, that”s the problem. People who have trouble with this, however, must not be paying much attention because between cooking shows, the Internet, and a wide variety of easy prepare wholesome foods at grocery stores, it”s not hard to come up with a seven day menu that satisfies everyone at the table. The entire family will like these many of these dinner ideas.

Corn dogs are an all American tradition, usually served at state fairs and by street vendors. While a little on the unhealthy side, it”s quick and good to eat. Coat the hot dogs with batter made of flour, corn meal, milk, salt, sugar and baking powder, then fry them until golden. If you want the feel of the fair, insert a popsicle stick.

In the old days dinner and supper were two different things, one a main meal and the other a lighter snack. Social status and job type dictated changes in this over time. Physical laborers needed an afternoon dinner to keep up their strength throughout the grueling day. As times change and we move away from regular meals at home, dinner has become the anchor that keeps families together and signals the end of the out of the home portion of the day and the beginning of at home leisure time. The meaning of supper and dinner have merged. That doesn”t mean the meal has to be large, especially for people watching their waist lines. Try a roast chicken salad.

Crock pots were made for busy schedules. Set it up in the morning then enjoy a great meal at night. Great food is possible in a crock pot, the entire meal too. Add some meat and some potatoes cut into quarters for a terrific pot roast. Stop on the way home for a hot loaf of bread. Or, skip the bread to avoid the extra calories.

The possibilities are endless with simple but delicious meals like veal cutlets, pork chops, even steaks on the grill. Use Google or Yahoo to find more great dinner ideas. The Internet is loaded with all sorts of recipes and cooking tips.

About The Author

Discover the secret recipes from your favorite restaurants and how to easily cook them yourself right now.

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Tips for Getting Out of the “Menu Rut”

By Debbie Ray

Dinner recipes can be hard to come up with day after day, meal after meal. Lots of people get into a menu rut, rotating between the same recipes over and over. Families often find, when examining their food selection, that they constantly eat the same meals while ignoring some old favorites. It”s all haphazard and kind of random and there is no real system in place. Now that more people are more focused on other things like work, it”s not easy to plan and execute a healthy menu.

When coming up with that weekly menu, and the recipes to fill it, keep in mind that prior planning prevents loads of future problems. That is, if you take some time to think about the menu in advance, you”ll find that your recipe selection becomes a lot more varied and exciting. Food isn”t only about the taste and nutrition, it”s about presentation, companionship and the whole experience. Even the same basic foods can be prepared a variety of different ways to make up meals everyone will enjoy a lot more.

Take ground beef for example. Add some flour, vegetables such as onions, tomatoes and lettuce. That”s a hamburger, right? Well, it”s also a great taco. Tacos and hamburgers have a lot of the same basic ingredients, but to most people they”re very different foods.

One food can make many different recipes and thus meals. Let”s try another food example. How about chicken and potatoes? Fried chicken and French fries aren”t too healthy. But roasted chicken and potatoes are. Still want to use chicken and potatoes. How about chicken salad and chips – they make a good lunch. Chicken pot pie. Chicken Teriyaki may not include potatoes, but it includes a starch in the white rice. There it is, a lot of variety from only a few basic foods.

Mixing kinds of meats can be lots of fun too. Cut up chicken and steak, potatoes and vegetables. Put them on skewers or sticks and grill. Those are delicious kebabs. Steak and lobster can be very elegant for a parents only dinner date, or pretty basic to include the kids too at a family meal. Some people even like to roast a turkey and serve fish and chips as an early appetizer. It”s all made in the same deep fryer.

What about sources for meal ideas? There are a lot of food shows on television, even an entire channel dedicated to food. Those give great ideas, and most have web sites where more information, including recipes. Speaking of on line, food ideas abound on web sites. Try a Google or MSN search for dinner ideas. You”ll never have time to read all the resulting information. There are more dinner recipes out there than the average person can ever eat in an entire lifetime.

About The Author

Discover the secret recipes from your favorite restaurants and how to easily cook them yourself right now.

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How to Maximize Your Grocery Budget

By Jill Black

As the standard cost of living continues to rise, more and more people are finding themselves in need of budget cuts and cheaper alternatives to the everyday expenses that they can”t cut out altogether. One of the biggest spending arenas is, without question, the grocery store. Clearly food, house wares, cleaning supplies, etc. cannot be left out of the budget, but as the costs associated with these must-have items continue to rise, many people are feeling the crunch. To help ease the stress and strain of shopping for these necessities, we”ve put together a list of tips to help you get the shopping done while still sticking to your budget.

Shop around
Your local grocer may not be the best price in town when it comes to a specific item or product. In fact, your most economical shopping option may involve a couple of different stores a specific market for produce and another for household items and paper goods. Of course you”ll want to take into consideration driving distances and other factors when determining how best to organize your shopping, but mixing it up can be a great money saver.

Shop on sale
Check out weekly circulars and coupon specials to save on must-have items like paper towels, toilet paper, bread, etc. Be careful not to get sucked in to buying something you don”t need just because it”s on sale, though that”s a surefire way to blow your budget out of the water.

Buy in bulk
This is a great option for budget shoppers, particularly where non-perishable items are concerned. While you can expect to pay more per visit to a warehouse or wholesale shopping club, you”ll find that buying in bulk requires far fewer trips to the store than buying in standard quantities, plus, the deals are infinitely better. Items like razor blades, paper towels, toilet paper, coffee, cleaning supplies, personal-care products, and even car tires can be found at drastic discounts in most warehouse and wholesale shopping clubs. Another great deal to be found there is bulk meats particularly those that are individually packaged. They can be frozen until you need them, and will save you a bundle on food costs. Another great buy: many of these warehouse and wholesale shopping clubs sell gasoline, too, and often at 5-10 cents below the going per-gallon rate.

Stick to your list
One of the quickest ways to blow your shopping budget is to give in to impulse buying. Remember, just because something is on sale doesn”t mean it”s a good buy. Make out a list of what you need before heading to the store, and don”t deviate from it.

Coordinate your menus
It takes a little planning, but working out menus for the week is a great way to maximize your food budget. If you plan a consecutive set of meals around a specific group of ingredients, you can avoid wasting leftovers and also avoid having to buy separate ingredients for each individual meal. This will not only save you money, it will help make the overall food preparation run more smoothly.

Remember that shopping on a budget is entirely doable all it takes is a little planning, discipline and creativity.

About The Author

Inside Houston real estate is a new brokerage in Houston. They have a plethora of info on Houston Texas Real Estate and describe different Houston Neighborhoods like the Montrose neighborhood.

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How The Robot Coupe Is A Driving Force For Future Profits

By Dominic Donaldson

Time saving devices for the kitchen are not a new concept. Literally since the days of the cave dwelling, man has endeavoured to save time and energy on finding and preparing food.

This conservation of energy allows either a chance to rest or an opportunity to burn up calories on other tasks. In the days of the hunter gatherer the whole of each day was spent sourcing, preparing and storing food for when times were hard. This task would require the whole clan to contribute, and there was little time for any other activities.

Back to the modern day; we have so many labour saving devices to hand that we are practically snowed under with other jobs we just need to get done. Even fitting in socialising seems like a finely timed task at times. This is all part and parcel of the modern world, and is a template that the future will follow.

We currently have a huge choice in appliances to utilise, and whilst the plain ole simple knife may be sufficient for a domestic setting, in a commercial kitchen, something with a bit more clout is needed for productivity and profit.

The term ”labour saving” in the catering industry translates as profit making. If there is an opportunity to save time by using a processing tool such as a robot coupe, this means that less man hours need to be paid for to do the task manually.

Productivity is high in relation to expenditure on equipment and labour costs. It could take five people an hour to prepare the vegetables needed for service using knives, or it could take one person the same time using a robot coupe.

Prices start from as little as 35 GBP, a bit more pricey than the humble parring knife, and these are adequate for a small catering department; but these machines can be built to scale and are able to function in large scale industrial catering plants.

For the regular commercial kitchen though, a high usage top end processor can cost in the region of 2,000 GBP. It is not just the preparation of vegetables that warrant the investment in a robot coupe, these processors can be built to process a variety of foods in a number of different ways. Grinding, pulping, pureeing, blending, shredding and kneading are actions that can be programmed into a robot coupe apart from slicing and chopping.

The invention of these machines was a direct result of observations made by a salesman for a catering company. The Frenchman witnessed firsthand the time expended on preparation of food stuffs in his clients” kitchen, and immediately came up with the idea of placing a revolving blade in the base of a bowl.

This design went on to inspire the processors we know today in both commercial and domestic use. The use of robots in the kitchen is likely to expand in the future too, as an ever more demanding way of life calls for yet more productive and time efficient ways of processing are called for.

What kind of machine would this be; where is the robot coupe going to take us? We all know that turning to a spot of sci fi can be a valid indicator of progression, and drawing upon many films and comics it could be a case that all kitchen equipment will amalgamate in one big super unit.

Would tipping all the ingredients in one end of a machine, punching in a programme, and then sitting back and waiting produce a perfectly prepped, cooked and served souffle? And what exactly would we be doing while it did this? Building the next labour saving profit building machine at a guess!

About The Author

Dominic Donaldson is an expert in the catering industry.
Find out more about the robot coupe and how it can speed up the prep rate in your kitchen at Acot Wholesale.

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Advantages Of Using Ice Machines In The Catering Business

By Anna Stenning

The advantages of having ice machines in a bar or at home is that you are guaranteed freshly made ice cubes in a matter of minutes or seconds. For people running a bar or restaurant, it is important to have one of these machines to keep the customers happy when serving up drinks on a busy night. As much as people find it fun to freeze up their own ice cubes, ice machines make it that much more efficient, with some machines producing as much as 10kg of ice per hour!

Bars and pubs all use ice machines on a daily basis. For fast serving and keeping up with the demands of the customers it is important that the machines keep on churning out ice constantly throughout the day without problems, therefore machine maintenance is another thing to consider when installing them. Buying bags of ice is simply not a convenient way of stocking up on ice cubes, because this does not guarantee that the number of bags you have in stock is going to be enough for the entire evening.

But these machines are not just useful for bars and restaurants because people at home are also able to benefit from using these. Portable machines are good for home installation, producing up to 2kg of ice cubes per hour, which is great for dinner parties and small gatherings during the summer months. Portable machines are designed so that they can easily be transferred from place to place, so if you are planning a boat trip or holiday away in a caravan then you can pack one of these without worrying about it taking up too much space.

Table top ice machines are great to keep in the kitchen, because they do not need to be plumbed in and can be filled up manually. These normally cost around 200 pounds or less, making it affordable and accessible to everyone. Having ice machines was once associated with the rich and wealthy, because they were not widely available and many people were not familiar with them.

Both the industrial and domestic machines can churn out various types of ice cubes, such as crystal clear ice cubes, different shaped ice and ultra hard ice cubes. The quality of the ice cube is important for some bars and restaurants. Crystal ice cubes are considered high quality ice cubes, because they are produced through processed moving water, whereas cloudy ice cubes are produced from unprocessed water which hardens very quickly. The latter can produce ultra hard cubes ideal for sculpturing and making small figures which can last for a longer time.

Ice machines can be built-in, plumbed in, placed on a tabletop or come portable. These are now widely used in entertainment centres such bowling alleys and cinemas, whereby customers help themselves to the self service ice machines when purchasing a drink. These have proved to come useful for many establishments, providing cool icy beverages in next to no time.

About The Author

Anna Stenning prefers to use ice machines at home during the summer when holding a barbecue party.

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