Christmas time is coming and I am sure we will all be tucking into expensive meats and treats around the festive period.

Well my words of advice are dont over do it and remember that you can always still eat healthily at Christmas and enjoy yourself :D

Have a great Christmas everyone!

On December 31st I will have been married to other half, sometimes better half, Derrick for 7 years. I dedicate this, my first blog on recipebite, to him because instead of developing an itch, he has developed a palate. :)

When we met dear hubby was subsiting on Hamburger Helper, fast food, fizzy drinks and Twizzlers. He told me never to serve him onions, he hated them and would know immediately if they were in a dish. Ditto for garlic and oh by the way, he didn't care for salt. Garlic powder, tinned black pepper and Tony Chachere's seasoning were acceptable.

I proceeded to cook without my trusty aromatics which resulted in what I thought were painfully dull meals that he, interestingly enough, gobbled up. Then I went through several months of cooking 2 versions of everything, mine with the onions and garlic and his without. He would look at my dish, filled with fresh veg and herbs and ask "whats that?". I would tell him, ask if he wanted a taste and he would just smile and go back to his unseasoned food.

One day, fed up with all the work I decided to trick him into eating my way. I minced green onion until it was almost a paste and added it to a stir fry after a few months of him tolerating and then requesting that dried herbs be added to dishes. That night he ate with a fair amount of gusto and then suddenly put down his fork and said "what is the green herb in here?"

I started to laugh and told him I sneaked fresh onion into his food and to my delight he laughed and told me he liked it. I wasted no time introducing him to new tastes with the first order of business being replacing waxy Twizzlers with the much deeper flavored Red Vines!

Now other half eats everything, including salad, milder dark chocolate, fresh herbs, my beloved infused salt (even on ice cream) and craves local organic meat & veg. He even has a healthy appreciation for Wensleydale cheese.

Last week we were cooking together (his left handed chopping is pretty amazing to watch) when I realized what time of year it was and that our 7th annivesary was approaching. I realized my husband has an itch to experiement with food and grow his palate. I'm one lucky woman!

Look at these: people actually eat them!

Recipe Search: rattlesnake recipes at recipe-super-search.net

I got thinking about these recipes the other day and got to the point where I decided I'd do one of them. The thing is, I can't get hold of snake meat anywhere! darn.

What does that taste of?

Taste? I ask you what is it really for? When you listen to a wine sommelier talking about the blackberries in the Burgundy they are drinking, are they really there?
Why can we sometimes eat a huge plate of food and feel content, yet sometimes a relatively small plate makes us feel we don?t want to continue? Why are some combinations of flavours so right? and some so wrong?

This is all about our sensory perception to taste. Taste is a sense, and all of our senses are given to us for one reason. That is protection.
We have made a luxury of these senses through our evolvement in time, with great music we listen to? artwork our eyes admire? soft, comforting fabrics against our skin that we wear? perfumes we spray? and fantastic food we eat.

We have 5 basic taste sensations, these are found by the tongue and they are categorised as SWEET, SOUR, BITTER, SALT, UNAMI.
All the rest of our taste comes from our olfactory bulb in our nose. If you have a cold you notice a distinct lack of taste, the same for airline food. This is because the olfactory bulb swells preventing the volatile food molecules being read and understood. That said, the smallest and warmest food molecules always get received 1st, and upon chewing more molecules are released and carried up to the nose? this is how flavours develop.

We all know of classic combinations such as chocolate and orange, strawberries and cream, chicken and mushrooms? but why have these become so well known?
How is it that some chefs can combine ingredients such as caviar and white chocolate, coffee and fennel, oysters and passion fruit? And these really work, against our minds better judgement?
Flavours are extremely complicated, and unfortunately our ability to detect them isn?t. There are more than a billion flavour molecules, all individual. Our senses can only detect 230 odd of them. It is when our brain maps an ingredient its limitations then become confused. If we were to plot a graph with the flavour molecules of an orange, and then do the same with basil, a part of the two graphs would overlap. This can sometimes confuse our brain so it is totally wrong, but more importantly informs us of any combination where orange is good, its highly likely that basil would be too. So instead of creating the orange flavoured chocolates, why not try with basil and see how complimentary it is!
This is where the wine tasters remark the ?oak? or ?leather? notes for instance. Neither are actually there? but a taste sensation they pick up on is similar.

The next thing I?d like to talk about is pallet fatigue.
Like I said earlier? our senses are for protection. Think about getting into a hot bath. It?s uncomfortable and you have to ease yourself in, but once you have got accustomed to it then its fine, and it hasn?t burnt you at all. This is your touch sense reacting to danger, and once it has recognised the danger isn?t of high profile you relax and no longer feel uncomfortable.

Eating is the same. Many children don?t like Brussels sprouts, yet as an adult can eat them easily. This is a reaction to danger? as cabbage shares part of the flavour chain as poisonous nuts, and the texture of a hard Brussels sprouts creates the reaction of dislike. To spit it out for survival. Once the brain is educated then this reaction can be turned down.
Pallet fatigue is of utmost importance. Just like the hot bath, once a sense is provoked for a sustained time the body turns down the reaction to it. This can be disastrous to a dish. If the dish is flat on texture and doesn?t hit a varied number of tongue tastes then it quickly becomes boring as the senses close down to it, regarding it as safe.
By using vinegar and sugar as well as salt and pepper as seasonings can give more dimensions to a dish, and keep them alive.
An extreme example of this is chewing gum. You probably agree with me that the flavour lasts a maximum of 10 minutes. In actual fact the flavour lasts days, but our senses stop tasting it as it is registered as safe. That same piece of chewing gum if you removed it and had a glass of water, and 2 minutes later chewed it again, you would find it went back to its former glory and full of minty taste!

With this in mind I hope the next blog I write about dish concepts and menu creating will fall into place nicely!

Once i was cooking for me and my bf. It was his birthday and wanted to make something special. I had a cook book beside me as i dont know how to cook lol i was making shepherds pie and how i messed it up i will never know. I was watching the time etc but forgot about it.

In the end the fire alarm went of and I burnt it! I was so upset as my bf walked in and i had nothing planned :( prob is the most good thing i have cooked but it didnt go so well! *sighs*

I recently made a triple cochoclate mousse and it tasted great however when you put your spoon in it tends to collapse and go slightly runny especially the white chocolate mousse, any suggestions welcome? :confused:

I am sick and tired of going into restaurants to discover an almost empty plate which I just paid quite a bit for.

I ordered fish and chips at Harry Ramsdens to find that they have almost halved the size of their chips portions. I looked at my plate thinking where is the rest.

I think we need to increase food size portions in restaurants. I am sick of paying good money for a measly portion.

I understand in this day and age we are all expected to eat healthily etc but I am a good believer of eating what I enjoy, and try to be moderate and consider your health at the same time.

Who is with me on this?

We all have days where we just dont feel like eating. Something may be getting us down. Work may be stressing us out, the kids are always fighting, the relationships at rocky ends. Sometimes we just cant eat.

I have had times when I havent eaten for three days when Ive been really upset about something. Sometimes we lose our appetites completely.

I have been thinking of ways to try and get ourselves to try and eat whilst feeling like this.

1. Try to surround yourself with people cooking and eating, this may just knock your appetite right back into place.

2. Look on the positive side of whatever may be getting us down and remember that food keeps us alive and should always be eaten at regular intervals.

3. Remind yourself that no matter what is dragging you down, that food is what keeps you going.

4. When trying to eat again when recovering from these feelings and loss of appetite dont rush yourself, take it in steps to eating again.

5. Try cooking something you know you normally enjoy, maybe it will tempt you to get back on track.

I hope this may help somebody someday. It is just what I try to do when feeling like this.

Badgers are helping to shorten our supply of food by spreading Bovine tuberculosis to literally thousands of stocked farm cows whilst driving up prices and shortening beef supplies. Each one of the cows that gets infected must be slaughtered at the cost of millions of pounds per year, coming from tax payers money.

Tuberculosis is a bacteria that damages the animals lungs and eventually leads to its death, leaving farmers powerless and with no choice but to put these animals down at the taxpayers expense. The epidemic is sweeping the nation and farmers are annoyed that they cannot do anything about it because since 1967 it has been illegal to trap or shoot badgers. Farmers argue that this law needs to be reviewed in light of this recent TB outbreak.

Due to the seriousness of the outbreak I could only summarise that farmers should be allowed to control the amount of badger sets that are laid on their land by means of shooting if any of their cows get infected with tuberculosis, as obviously most these badgers would be infected and would only start the vicious circle again. At the end of the day, human welfare has to come first in my book, all over the world animals die at human hands for no apparent reason, not for food, just for fun, I am against this sort of killing, but to me, there is a reason these infected badgers need to be kept under close control.

The price of a bullet is far cheaper than the price and upkeep of cows that then need to be destroyed. The badgers can be caught, shot and destroyed humanly at a fraction of the cost of the effects it would have if we let them roam free to infect more cows. Farmers could loose their livelihood if this epidemic is allowed to continue, there are hundreds of farms at risk from closure as it is, do we really need something else that is going to take the 'good food' off the shelves of the supermarket ? Don't we suffer enough with poor quality and foreign foods ? I believe that local food is the best and the most fresh food type that you can buy, I don't want my food to be in a lorry then on a boat then on another lorry then in a warehouse then on another lorry to be delivered to supermarkets, the fuel problems in England are bad enough without adding to the problem by not using local produce because someone has decided that we cannot protect our farms from diseases like TB. Something has to be done and quick.... for those reasons I WOULD sacrifice a badger to save a cow.

Am I alone in thinking that the high street shop is getting very Junk Food oriented?

Today we have a mass of Junk food places that we could take the children for a meal, these shops are profiting from children, causing them allot of harm and only caring about their profit margin, children can tell you the names of these places just by the logo, being totally absent minded as to the real product they are consuming and what harm it is doing.

Some parents are even worse, being totally naive as to what they are really doing to their children, saying that they are just giving their children ?what they want,? huh? Since when does a child know what it wants, would you say ?yes? if your child wanted to destroy your house or let the tyres down on a neighbours car ? No! I don?t think so, because you know the consequences of those actions and you as a parent want to protect your child the best you can, in a safe environment where they would not cause themselves or others any harm.

Then I guess the question is ?why don?t they protect them from the damage too much junk food can do to them?? The answer I believe to be the correct one is that parents don?t know the problems it could lead to later in life (and believe me, I use the word ?later? very loosely), as they were never taught basic cooking skills and as a result were bought up on readymade ?convenience foods? or they believe that they ?don?t have time? to make proper dinners. This is the constant story that I keep hearing the more I delve into the world of food, and to be honest, I don?t believe a word of it.

Today, we live in a society that usually requires both parents to be working, which I can understand is very hard juggling work with children and household chores. The other part of society are the ?single parent family?s? , where life must be ten times harder than it ever need to be. These problems are all contributing to a nation that is getting worse for its health, and will not improve until we do something about it, installing new morals into the family, and I believe food can be a very good start to that structure.

Let?s start with the basics of the truth, the stuff that people are too afraid to say for fear of reprisals from those that know very little about eating right and the harm junk food is really doing. These junk food places are destroying your children?s lives because parents are letting them, taking them to these shops keeps them in business and selling what the ?customer demands? , the power of the people is the strongest parliament there is and unless we fix this they will stay in business causing allot of harm along the way, the truth is if you asked them, they will say ?we are giving the customer what they want? and as long as they can make a profit, they don?t care.

I have already explained the reasons why we live like this today, now I am going to tell you the possible solutions. The first thing we as a nation need to do is re-install home cooking values back into the home. I believe the method for this is not only to target the children, but also the parents, to teach them new skills, show them how quick and easy a homemade meal can really be using quick and easy foods as a basis, those being pasta, pies, salads, stir fry, and simple quick to cook meats like lamb chops, mince, and chicken breasts, of course there are lots more, but I can?t list them all here. These are foods that take next to no preparation and can be made up into a meal and cooked very quickly with hardly any fuss.

Food is obviously more exciting than that, and we need to show recipes to the children whilst they are young, making cooking an essential part of schools curriculum with full exams on the subject, I can?t remember the amount of times my daughter has had cooking at school and disappointingly bought home pizza or cakes, what is this teaching them?, they know nothing of food, it is teaching them that foods with salt and sugar are things you can eat the whole of your life without any consequences.

So to sum up, the point I am making is that food needs to be educated to people of all ages, so that at least if they choose to ignore these important guidelines, they are making it by choice and not because they are naive to food. If there were ever an education system about food to teach people about the consequences, high street ?restaurants? and shops that deal in the junk food market will soon disappear leaving us with a fitter healthier nation. It is my pledge that recipebite.co.uk will be dedicated to resolve this issue to try and reach the most amount of people it can.

Ingredients

* 4 large tomatoes
* 1 large onion
* 1 head garlic
* olive oil
* salt and pepper
* 1/4 cup butter, softened
* 3 ciabatta (6 - 8 inch loaves)
* 3/4 lb roast beef
* 3/4 lb
* 1/2 lb munchee cheese

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325F, line a sheet pan with foil.
2.Slice the tomatoes and onion to about 1/4-1/6 of an inch thick.
3.Wrap the garlic in foil and place on the sheet pan along with the onions and tomatoes.
4.Drizzle the onions and tomatoes with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
5.Place in the oven and roast for 1 hour.
6.When done remove from the oven and unwrap the garlic, cut it in half and squeeze all the cloves out of it into a small bowl; stir in the butter.
7.Take the ciabatta and cut them in halves.
8.Evenly spread on the garlic butter mixture on both sides of the bread then begin to layer the bottom half with cheese, then pastrami, then beef, then onion, tomatoe, more cheese and then the top half of the bread.
9.the sandwiches in foil and place on a clean sheet pan.
10.Place another sheet place on top, and weight it down with a big iron skillet.
11.Place in the 325F oven and 15-20 minutes.
12.These sandwiches are great to make ahead of time too!

Although fresh cooking herbs are available practically throughout the year, there are a few months when they become more available and cheap, the best time in which you may purchase herbs from local growers that you can easily dry or freeze for a year-round supply, even if you grow your own herbs.

Drying herbs gives you the possibility to make preparations and mixes that probably will be of a higher quality than those you can found in grocery stores and supermarkets, with your own taste and are much, much cheaper than commercial brands that are offering mixings of herbs and spice as seasonings.

For retaining the highest flavor and quality of herbs, air drying or room drying is the best, easy, and inexpensive method for preserving herbs. There are electronic devices to dry herbs; moisture evaporates slowly and naturally during air drying, leaving the precious herb oils behind.

Dehydrators are useful when you are planning to dry large quantities of herbs or work with high moisture herbs such as basil. Some people believe that their microwave oven is the best way to dry herbs just because it is already in their kitchens. However, microwaves literally cook the herbs producing very poor quality.

Air dry your herbs using traditional methods that does not require any special implement and is as easy as following a few simple guidelines:

- Always use scissors or a sharp knife or to cut large stems or branches from mature plants.

- Gently shake each branch to remove insects.

- Examine each branch to remove all old, damaged or diseased leaves.

- Rinse each branch carefully in cold water and dry with towels or paper towels, removing all water.

- Keep in mind that wet herbs tend to mold which destroys the whole bunch.

- Now, turn branches upside down removing leaves along the upper stem.

- Consider that lower leaves are not as pungent as the top leaves nearest buds.

- Tie five to six stems together in a small bunch.

- To get the high moisture herbs, use smaller bunches.

- Once done, place the bunch upside down in a large brown paper bag, avoid plastics.

- Then, gather the bag around the stems and tie.

- Cut or tear several holes in the bag for ventilation, making sure there is plenty of room inside the bag so leaves do not touch the sides of the bag.

- One of the most important things to do: write down the name and date on each bag for later identification.

- Hang the bag in a warm, airy room or attic, leaving it undisturbed for about two weeks or even longer. The more time left, the better results.

- Once the leaves are dry, check for any signs of mold growth.

-Toss the entire bunch if moldy and try again. Strip dried leaves from stems discarding stems.

- Crush the leaves if desired, do not forget that whole herbs retain their flavor longer than crushed, ground or rubbed herbs.

- Store your dried herbs in small airtight containers keeping them away from direct light or sunlight exposure.

- Zip containers and label each one by weight, the date, name of the herbs, if you are making your own mixtures.

- Store the herbs in a cool, dry, dark place away from any light source.

Practically all dried herbs can be kept for years, however for best results use them within a year, because herbs tend to diminish in flavor with age and the more aging a larger amount will be needed to achieve the desired flavor in cooking.

The only herb that will grow stronger in flavor during storage is sage. If you want to make rubbed sage, place dried leaves in a sieve or wire strainer over a plate and rub against the side. Sage is a very strong herb that rubbed creates smaller pieces for more even distribution in recipes.

To release all their full flavor, crush leaves or use a mortar and pestle to grind them, just shortly before adding to the recipe. Dried herbs should be added to soups and stews during the last half-hour of cooking, except if the recipe directions say something else.