Students Of Success

The native herbs and spices of a country speak volumes about the healing traditions of that culture. Battles have been fought and territories invaded all for the sake of precious spices. Voyages and trade ensured the spread of these treasures from one part of the world to another, thereby influencing a peoples’ way of life.

But just what are herbs and spices?

Herbs are the leaves and flowers of low-growing woody plants without a trunk but with several stems growing from the base. Examples of herbs are parsley, chives, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, oregano, dill and celery.

Spices on the other hand come from the roots, bark, seeds, or fruits of tropical plants and trees. Examples are cinnamon, ginger, cloves, black pepper and mustard. Herbs and spices can come in the form of mixtures, and are typically used as seasoning blends such as chili and curry powder.

Herbs and spices have multiple uses. From enhancing food to improving health, they have a very important role to play. Diet related disease is the plague of modern times. Using herbs and spices can regulate levels of fat, sugar and salt in the diet. The calories from herbs and spices are negligible compared to calories from trimmings, dressings, gravies, sauces and fried foods.

Herbs and spices can add taste simply by adding flavor. The tantalizing aromas created by herbs can add a more sensual dimension to eating. Spices are distinguished because they aid digestion, increase the rate of metabolism and impact energy levels positively. Black pepper is used in many traditional cuisines as an example. To store herbs and spices, they should be ground and kept in a cool place to maintain aroma and taste.

Herbs provides detailed information on Herbs, Medicinal Herbs, Herbs And Spices, Chinese Herbs and more. Herbs is affiliated with Mediterranean Diet Food.

With all the diseases in the world today, food safety should be
utmost in everyone’s mind when handling or cooking food. The way
food is handled before it is cooked is just as important as the
cooking itself and how it is handled afterwards. There are many
things that one has to be mindful of, such as making sure the
food is thoroughly washed. This applies to home use as well as
restaurants and fast food outlets. Some foods, such as eggs,
dairy products and meat spoil quickly and must be kept
refrigerated. There are bacteria in these foods that can cause
food poisoning. You can become very ill and deaths have been
reported from Salmonella food poisoning if proper food safety
measures are not followed.

Before you begin any food preparation, food safety involves
washing your hands with soap and water. All surfaces that you
will be laying the food on should also be washed as bacteria can
live on any surface, even the kitchen countertop. Sponges should
never be used for cleaning as they attract and keep small pieces
of dirt in the pores. When you are cleaning the surfaces you
should use a mild bleach to make sure you kill all the germs.
You should clean out your refrigerator on a regular basis and
throw out food that has been there for some time. The proper
temperature of a refrigerator is 41 degrees to ensure the safety
of the food inside.

When cooking meat you should thaw the meat in the refrigerator.
This helps with food safety because the meat is not being thawed
at a fast pace. Thaw the meat on the lowest rack to make sure
that none of the juices leak on to other foods and spoil them.
If you need the food in a hurry, use the defrost feature of the
microwave. When you are buying groceries, always check the best
before date on the packaging. Many stores put foods, such as
meats on sale just prior to this date. If you will not be using
the food before the date, then you shouldn’t buy it. Foods in
the freezer that have been there for a long time or have a hole
in the packaging will most likely have freezer burn. These
should be thrown out as they are not safe to eat.

When cooking food, one food safety rule is to cook all seafood
to 145 degrees. Raw seafood should never be eaten. Eggs should
be cooked until the whites are firm and the yolks begin to get
hard. When serving cold food refrigerate it until you are ready
to serve it. Likewise, hot food should be kept hot until you are
ready to serve it.

One of the “tricks” I find most useful for hosting stress-free dinner parties is to make some of the recipes ahead. I find that too many last minute jobs can overwhelm me, so I plan ahead to eliminate as many as possible.

The more dishes you can prepare a day or some hours before guests ring your doorbell, the more you reduce your stress. Here are some reasons:

· You avoid a last minute crisis if preparation takes longer than you thought it would.

· If you like to cook, you’ll have the leisure to enjoy what you’re doing instead of feeling frantic about a deadline

· You have time to clean up after you cook.

· If there is a disaster, say you burn something, you have plenty of time to come up with an alternate plan.

· If you have prepared the dessert ahead, you don’t need to leave the table for a long stretch just when the conversation is getting really interesting.

Put your imagination to work for you! Try to imagine your way through the last minute jobs you will have to get dinner on the table, and reduce them to a minimum you feel comfortable with. It helps to think about what all those last minute jobs are: setting out the ice water pitcher, lighting the candles, putting items in serving dishes and getting the guests to the table.

By the way, many of these are jobs that your guests can do.

What is your level of tolerance for last minute jobs?
Now ask yourself what your level of tolerance is for last minute jobs? If it is low, then you should think about finding some recipes that absolutely minimize any last minute work. This is especially true if you are an inexperienced cook.

Some of the recipes I rely on are make-ahead, and some are just items that I can bring home from the store and put out in nice serving dishes.

Some cooks even make everything ahead. If you love stews, lasagna and casseroles, then you could do that too.

But I often prefer serving a delicious roast of lamb or beef or chicken as the special item on the menu. Luckily these dishes are ones you can put in the oven and leave to themselves while you do other things.

If you can add potatoes and vegetables to the roast while it cooks you have almost all of the advantages of make-ahead. Once you pop them in the oven beside the roast you can pretty well ignore them until they are cooked.

So I tend to focus on finding appetizers, salads, side dishes and desserts that I can make ahead, or set out straight from the store, or vegetables I can cook alongside a roast. Then I can concentrate on the last minute items like slicing a roast, making gravy, and getting things on the table.

Probably the most important category for me is appetizers. I find it too stressful to be fussing at cooking something while the doorbell is ringing. If you are hosting by yourself you may find the same.

So I try to have a repertoire of make-ahead or buy-ahead appetizer recipes that work for me. Often I serve more than one, since some of my guests like to stick to very light appetizers, and others enjoy heartier ones.

You can build your repertoire of make ahead recipes for your home dinner parties. I suggest you start with appetizers. If you want to see some of my favorites, just go to my the Make-Ahead Appetizers page on my website.

Enjoy minimizing your hosting stress and watching your guests’ eyes light up at the sight of your tasty, well presented appetizers.

About the Author

Joanie Williams has been enjoying giving home dinner parties with minimum stress for over 25 years. See how you can use make-ahead appetizers to reduce your stress and enjoy your own dinner parties. http://www.thedinnerpartyplanningsite.com/make-ahead-appetizers.html

Here is a nice easy meal you can make while you are at work!

Ingredients 1 can (10 3/4 oz) condensed cream of mushroom soup
with roasted garlic 1/2 cup beef broth 4 large red potatoes, cut
in 1 inch chunks 1 1/2 cups bagged baby carrots

MEATBALLS 1 lb lean ground beef 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup seasoned dried bread crumbs 1 large egg 2 tablespoons
chopped fresh parsley 1/2 tsp each salt and pepper

Garnish: chopped parsley

Directions 1. Stip soup and broth in a 3 qt. or larger
slow-cooker until blended. Stir in potatoes and carrots. 2. Mix
Meatball ingrdients in a bowl with your hands or a wooden spoon
until blended. Form into 1 1/2 in. balls. Place on top of
vegetable mixture. 3. Cover and cook on low 7 to 9 hours until
Meatballs are cooked thru and vegetables are tender. 4. Transfer
Meatballs and vegetables to a platter with a slotted spoon.
Whisk sauce until smooth, and pour over Meatballs and
vegetables. Sprinkle servings with parsley. Nutritional info 661
cal, 33 g protein, 62 g carbohydrate, 5 g fiber, 30 g fat (12 g
saturated fat), 148 mg cholesterol, 1,438 mg sodium

4 servings 661 calories Time to prepare: 14 minutes Total: 7 to
9 hours on low in slow cooker Difficulty: Easy slow cooker recipe

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Using digestive enzymes when you have hemorrhoids is a good idea. Digestive enzymes help reduce inflammation, reduce fibrin, and clean the blood of foreign particles. These enzymes activities strengthen your immune system and give it more power to work on your hemorrhoids.

Bromelain

Bromelain is a digestive enzyme that is found in pineapple. It’s capable of reducing inflammation and swelling and for this reason has been used to treat hemorrhoids.

Bromelain also activates a chemical that promotes the breakdown of fibrin. Fibrin is a chemical that repairs open wounds, internal wounds and weak tissue by creating fibrin deposits. If you are over 35, fibrin is not balanced with your body’s enzymes. This results in excess fibrin deposits at inflamed locations, eventually causing more sickness and disease. Disease.

To balance and control excess fibrin activity, you need to take digestive or systemic enzymes. Systemic enzymes are enzymes that work throughout the body to attack blood impurities and dissolve fibrin.

As a supplement take 500-750 mg a day. You can also add fresh pineapple to your diet since it is high in fiber and other nutrients.

Digestive and Systemic Enzymes

Digestive enzymes are used to help you digest your food and improve your assimilation. Systemic enzymes are found deep into our body. They are in your tissues, organs, and cells where they help in all types of chemical reactions that your body is involved in.

Both types of these enzymes are available in capsules so you can easily supplement your diet. Digestive enzymes help to reduce the stress you get in the rectum when your food is not properly digested. Undigested food reaching the colon eventually leads to constipation.

Take a good digestive enzyme that you can get at health food store. Take 2 capsules with each meal.

Systemic enzymes help reduce swelling, inflammation, improve circulation, and speed the healing of tissue. One important fact about systemic enzymes is they eliminate fibrin, which is at center of most inflammatory conditions and illness.

Take systemic enzymes between meals. This allows them reach the small intestine and get absorbed into the blood stream where they can do their work.

Some systemic enzymes are enteric enzymes, which means they are coated so they will not dissolve in the stomach. This allows them to move into the small intestine where they will be absorbed into your blood stream.

The brand Vitalzyme contains serrapeptase, a systemic enzyme that is mix with other nutrients and enzymes. Just put Vitalzyme or serrapeptase into the goggle engine. This will bring in a flood of sites for you to chose a good systemic enzyme.

Copyright © 2005 Rudy Silva

About Rudy: Rudy Silva has a Physics degree from the University of San Jose California and is a Natural Nutritionist. He writes a newsletter called “Natural-Remedies-ThatWork.com” and he has written an ebook called “How to Relieve Your Constipation with 77 Natural Remedies.” You can get more information on this ebook and more hemorrhoid remedies at this site http://www.hemorrhoid-remedies.for–you.info.

If there was ever a principle that was responsible for the most happiness and achievement in the world, it would be the 80/20 Principle.

The 80/20 Principle or Pareto Principle was discovered in 1897 by an Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto while he was searching for patterns of wealth and income in England.

What he found was that 80 percent of the wealth was enjoyed by only 20 percent of the population. Additionally, it was consistent in different countries and in different times.

This has been found in present day as well and in almost any activity that we perform, business or otherwise.

In other words, 80 percent of your results in a given activity, are generated by 20 percent of your input or effort. Just the same, 80 percent of revenue or profits are generated by 20 percent of your efforts or sales.

The 80/20 relationship can also easily be documented in personal achievement and happiness.

Most people have never taken the time to count their achievements or much less figure out what makes them happy. If they did, they would have realized that there are very few things that contribute to most of their happiness. They would also have found that there are very few things that they have done that has resulted in most of their achievements.

A great example of the 80/20 Principle in achievement would be to look at some achievement that you’ve made in your life, and write down all of the things that you did that “truly” got you there. If you’re looking at it honestly you’ll see that it took consistent effort on very few things to get you most of your results.

My website http://www.RasheedAli.com is another great example. I could have spent a lot of working hours and even more money to get my traffic up, but in reality it took very little work and money to get my Alexa traffic rank from over 3,000,000 in the world to currently 212,901 and climbing every week! It has taken very few, small but effective steps to achieve this. You will find this time and time again in your life if you take a closer look. What you may have thought of as hard work may have been a few effective actions combined with many ineffective actions. By the way, this was done in less than three months.

Now, although achievement makes us happy, what else does?

A serious “Happiness Analysis” is also something all of us should do at least once in our lives. If you documented the things that contribute to your happiness then number the things that make you the happiest, you will find that there are only a few things that contribute to most of your happiness. In other words 20 percent of the things that make you happy, contribute to 80 percent of your happiness!

With that said, if you were to spend more time doing the things that result in most of your happiness or achievement, you WILL double or even triple your results!

Rasheed Ali was once a homeless runaway on the streets of NY and is now dedicated to helping people from all walks of life to reach their ultimate potential by conquering any and all obstacles through his Conquer Your Adversity Newsletter. You can subscribe at http://www.RasheedAli.com

rasheed@rasheedali.com

Waffles have been the comfort food in many a kitchen. A waffle is a flat batter cake cooked between two hot plates that are called a waffle iron. Belgian waffle irons provide deep pockets to catch the butter and syrup. There is nothing like a warm, buttery waffle swimming in syrup.

The waffle irons of old sat on a gas fired or wood stove. You had to heat both sides of the plate before you added the batter. It took practice and acquired skill to know when the iron was hot enough to pour your batter in. You also needed to know when to turn the iron as well as when to remove the waffle. Until non-stick surfaces, getting the waffles out of the waffle iron presented its own of set problems.

Waffle irons have come a long way since the days they were first used. Whether you prefer the regular pocket or the deeper Belgian waffle pocket you will have no shortage of choices of commercial waffle irons to choose from. There are many quality, affordable waffle irons on the market today.

With the Chef’s Choice Waffle Pro you can dial in how done you want your waffles whether you like them golden brown with a crisp exterior or a deep baked uniform texture this waffle iron can take care of it. Commercial waffle irons today also come with a non-stick surface making removal much easier than those first waffle irons.

With Waffle Exotica you are no longer limited to a round or square waffle. Waffle Exotica offers such fun shapes as hearts and your favorite cartoon characters. The Belgian Waffler and Multi-Baker, comes with a Belgian waffle iron and three other interchangeable plates a flat griddle and ribbed grill for vegetables, fish and meats.

Whatever you’re personal preference waffles smothered in warm butter and hot syrup is a great way to start any day.

Tracye Gano is an accomplished freelance writer and designer for kitchens 4u.