The Joy of Bread Making

I procrastinate. A lot. As you can see it goes for this blog, and almost everything else in my life. Even shopping. I've been procrastinating for years to buy a bread maker. Friends would talk about their machines, the idea of freshly made bread would bring smile to my face, and still, I would not go and buy it. The good thing, my procrastination does end. The time has come, and with just one click (thank you, Amazon and Jeff Bezos!) I became a proud bread maker owner.

I went for a Hamilton Beach. Why? First, several people whose cooking skills are way better than mine recommended this one. Second, I have a Hamilton Beach food steamer and I am very happy with it. Last but not least, the price was hard to beat.

The machine came with a nice little book featuring several recipes. I was also pretty surprised to learn that you can use your bread maker also to make jam. The bread maker has 12 different cycles (from basic white bread to French to gluten-free), 3 different crust types (light, medium and dark) and allows to make a 1.5 lb or 2 lb loaf.

My bread making experience started with making basic white bread. I turned out to be no-brainer! Just add all the ingredients (water, salt, sugar, butter, flour and yeast - yes, no milk or eggs), select cycle and press 'Start'. In 3 hours I opened the lid to find a perfectly baked loaf of bread that smelled totally awesome! And the taste... OMG... it has been a while since I had such great tasting bread. Winning!

Next time I tried to make French bread. I think I messed up on the flour measurement, that's why my loaf turned out to be not the most beautiful one but it tasted fantastic!

In a little bit over a week I made 4 loafs, and everyone who tried my bread loved it.

Easy, no-mess and almost no-clean up bread making seemed like a dream. Now I have it in the comfort of my kitchen. What have been I waiting for? I should have gotten this wonder machine long time ago. Procrastination, procrastination...

Flavors of Italy

This is a Guest post by Janet Becker. 

Everybody has dreamed at least once to sit in a premium restaurant with a glass of fine wine and a stunning view of the Mediterranean Sea, with that blue that cuts your breath away. And where to go when you want to get all these?

Think about Italy! You have probably joked at least once with friends acting like Italians, with their unmistakable accent and with their large arm movements. But Italy is not only about friendly people, summer perfume and beautiful views.

Italy is also about FOOD. Great food, taste and diversity. We have Italian restaurants all over the world and the Italian cuisine is one of the most famous in the world. Then it's obvious that you must taste it there, where it all started from. So here we have some tips that will lead you to the world of Italian tastes.

Go to Naples for Pizza

• Known as the city of pizza, Napoli is the third city of Italy, after Milan and Rome. In 2004 a document was released with the original recipe of Neapolitan pizza.
• The best pizza in Naples can sometimes be found in small restaurants that don’t allow a reservation. One of the best options is Pizzaiolo del Presidente. Situated in the center of Naples, the restaurant has its name from a funny story. After Bill Clinton ate there and rated the pizza as the best he had ever eaten, the boss renamed it Pizzaiolo del Presitente (The president’s pizza).
• Another great option is pizzeria Da Michele, on Via Sersale 13. Here you can taste the famous Pizza Margherita or the delicious Pizza Quattro Stagioni, which means four seasons.

Venice for Fish and Sea Food

• If you want a genuine seafood experience, you must go to the most famous fish market in Italy. Situated in Venice, Rialto Market offers you a large range of fresh fish and seafood. The food can be cooked in front of you and, as a tip, fresh seafood and home-made Italian pasta make the best combination.
• Another good option is Ristorante Marco Polo, situated in the touristic center of Venice. The restaurant offers quality service and cozy atmosphere, along with the best seafood and fish specialties, which makes it perfect for a great and authentic Italian experience.

Milan for Pasta

• As a reward for its special cuisine, Milan has several world-known restaurants. One of them in Antica Osteria della Lanterna, an authentic place situated in the center of Milan. Here you can enjoy the best home-made pasta in Milan, with genuine Italian decorations and served by a local gentile woman.
• Another great place is the Pastamadre Restaurant, meaning Mother of Pasta. This cozy place is situated on Via Bernadino Corio 8 and, of course, the main dish is pasta. Whether you want the well-known Carbonara or you prefer something that you’ve never heard about, this is one of the best places in Milan to try it and you surely won’t be disappointed.

So, if you decided to go there for a culinary experience, you should prepare your luggage and your passport. You should know that there are no special visa requirements for Italy, unlike for US, where you need an ESTA approval to travel, so you are free to go to Italy and enjoy your holiday. Buon appetito!

Five Weird Food Delicacies From Around the World

This is a Guest post by Julia Dawson. 

There are a lot of gluttons around the globe who like to indulge in various cuisines from all over the world. However, there are such, who are so adventurous, that they are willing to push things to the extreme and try some of the most bizarre dishes one could possibly imagine. Such meals are not necessarily delicious, but can definitely be described as weird. Adventurous types are even willing to travel to foreign countries so that they could have a taste of their culinary oddities.

Here are a couple of traditional dishes that are quite bizarre. 

Top 10 Tasty World Cuisines

This is a Guest Post by Julia Dawson

If you are a person who appreciates the good things in life then you know food is definitely one of them. There are far too many amazing opportunities to try out different foods from the incredible variety of cultures around the world. While we want to try so many things there are quote a few cuisines globally which are well-loved and respected for their healthy ingredients and preparation as well as their lovely taste. We have compiled a small list of these cuisines to give you some hints on what you should be looking for when globetrotting:

Healthy Carbohydrates to Dive Into

This is a Guest Post by Alia Haley

Is intake of carbohydrate on regular basis good for health? Is it mandatory to include some carbohydrates in daily diet chart? Answer to both these questions is a big YES.

Proteins may well be considered as the building blocks for body, but carbohydrate intake helps in supplying the required amount of energy. The body needs positive energy to function properly. Without intake of carbohydrate, body will slowly become weaker. Daily intake of carbohydrate in balanced amount acts as a necessary energy supplier to the human body. The main trick lies in finding the right type of carbohydrate-enriched food products with minimal fat and calorie percentage. Let's have a look at some of the healthiest carbohydrates to include in the daily diet chart for a better living:

Preparing Steaks for a Dinner Party Made Easy

This is a guest post by Mark Johnson

So, what are you cooking for dinner tonight? Is it the same and old lobsters or one of those continental delicacies that you prepare every time for a dinner party? Well, if you are planning to prepare something new and delectable, why don’t you get steaks to your kitchen interiors? In fact, you can try so many unique recipes with steaks and leave your guests amazed.

Now, if you are heading to try a new recipe, it might take a lot of time and this might further result in making you delay for setting up the party decors. In this respect, preparing steaks is so easy, and you don’t need to kill hours behind it.

So, you must have got excited to know the recipe, right? Without keeping you in further suspense, let me give you the detailed cooking procedure for a mouthwatering recipe called ‘Steak with Red Wine Shallot Sauce’. Let’s take a look:

Italian Sausage & Potato Pot

There are dishes that I call "put in the oven and forget". They are easy, time-saving and also good for you - no frying just roasting or baking. When you have a busy day but still want to endulge in a nice home made meal, this is the best choice.

I had some Italian sausages in the fridge and wanted to use them. What would go with them? Potatoes!

Here is what I came up with. Easy and simple.

Juicing!

Dave read a blog about jucing, and suggest we give it a try. OK, said – done. We went shopping for veggies and fruits, got a juice extractor and started juicing. Originally Dave wanted to stick to 30-days juicing fast but we realized that keeping our full-paced life when having just 3 juices a day is not going to happen. One or two juices a day and some food.

Juices actually taste great: you can taste all the ingredients and after you have it you don’t want any crap. You just want some quality food.

Here is kale + watermelon + lime + parsley juice.

Other great options include carrot & cucumber, berries & pineapple, and chard and kale in everything. We just didn’t like the orange one at all. Actually you can juice anything as long as it natural, low in sugar and has greens in it. No juicing fast for us but juicing is on!

It's Watermelon Time!

I have to adimit: I am addicted to watermelons, and every year I can't wait for them to be in season (those small ones they sell all the year round I don't favor at all) to build my diet around it. It is so refreshing, rich in Vitamins C and A, has only 50 kalories on one cup. Perfect summer snack and even a full meal when it is hot. The only downfall is its sweetness, and some nutrition specialist recommed to be moderate with watermelons because of that. Well, everything in moderation is a great rule but when it comes to watermelons you can't stop me.


You can use watermelons in desserts and salads, you can grill it and pickle it but I enjoy it the most when it is  just a slice of fresh juicy watermelon. It just screams 'SUMMER':)

What-Is-In-The-Fridge Salads

There are days (and pretty often) when you don’t have any special ingredients for a certain dish in your fridge but you still want to make something. This happens a lot about salads for me. I believe that one should try really hard to make really bad salads, that’s why I have a long list of salads that fall under the category “What’s Left in the Fridge”. Just thought I’ll share some of them with you.

Salad #1

Lettuce, tomato, avocado, crab sticks. Olive oil and Italian herbs seasoning.

Lip - Smacking Lobster Recipes for the Sea Food Enthusiasts

This is a guest post by Mark Johnson.

Lobster is highly preferred by the seafood lovers. You can use lobster meat to prepare some lip-smacking recipes, which are very healthy and involves minimum cooking time. Apart from lobster salad, hot lobster, lobster pizza, lobster club sandwich, grilled lobster with barbeque mayonnaise, other lobster recipes are:

Flourless Chocolate & Guinness Cake on St. Valentine's Day

It all started at the Periodicals section of our local Barnes&Noble. I opened Food Network Magazine Special Chocolate issue, and I just could not put it down. The recipe for Towering Flourless Chocolate Cake looked so good! It asked for lots of chocolate and also some Guinness beer, both Dave’s favorite so that very minute I knew what I would make for my husband on St. Valentine’s Day. 

Last year I had kept it low key making just heart-shaped cookies so this year I was thinking about treating him to something unusual.

Chicken Pâté

This is a guest post by Alla Osipova, the author of www.alliluya.livejournal.com

Here is a simplified recipe for Chicken Pâté.

Homemade chicken noodle soup

I was making pelmeni the other day, and had some leftover dough. I don’t like wasting food especially when it is good stuff so I decided to ‘recycle’ it and make chicken noodle soup. It is an easy and hearty dish perfect for rainy winter days. 

Making the soup brought back many of my childhood memories. When I was a kid and was spending summer with my Grandma (aka Baba Zina) in the country, we had a certain tradition: one or twice a season her friend Anna Nikolayevna (aka Baba Anya) would come over to make chicken noodle soup. I don’t know how they were arranging it back then with no cell phones, Internet and even land line in our country house but my Grandma always knew what day and time Baba Anya would come so we would dress up and go to the railway station to pick her up.

Eating healthy with a food steamer

Holidays are over, spring is coming, and it is time to think about our waist line and get rid of some extra lbs/kilos. Working out is a great way to do so, especially when it is nice and sunny outside and many outdoor sport activities are available but eating right is also a big part of weight watch and wellness program.

A few months ago I was doing some window shopping on Amazon and came across a nice and very inexpensive food steamer. I was just one mouse click from it, and I made a step towards eating better. It arrived in 2 days, and I was very excited. Dave, however, was a little bit sceptical about it. It is the third or fourth food steamer I’ve ever had, but the first one here in the States and I was not sure anyone would join me in my food steaming experience so I went for a small one thinking it would be a Marina-only things. 

Crispy Corn Flake Topping Baked Chicken

This is a guest post by Alia Haley.

Everyone looks for easy recipes that do not require spending hours slaving away in the kitchen. If you are back home after a hectic day at work, the last thing you want to do is spend more time working again preparing a meal. The crispy corn flake crusted baked chicken comes in handy in situations like that. This is a delicious, easy to make dinner recipe even the pickiest of eaters will adore. The best part is that it is a healthier version to the fried chicken and since it is coated with a crunchy corn flake crust, the kids would love biting into them and maybe even help preparing the dish. With a few basic ingredients, you can put together this amazing dish for your lovely little family. Here’s how to go about it:

In-pumpkin baked veggies w/pork

This post is a part of the FaveDiets November Blog Hop & Giveaway: Favorite Vegetable Recipes. As I was thinking about what recipe to submit, I asked myself: how would you like your veggies in late fall? No doubt, it is all about seasonal produce and hearty dishes. What can be more seasonal than pumpkin and what can be more hearty than a hot casserole dish? Only the one where you can combine both and add some fun twist to it.

Pumpkin is not only a great ingredient to cook with, but is is also an amazing thing to cook in. It looks fun, plus you don’t have to clean up the mess;)

You can find pumpkin practically any size now. For this recipe I’d rather recommend you don’t go extra size but stick to a small or medium-sized one: it cooks faster and makes it a great treat on a weekday night or fun thing for weekend family dinner.

Winning!!!

It all started with me taking part in blog hops and monthly healthy bites on FaveDietsBlog.com. Of course, I check out other blogs too - and I have to tell you, it is the best part of it: there are so many cool blogs out there with unique personalities behind them.

One of the blogs I discovered was Alisa Cooks. I really enjoyed the recipe and pictures and noticed a post with a WASA products giveaway. It was all about crispbread. To enter the giveaway one needed to comment on the post and share her experience with crispbread. I’ve been a huge crispbread fan and of course I did comment.

In the kitchen with... George Washington

On our recent trip to DC we visited not only Gettysburg but also Mount Vernon, the estate and plantation that belonged to the first American President George Washington, now his burial site and a world famous museum. The place is no doubt very historical and a must-see. When Dave is into historical figures, I am more of low key and interested in everyday life of people in different times. Mount Vernon satisfied us both. Dave saw where George Washington lived and buried, and I saw how people lived back then and how they ran their household.

Pumpkin “Envelope’ Pies

With Thanksgiving just round the corner and pumpkin being in season it is a great time to enjoy the variety of dishes you can make using this wonderful ingredient. Today I want to share one of my all time favorites: it is easy and fast recipe that allows you to make it in volume practically in no time - just perfect for throwing a party or having all your big family over for Thanksgiving.