SKIP THE DIET. JUST EAT HEALTHY.

The newest thing in food now a days is dieting and eating healthy. This isn't exactly new to anyone. There is always talk about eating more healthy and the newest way to lose pounds fast.

 www.cosmopolitan.com

Like this ad promises are made and everyone rushes to try the next easiest way to lose weight. 

I have issues with diets and I'm pretty sure I will not use diets ever.

But Never say Never.

My goal is to eat healthier.

Maybe that is a diet to some people, but the word diet has a negative connotation to me.

I want my children to be healthy and I think that starts with parents being healthy. 

I think a lot of people feel this way and that's why diets get so much attention. 

It make sense to think "I'll eat healthy when I'm skinny" I mean it should be easier then. After you feel good about yourself. 

But enough ranting about diets. 

We are here to talk about eating healthy.

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 I have recently started to make an effort to eat healthier.

I was surprised at how much I like it. 

For example:

for my lunch today I made a strawberry salad with homemade strawberry vinaigrette, goat cheese,spinach and hemp seeds. 

This salad is so tasty it is ridiculous. 

I also made a Strawberry banana smoothie and I brought a bag of strawberries and a yogurt.

If it seems a little strawberry over loaded, its because I just bought strawberries from Costco last night.

The most awesome part is that I found information on how to make produce last you longer. 

It talks about washing berries in a vinegar/water mixture to help them stay in the fridge longer.

These tips make it easier for my boyfriend and me to buy from Costco, because its just the two of us. 

Keeping healthy food in the house is a must of us. 

I'm much too lazy to go looking for unhealthy food out of the house. 

Especially if there are yummy healthy snacks in the house. 

We cheat sometimes.

My boyfriend loves popcorn.

So we eat that on a regular basis.

However, I found a trick.

If you buy white corn kernels they are naturally sweeter and you won't need butter. 

Most people don't know that you can pop popcorn in the microwave in a normal brown paper bag. 

It is important to remember that it's OK to cheat sometimes.

But the more you eat healthy the more you will want to eat healthy.

Your body will start to crave the good stuff.

To get you started I will share my favourite recipe from my Superfoods Cookbook. If you go to the link it gives you a sneak peek of the book. 

The beginning of this book tells you all about the superfoods and how they help. 

Coconut-Curry Butternut Squash Soup

makes 4 servings

4lbs of Butternut Squash(2Kg)

1 ½ tbsp Olive Oil

4 Large Shallots, Sliced

1 tbsp peeled and Grated Fresh Ginger

2 Clove Garlic, Minced

3 Cups Chicken or Vegetable Broth

Sea Salt

1 tsp Thai Red Curry Paste

¾ Cup Light Coconut Milk

2 tsp Fresh Lime Juice

Using a sharp knife, trim the stem end from the squash, then cut in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds and discard. Cut off the peel, and then cut the flesh into 1-inch cubes. (you should have about 9 cups/3lb/1.5Kg)

In a soup pot, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the shallots and cook until softened, 2-3 minutes. Add the ginger and garlic and cook until fragrant but not browned. about 1 minute. Add squash, broth, and ½ tsp salt and bring to boil over medium high heat. Reduce the heat to maintain a simmer, cover and cook until the squash is tender when pierced with a fork, about 20 minutes.

Remove from the heat and cool slightly.

In a small bowl, combine the curry paste and coconut milk and whisk until well blended. In a blender or food processor, working in batches if necessary, process the soup until smooth. Return to the pot and stir in the curry-coconut milk mixture. Reheat the soup gently over medium heat just until hot and season with lime juice and additional salt to taste. Ladle into warmed individual bowls and serve right away.

If you like squash this soup is extremely good for your immune system.

So I think it is a good winter soup.

Warm, Filling and it helps you fight colds.

Dumpfnoodle - Fried Dough

So finally I give you what I promised. A german recipe from my Grandmother. 

My Grandmother made this last week with me and it was delicious. 

To make the dough mix yeast with water, Potato water will make the dough more flavourful. 

Add Salt and lard. Mix well.

Add the flour, knead until it starts to stop sticking to you.

 If you don't want to knead the dough, my grandmother uses a Dough kneader(Bosch makes one). 

I have a paddle for my stand mixer to knead dough. 

So it does't have to be so difficult.

However, If you want to buy frozen dough it will work as well. 

My mom has used frozen dough to make this easier to do. 

Let the dough rise until it rises to twice the size, punch it back down. 

Let it rise again till its twice its size and punch it down once more. 

Once it has risen the third time it is done. 

It should take about 2 hours. 

If your house is cool, or you are making this in the winter, 

you might have to turn your oven on the lowest setting and put the dough in there to rise. 

While the dough is rising:

In a frying pan, fry the sausage on medium. 

If you want to make some without sour kraut, now would be the time to  take some of the sausage out of the pan. Add the sour kraut to the pan. You want to boil the juice out of the sour kraut so its not too moist. 

You might have to drain some of the juice if it hasn't evaporated after about 20 minutes. 

Mix in garlic powder(you want powder not salt because this recipe is salty already).

After the dough is done. Grab 2-3 inch balls and roll them out into flat circles. 

 Fill with sour kraut mixture, and squeeze the edges of the dough together to make pouches. 

If you want to make some with just sausage, fill them up! 

Also if you want to make some without anything just leave the dough in 2-3 inch balls.

After the pouches are made the dough needs to rise again for a half hour. 

My grandmother said because the dough is so sticky still you have to place the pouches on a wooden board. 

I think wax paper should work to stop the sticking as well. 

Again if your house is cool, place the pouches in the oven to rise. 

To fry the pouches you will need non-stick pans with lids, make sure the pans have higher sides. 

Heat 2 Tbsp of oil in the pan(each pan if more than one) on medium-high. 

Once the pan is hot enough(splash a little water into pan and it should make loud frying sounds) add 3/4 cup of water. 

Place the risen pouches in the pan as spacious as possible. 

However, my grandmother always puts as many in as possible. 

Once in the pans, put the lid on and fry until there is no water left on the bottom. 

You will also be able to smell the fried dough from the outside of the pans. 

About 30 minutes.

DO NOT take off the lid until it smells fried and there is no water sloshing at the bottom of the pot.

When it is done you will hear frying noises when you move the pot around. 

Then Enjoy!

Food Favourites from the Web!

OK! so since I haven't made any food yet to share with you I thought I would share some of my favourite websites that I use for making dinner. Kraft Canada, and Martha Stewart are my two favourite websites.

Kraft Canada is a wonderful website for quick meals, and meals that are made with Kraft products. One of the reasons why it is so quick is that not a lot of the stuff is made from scratch. Some of my favourite meatballs are from this website, made with chicken stuffing instead of ripping bread apart and seasoning it. Also Chicken pot pie, made with mayo and frozen pie crusts. Don't get me wrong I love making dinner from scratch but sometimes you just don't have time. My boyfriend really likes the Chicken sandwich in the lunches section, which is perfect because I just buy one of those pre cooked chickens from the grocery store. Its so easy. The Desserts are really good as well and usually shown by season. One of our family favourites is the Oreo/Fudge Ice cream cake. I mean who wouldn't want to make Oreo ice cream! The website also has a healthy living section that has articles on food labels and links to their low calorie Appetizers. When I am not sure what to buy from the store I look on the Kraft Canada Website to get inspiration.

Now Martha Stewart has an amazing website. She taught me how to cook and bake. I Love her old fashioned Apple Pie. I always add more cinnamon, but I love cinnamon. They also use links like I am to help you get to what you need. So if you are feeling like you want to make the dough from scratch just click on the Pate Brisee a it will take you to the recipe and teach you how to make the dough.Any time I need to make a Turkey or Ham, I go on her website and she shows me how to make the whole meal trimmings and all. She explains how to do thing very nicely and she has videos to help. The website even has a school section for explaining how to get started with cooking. ALong with the food section Martha Stewart also has a Craft section which has everything from how to start a garden to how to make your dog a jacket. And a Celebrate section, to help you with party planning, like Kids birthdays and Weddings. I love this website just from how it challenges me to go that one step further to make something special.

I how you enjoy the links that I have given you. And I want to thank the people at Kraft Canada and Martha Stewart for inspiring me to test out my own limits when it comes to what I can create.

Reliability of Food Blogs

Food blogs tend not to have reliability issues as they are just relaying information about how to make certain dishes or desserts. The only issues that would come up is false promoting and preparation issues.

Promotions like the "best spaghetti " or the "most moist cupcakes"happen often. For example there are 3 million most moist cupcake URL's that come up on google search and 87 million results on best spaghetti. There can not be 3 million most moist cupcakes in the world, nor can there be 87 million best spaghetti's. These falsities are not life threatening, and they can be tested but no one will go through and test 87 million spaghetti's to see which one is the best. I'm sure everyone has their own opinion to which one is the best. But even then there can only be so many of the best.

There are issues concerning the proper procedures for preparing certain foods. Foods like raw eggs and meat need to have careful cooking instructions to insure they are cooked properly. And most food preparation blogs or websites have warnings about making sure you cook meat properly. Also the use of raw eggs is almost always followed with a warning for elderly, pregnant women and children for ingesting food with raw eggs.

Apart from these issues food blogs and websites tend not to have any hoaxes. And their reliability concerns only to proper preparation and false advertising.

Introduction

My name is Kendralee. I am half Jamaican and half German. I wanted to write about something I would be proud of. Something that would make a difference. So I have decided to share my grandmother's recipes.
My grandparents families have brought these recipes with them from the Ukraine where they lived and passed them down through generations. We are not sure which recipes are German and which are Ukrainian or whether they are some mixture of both. 

Over the next couple of months my grandmother and I will make these recipes so I can extract the measurements and share them with all of you. These are the recipes I will be sharing with you, in no specific order.

Streudle
Streudle is an extremely thin dough rolled up into little cylinders. My grandmother makes a Pork Rib, Potato and Tomato Paste Stew. This is my favourite of the Five that we will make. My family always uses the stew to dunk the dough into.

Dumpfnoodle
Dumpfnoodle is a fried ball of dough stuffed with sour kraut and sausage. This is a family favourite! My grandma is so nice she makes them custom for us. I don't like sour kraut, my mom doesn't like them with to much sour kraut and my grandfather likes some with nothing in them to use with his soup later. 

Fleisch Roladen
Fleisch(Flesh Roladen) is pickle and bacon wrapped in a beef tenderloin. This is not my favourite but it is still really yummy. I like it after i take the pickle out, but I'm really picky. My boyfriend really likes this one because of the lack of dough. My grandma makes it instead of roast with all the fixings. 

Borscht
Borscht is a cabbage, beef and vegetable soup. It is really hearty and good. My grandparents really like this. They make it all the time for themselves. 

Schneeballen
Schneeballen is a German pudding dessert. It is made with egg whites and vanilla cream. We are going to try this one for the first time together. My grandmother assures me it is yummy!


I hope you enjoy what I will share with you over the next couple months.