Food newsletters often contain recipes that you can try.  If you love cooking, you will surely enjoy receiving weekly recipes from your favorite food and chef blogs.  You can try out different recipes, flavors and tastes.  Of course, you still need to choose your recipes well.  After all, you still have your health to think about.  For instance, there are foods that burn fats.  There are other foods that promote the buildup of fatty tissues in the body.

You need to make sure that you choose your recipes and ingredients well.  The effects of food on your health should be a major factor to consider when choosing your food newsletters’ ingredients and recipes.  So, what should you look for?

First of all, look for recipes using ingredients that are rich in vitamin C.  Your body needs Vitamin C because this vitamin dilutes fat fast.  By eating foods that are packed with this vitamin, your body will be able to efficiently break down fat quickly and flush it out from your system.  There are many food newsletters that offer instructions on how to prepare dishes that are rich in vitamin C.

Secondly, you need to look for recipes that require the use of ingredients rich in fiber.  This is really great if you want to lose weight.  Foods rich in fiber can trick your stomach into feeling faster, so you reduce the amount of food you eat because you already feel full.

Opt for vegetables in your diet because these are rich in fiber.  The outer skin of some vegetables and fruits can help you burn fats.  There are certain vegetables, like cucumber, celery and beet root, that offer negative calorie effect in the body, such that, you tend to burn energy as you digest them. You might want to look into food newsletters that offer recipes for these kinds of vegetables.

Although it can be tempting to try out different dairy recipes, you should consider your health.  To indulge every now and then, of course, is acceptable.  It is hard not to give in to cravings, but make sure that you still opt for healthy choices.  Opt for low fat dairy products when cooking or baking.  There are many food newsletters that offer tips and recipes on this.  All you have to do is find them and be creative!

Filed under: Chef Newsletter

We all know the old schoolyard song that goes along with beans — Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit, the more you eat . . . well, it is a fact that beans cause gas. However, there are ways of reducing the potency of the problem. Proper handling of dry beans before and during cooking can improve digestibility and lessen the rumble. use one of these soaking methods:

• slow soak: Cover beans in water for 6 to 8 hours or overnight.

• Hot soak: Bring beans to a boil, cover and set aside for 2 to 3 hours.

• quick soak: Bring beans to a boil, cover and set aside for 1 hour.

After soaking, drain off the soaking water and replace with fresh water then proceed with your recipe. Add salt only after the beans are soft. the best news is that beans come in an incredible variety of colors, shapes and flavors.

Try black beans with your eggs for a Mexican-style breakfast or a mix of kidney beans, lentils and chickpeas in some vegetable soup for lunch.

Here are a few tips for adding more beans to your diet:

• Keep beans in your pantry. If you don’t have time to cook packaged dry beans, use canned beans instead.

• use beans instead of, or in addition to, meat in your main dish.

• Add beans to soups or stuffing.

• Top salads with beans.

• Mix beans with rice.

• Stir beans into your favorite pasta sauce.

• fill a tortilla or flat bread with beans and other complimentary ingredients, such as rice, meat, cheese and vegetables.

• use convenient prepared bean spreads (hummus, refried beans), or make your own by mashing cooked beans and adding spices for a healthy dip or spread.

• Beans are often thought of as a side dish; however, they make excellent meat-free entrees.

You have really missed out if you have never enjoyed a good fresh pot of homemade beans served with a side of rice and skillet of fresh-baked corn bread.

You don’t have to be a vegetarian to reap the benefits of legumes.

quick Black Bean Soup

1 tablespoon olive oil

1-1/2 cups chopped onion (1 large)

2 cups thinly sliced carrots (4-5 medium)

1 cup thinly sliced celery (2 stalks)

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 cans (15 oz. each) black beans

1 can (14.5 oz.) low sodium chicken broth

1/2 cup beer or substitute 1/2 cup chicken broth or water

1/8-1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

I thought it would be nice to have a post listing resources for the Real Food Challenge. so I compiled a list of: links from our blogs and other blogs, websites for great shops to buy good stuff from, links to articles and websites that have tons of great info and an extensive book listing including cookbooks and more. Feel free to add any great resources in the comment section. I’ll keep adding links as I find them so keep checking back, the list will only get better!

A few great Articles & Resources:
Drink that Milk, Eat those Peas – a great article from the Weston A Price foundation on transitioning your family to a healthier diet.
Against the Grain – great info about bread and grain
Mother Earth News Real Food Section – all kinds of good information on real food
Why Butter is Better – a wonderful article from the Weston A Price foundation about enjoying real butter.

How-To/Make your Own Posts from Chiot’s Run.
Make your Own: Brown Sugar
Make your Own: Baking Powder
Make your Own: Ghee
Make your Own: Butter
Make your Own: Preserved Lemons
Make your Own: Ketchup
Make your Own: Sauerkraut
Make your Own: Canned Tomato Soup
Make your Own: Sourdough Pancakes

A few links from Jennifer’s Blog:
Accepting the Challenge
Incorporating Family and the Challenge
Realities: Grains
Realities: Fruits and Veggies
Realities: Oils
Realities: Milk & Meat
Recipe: Skinless Sweet Potato Skins
Recipes: Yogurt, Cheese, and Whey

Sourdough and Wild Yeast recipes:
Wild Yeast Blog
Northwest Sourdough
Sourdough Recipes from Richard Packham
Make your Own Sourdough Starter

Baking Artisan Bread:
Upper Crust Bread Recipe & How-To
Quick Artisan Bread
Easy No-Knead Crusty Bread from Mother Earth News
Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor
The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread

Cracker Recipes from Jennifer’s link file:
Spelt Everything Crackers
Poppy & Parmesan Cheese Crackers
Sesame Semolina Flatbreads
Lavash Armenian Flatbread

Cooking/Baking Blogs:
Refrigerator Soup: has recipes from many food blogs, great place to find new cooking & food blogs
Smitten Kitchen
Nourishing Days: Nourishing Traditions recipes
Cheese Slave - blog about traditional food, slow food, and food politics
The Nourishing Gourmet – blogging about nourishing food
The Chicken Coop – a great listing of nourishing traditions recipe links
101 Cookbooks – a great resource for vegetarian & vegan recipes.

Cooking with Dried Beans:
Here’s some great info about soaking beans and grains.
The Weston A Price Foundation has a great in depth article on the healthfulness of beans and soaking methods.

Organic Spices, Teas, Essential Oils, Bulk Ingredients and Non-Toxic Toiletries:
Mountain Rose Herbs

Bulk Nuts, Dried Fruits and other Staples both Organic and Conventional:
Nuts Online (contact me (Susy) and I can get you a 10% off coupon)

Finding Local and Non-Local Sources for Food from Small Growers/Producers including Farmer’s Markets:
Local Harvest
Eat Wild – find local sources of grass-fed meats

Places to find information on food, food safety, food legislation, etc:
Weston A Price Foundation – a wealth of information on healthy food.
Organic Consumers Association – information on processed foods, companies, and food legislation
Union of Concerned Scientists – great article on CAFO meats
Real Milk Campaign

Great Cookbooks:

For the more Adventurous/Advanced Cooks:

For more Reading about Food:

Other great Reading:

Do you have any great resources to add?

Chinese recipes usually call for very specific ingredients and ways to cook everything. there are many tips you can use to save time and money and still have a top notch meal or add ingredients to make a good meal great.

You can cut corners on rice, kinds of oil, even the kind of meats you use. Many people take the meat out of a recipe and call it vegetarian.

A delicious alternative to regular cooking oil is sesame oil. just a few drops mixed with your normal oil or used by itself, sesame oil makes any dish have a very unique flavor.

Shrimp cooked in vegetable oil tastes like greasy shrimp but shrimp cooked in sesame oil taste like a Chinese treat. Sesame oil has a strong and unique flavor that many people automatically associate with Chinese food.

It is higher in fat so if you are on a diet, it might not be a good choice.

Rice is common in all kinds of Chinese recipes. If you make a lot of Chinese food, you can cook a lot more rice than you know you will use.

You can freeze this excess rice and use it later on for fried rice. this will save you the trouble of cooking a whole new batch and it tastes just as good.

Dont be afraid to change recipes. If you have a great recipe for chicken, try using crab or shrimp next time or changing some vegetables around.

You might have just created your own unique recipe! this can be a lot of fun and the more familiar with Chinese recipes you get, the better your creations will be.

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A Malteaser milkshake – delicious, and if you’re trying to put on weight, a just dessert. Photograph: Alicia Canter

It’s the time of year when many people guilt-tripped into joining a gym by an avalanche of articles and adverts after Christmas start to run out of steam. Forget holding onto the blubber for the unusually cold weather that still refuses to loosen its grip, you need to start thinking about your bikini body NOW. if you’re trying to drop the pounds, there is plenty of support from diet clubs you can join, or your friends and colleagues who are also chowing on lettuce and water and trying to muster the energy to do some exercise.

However, if you need to gain mass to achieve a healthy weight, unless you go to a dietitian or find reliable sources of information online, there is not the same range of support available. in 2008 I got salmonella from a restaurant meal and after two weeks of unfortunate close acquaintance with the toilet had lost 10lbs. I received help from Lynne Hubbard, specialist dietitian at St Thomas’ Hospital.

Many people have experienced rapid weight loss through food poisoning or a seasonal illness, but you can also become underweight through injury, as Lynne explains:

“You can lose weight through an injury that has used muscle and body fat to recover and repair itself, such as a burn. Even something like a head injury from an accident has a high energy requirement. Pre-existing conditions such as cystic fibrosis or epidermolysis bullosa have high inflammatory responses, so people with these kinds of disabilities consume large amounts of energy, and are often very underweight.”

Should you ever need to put some pounds on, a reliable way is to drink high protein / energy milkshakes in between meals. These can be prescribed from a doctor or dietitian, or you can buy some in health shops. making your own may be cheaper, and it’s probably preferable, as some of the prescribed drinks are not the easiest things to gulp down.

You could get quite creative making your own milkshakes or hot chocolates, adding different ice creams and creams to taste. Adding protein powders tops up the goodness in these drinks too, and if properly stirred in, unflavoured powders are not noticeable. Milky puddings like custard and rice pudding or even full-fat yoghurts also make a nourishing – and comforting – addition to your menu. Snacking on nuts can be beneficial as they’re packed with protein, energy, vitamins and minerals, and they don’t fill you up, so won’t spoil your meals.

A careful balance also needs to be met with physical activity and exercise. You cannot avoid running around, going to work and generally living, so it is important the food you are taking in is sufficient to keep you going, like fuelling a machine. yet by doing too little you could lay down too much fat, and while some fat is necessary, you need a balance between gaining fat and muscle.

People who have to gain weight may be scoffed at for saying how much more difficult it is than losing, but it’s true. It’s a hard slog that takes a long time, especially when you’re low in energy and tired and still recovering from something. Possibly the only people who gain weight joyously are film actors. Gaining 30lbs for a million dollar film role would be preferable than regaining weight lost through chemotherapy or some such.

Boxes of Krispy Kremes aside, if you have been through it, what would you recommend for increasing your mass, should any readers ever need to? Do you have any secret recipes for high protein milkshakes, or a filling dessert that’ll bring you back to health? Do share – or on second thoughts perhaps you’d better just make enough for everyone …

You will come across plenty of delicious homemade dog food recipes to try. your pet will be healthier and you will feel good knowing exactly what is in the foods they consume. You will also like that this process is more affordable than buying food at the grocery store.

The main reason to consider homemade dog food recipes is to ensure your pet is as healthy as possible. When you buy packaged dog food you don’t always know what you are going to get. Many of them contain fillers which your pet really doesn’t need in their diet. they can also be hard for your dog to digest, and that can mean they are uncomfortable after each meal.

Many people began seriously searching for homemade dog food recipes after some of these pets became ill. they had consumed name brand dog foods that had contaminated ingredients in them. Many of these pets became severely ill and others died even though a mass recall of the food was done. this led to many owners becoming more aware of such problems. the solution is to follow homemade dog food recipes.

People aren’t the only ones that suffer from food allergies. If your pet is sick often you should discuss that possibility with your veterinarian. Chances are it has a reaction to one or more of the ingredients found in packaged dog foods. your veterinarian can help you to identify what they are. When you use homemade dog food recipes you can be certain none of them will be included when you pet is eating.

These days most of us are interested in saving money anyway we can do so. the cost of dog food is ridiculous. If you own several pets or one with a huge appetite it can be a strain to feed them quality foods due to the cost. When you make homemade dog food recipes though you can be sure they get the quality nutrition that they need. yet you can do so at a much lower cost. You will find it also doesn’t take that much time for you to make enough to feed them all week long.

Chances are you have friends and family members that could benefit from homemade dog food recipes as well. You may be able to offer them free samples of what you have made for your own pet. it would be great if you can sell it to them so that their pet is getting the best nutrition as well. You can make enough money to pay for all the ingredients needed to feed your pet as well. Then you will be offering them the best food for free!

When you are starting out, try a few homemade dog food recipes in small portions. see how your pet consumes them. look for signs that they may be upsetting their stomach or that they may be allergic. If all goes well you can continue to make such foods for them. You can easily find homemade dog food recipes online to try.