Planning a Real Mexican Meal at Home
November 26, 2010 by Christine Szalay-Kudra
Filed under Gardening
Therefore, you want to cook an authentic Mexican meal for your family, but where do you start? Do they have a salad or a vegetable side dish like the one we have in the United States? Is everything spicy? How many dishes are featured in your average meal?
With all these questions ranging in your head, it is no wonder that you may be a bit confused. Unless you go out to a Mexican restaurant and get everything as part of a combo meal, how are you to know what to make? Take a few deep breaths and relax. Cooking your family an authentic Mexican meal will not be that difficult.
As you begin your meal planning, take note of the weather. Is it a hot night in July or is the frost coating the lawn at night? Seasonal meals are important in Mexico because the seasons affect what food choices are available. For the sake of your planning, let us just say it is an average night that is neither too hot nor too cold.
For your meal, pick out a main dish with a couple of side dishes and a simple dessert. This will round out your meal nicely. Perhaps you would like to make a main dish of cheese enchiladas or chilies rellenos. There are plenty of recipes to choose from for both of these dishes available online or in cookbooks.
Your side dishes can simply be rice and beans, or you could make a fresh ensalada with black beans, lettuce, cilantro, chilies, and tomatoes, crushed corn chips and topped with sour cream and guacamole. If you want to keep it simple, homemade tortillas can take the place that bread would normally fill in one of your meals. Wrap the tortilla around a bite of the main dish, or use it to sop up that enchilada sauce. Fresh salsa makes a fast, fresh condiment that you can serve with anything.
Finish off your meal with your choice of good Mexican desserts. You could make a flan with caramel sauce to soothe your taste buds after your meal, or maybe some fried ice cream. There are many delicious Mexican desserts to choose from that will make your meal special.
Make up your shopping list and finish your marketing the day before. Some recipes need to soak or marinate, so you want to give yourself time to do this. If you are fortunate enough to have a Mexican market in your city, you can find all the right chilies and other ingredients you may need. They may even feature a bakery where you can get authentic Mexican pastries for dessert.
Let your kids join in the fun and help decorate the table before your special meal. Perhaps they want to make some colorful placemats in the colors of the Mexican flag or help you set the table with colorful plates. Your family will love sitting down to a home cooked Mexican meal. You may be surprised when they request to have another.
Mexican desserts can be great fun for kids. Make them some mueganos. This traditional dessert features dough squares fried up golden brown. They get covered in a delicious caramel syrup that uses piloncillo in it to create its delicate flavor.
Easy Boneless Chicken Recipes with Fresh Fruit
November 20, 2010 by Christine Szalay-Kudra
Filed under Gardening
There are lots of ingredients you can add to chicken dishes to make them more interesting. Common ones include onions, garlic, cilantro, parsley, tomatoes, broccoli and more. Nevertheless, what about fruit? Fruit is not just for desserts.
Using fruit in chicken recipes is more than adding something sweet to something savory for balance. This kind of meat has a naturally mild taste, which is just as good with a bold, full bodied sauce as with a light and subtle one. Fruit goes really well with it and you will love the results of a fruity chicken recipe.
Fruit and meat dishes are also very popular. Duck a l’orange, pork chops with apple sauce and Chinese lemon chicken are all famous recipes. Maybe you have tried steak with a plum sauce or grilled fish with grilled plantain or banana on the side. Fruit can definitely enhance savory recipes but you need to be careful how much fruit you add, so as not to make the meal too sweet. It is best to follow a good chicken recipe if you want to use fruit with the dish so you get the quantities right.
Tips for Fruity Chicken Dishes
It is not always necessary to cook the fruit with the meat. Perhaps you would prefer to make a curried fruit and vegetable side dish to serve with the meat or make a nutty fruit salad. This is a nice way to get used to eating fruit with it because you can choose how much fruit and how much meat you want in every mouthful. The fruit in a chicken recipe does not have to be hot or even cooked. It does not have to be part of the sauce either.
Try making a chicken salad with feta cheese, walnuts and melon or a fruit salsa to serve with your baked or grilled boneless chicken. After trying one of these delectable dishes, you will know for sure that fruit goes beautifully with the flavor of meat.
Chicken with fruit makes an impressive dish but the great thing about these meals is that they are often really easy to make. Whether you want to make Chinese lemon chicken or a cranberry chicken recipe, meals like these are always popular.
You might want to use the fruit to make a marinade for the chicken. Fruits like kiwi, fig, papaya, and pineapple work as tenderizers and break down the tough parts of the bird, as well as adding flavor to the flesh.
Be careful not to cook fresh pineapple with meat or chicken, though, because the tenderizing enzymes work like crazy when they are heated and will turn your meat to mush as it cooks.
A lot of recipes for chicken and fruit will have a sour or bitter ingredient in them like ginger, vinegar or an acidic fruit. This is to stop the dish from being too sweet. An acidic flavor will balance out the savory and sweet flavors and make the meal one to remember for all the right reasons.
Chicken is loved the world over and we have a nice group of international recipes like our orange chicken recipe.
Add Some Spice And Flavor To Your Finances With Food Inspired Checks
September 1, 2010 by Alan Plastin
Filed under Finance
Everyone loves to eat! If you are tired of your plain old boring personal checks and want to add some new life to them then how about carrying checks that contain images of some of your favorite foods?
One of the best things about checks that contain images of food items is that you can basically discover every kind of food that’s out there so you know that you’re going to find some design that appeals to you. There is almost certainly a check series for you, whether your enjoy fresh fruits or tasty candy.
If you like big mouth-watering apples, for instance, then you will thoroughly enjoy those checks that have outstanding photographic images of this marvelous fruit. The photos are so lifelike that you will think you can grasp right into the image and draw out the apple and take a bite out of it.
The same is true for those checks that have gorgeous images of ripe red cherries. These are so realistic looking that you can nearly smell the sweet aroma of the cheery tree as well as experience the tartness that they are recognized for.
Conversely, if you’re more interested in the cooking aspect of food, then you’ll almost certainly enjoy those checks that contain images of recently baked breads, hand-canned fruits, and fresh vegetables lined up on the cutting board, ready to leap into a container of homemade soup.
From time to time, food is more than just substance for our bodies. This is particularly true when it comes to particular beverages like coffee and wine. The stunning wine inspired checks feature a way of life that goes along with drinking fine wine. On the other hand, the coffee checks pay deference to the welcomed break and reprieve that coffee can offer to those with frenzied busy days.
For those that don’t like to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, but still love to eat, then the pizza checks might be the series for you! These remarkable designs contain images of hot and steaming pizza slices. Just take a look at one and you’ll be wanting to call up your local pizza delivery service.
Don’t forget, too, that most checks series can be purchased with coordinating accessories at an additional cost. You might, for instance, like a matching checkbook cover or coordinating address labels to go along with your new checks.
You may have hesitated in buying personal checks in the past because you found them too costly but now you don’t have to worry about price. These days, when you use a highly regarded site you can save as much as 50% off the price of your new checks.
It typically takes approximately 5 days for your checks to get to you in the mail. This could be even sooner than your local bank was able to get them to you when you bought your checks from them in the past.
Before you purchase food checks, visit FoodChecks.net to get coupon codes and to save up to 50% off your next purchase of food personal checks.



