Queen of the Food Age

There are two types of people in the food industry: 

Those who buy it. 
Those who make it. 

Ultimately, every food lover is left wondering whether they could bring something new to the market. It’s easy to consider a small food business when you are passionate about ingredients, recipes, and sharing them with people. Food trucks are a common place to start, but there are other options. You could start your food venture as a recipe specialist, preparing only a handful of ingredients for the market. Alternatively, you could also address a gap in your local market, in terms of food offering. Here are some of the things you want to consider to differentiate your food side hustle. 

#1. Get familiar with market data

Starting a food business is as much about enjoying quality ingredients as understanding the Food Services industry data. Having a blast in the kitchen isn’t enough to make your venture relevant. You need to gain a full understanding of the current market trends and expectations. 

#2. Vary cooking equipment

 There’s the idea of doing only one thing well, such as Five Guys and its inimitable burger business. However, when you start a small venture, you need to prepare for a variety of situations. For instance, a lot of small food businesses prefer to work extensively with seasonal market ingredients to keep their costs low. However, this means that you need to be able to vary your cooking style – and therefore equipment – to make the most of each ingredient. Soft and tender asparagus tips, for instance, can be sauteed to perfection. Yet toward the end of the season, asparagus can get hard and woody. You would need to bake them into a souffle, for example, to enhance their texture and flavors. 

#3. Consider smart packaging solutions

Are you going to sell your food on the high street? Smart packaging is the way to go. Yet, you can turn your packaging into a marketing campaign. A wooden box for your wine bottles could become a birdhouse, for example. Or you can make the packaging part of the end product, such as making sure customers can keep their fingers clean when grabbing a slice of pizza. 

#4. Make it easy to order online

If you are tempted by the food truck sector, why not make it easy for your customers to order food. Not everyone wants to wait outside while their food is being cooked. But you can publish your menu on UberEats or use another app that keeps food at their fingertips! 

#5. Have good portion sizes

If you are familiar with restaurants, you’ve probably noticed how dull the kid’s menu can be. Adults can choose between dozens of delicious dishes, but kids often have a simple choice between steak and fries or pasta. It’s unfair to ignore young foodies! Many children love to try new flavors. Rather than differentiating by age, why not create a menu that offers different portions? Kids and light eaters could pick the small portions without missing out on the tasty experience. 

Are you ready to launch your food business? With the food market constantly growing, there’s plenty of room for newcomers, as long as they can bring new and exciting ideas. From offering a seasonally changing menu to making your packaging work harder, it only takes one brilliant idea to get noticed! 

Delicious meals are a uniting factor regardless of your origin, mood, or relationship. You need to prepare a hearty meal that will help you cement your family celebrations. You must ensure your meals are an accurate reflection of the day’s intent. 

Many people like having barbecues, steak nights, or turkey-themed Thanksgiving dinners. The success of these celebrations depends on the preparations, presentation, and the actual cook. 

However, a three-course meal is an excellent way to wow your guests and treat them to different textures and tastes during the meals. It offers health benefits like providing various nutrients in the different balanced meals. It also presents the perfect opportunity for people to bond during the lengthy mealtime. Additionally, you can incorporate different cooking techniques like baking, grilling, frying or boiling in savory, or sweet cuisines. 

Planning

Before you decide on the menu, ensure that you pick the theme and type of cuisine you would like to showcase: Asian, Mexican, Spanish, or African. List down the main ingredients like meats and vegetables that are the star of the dishes. Purchase your ingredients beforehand and make sure you allocate enough prep time for your dishes. 

The Menu

Appetizer: Grilled Mexican Corn Salad

To start a Mexican themed menu, you can do a grilled corn salad. The char on the corn in the salad blends well together with the cheese in the salad. Besides, you can easily find these ingredients. The freshness of the salad also plays a significant role in preparing the pallet for the subsequent courses. 

Main Course: Pork Carnitas With Spicy Mexican Rice

What better way to treat a good cut of pork than making Pork Canitas? There are various ways to prepare this meal. You need to choose a method that you are confident will give you a delicious result. It only needs six ingredients making it affordable and easy to prep and cook. 

The slow-cooked Mexican pork carnitas has a different preparation method that allows you to prepare them with no grill or oven. The dish’s simplicity should not fool you; it is a tempting browned dish that is juicy, tender, and full of flavor. 

Since it is not a spicy piece of meat (due to the absence of marinade), you can introduce a side dish with some heat to complement it. You can do a Mexican salsa with some tomatillos and jalapeños to balance the meat’s different flavors. 

Dessert: Ice Cream

Dessert is the best part for anyone with a sweet tooth – the perfect way to end a meal.  What better way to end the day than with ice cream? You can incorporate different ice cream flavors like rosemary and lime for a unique ice-cream taste. 

If you are worried about the cold winter weather, you can make a Mexican chocolate cookie. Pair the cookie with sweetened masala tea to provide comfort and warmth during the freezing nights. It will also be an excellent way to sign off.

Be sure to adhere to the unspoken rules of three-course meals of plating, drinks, and an appropriate environment. Observe the basics, and you will be sure to raise the standards of deliciousness!

Guest Post by Claudia from mealfan.com

When I was little, before my mom discovered how to cook with wine and make a great cheese sauce, we ate a lot of egg noodles, spaghetti, and potato salad. Her mother wasn’t that interested in cooking, and I remember the simple boiled onions that were served with plain unseasoned turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy and the requisite cranberry sauce every Thanksgiving when we went over to her house and ate at our respective tables for little people and adults. My dad frequently lamented the fact that he couldn’t ever get a meal that wasn’t boiled. What I wanted to know was: what does “boiled” mean?

via GIPHY

Since then, my repertoire has broadened and I can now not only boil eggs with the best of them, but I learned that food can taste a whole lot better if you know the right way to cook each kind. I think maybe without being aware of it, that’s what my dad was alluding to. Since boiling was a foregone conclusion, I set my sites on other ways to try to get different foods to speak to me about what they could do. Once I learned a few things from them, a whole another world opened up. My kitchen became a portal to aromas, textures and the blending of flavors that could never be accessed by boiling.

Boiling will always have its place, especially in terms of its ability to get the most out of what’s being boiled. It’s a great way to get soups, casseroles and sauces that can be used in an additional dish or meal. And it will always have its place in my heart. Here are 5 other cooking techniques that I found the most useful overall for my own kitchen portfolio, which is generally pretty light on meats. I’ve found that they fit really well with the meal kit delivery service ingredients like Purple Carrot that I tend to like the most.

Steaming

A mere step up from boiling, steaming is a great option if you want to preserve the color, flavor and nutrients in your food. Basically, you’re cooking the food in a bath of moist heat. The food sits in a pot with enough headroom to accommodate a steamer. These aren’t expensive and they’re easy to find in any department store. The trick to steaming is to make sure that the steam can circulate freely in and around the food so it cooks evenly. Steamed foods are great for special diets and are popular in Oriental cooking.

Stir Frying

Next comes stir-frying. Another cooking technique that’s frequently used in Oriental cuisine, stir frying can use oil or not. It’s best done in a wok (a large pan that resembles a metal salad bowl). A wok can do a lot of things at once. It can boil, steam, fry and keep foods warm on a rack that affixes to one side at the top. The heat concentrates in the metal at the bottom near the heat source and increasingly diminishes the farther up you go. Horizontal ridges inside the wok hold the food in place, letting you choose the intensity of heat at which the food cooks.

Sauteeing

Another cooking technique I use a lot is sauteeing. Sauteeing is the next logical step up from stir-fry in that the food gets turned frequently to keep it from spending too long in any one place — unlike frying, which generally only needs one flip to cook the other side. Sauteed ingredients are usually chopped, diced or sliced before going into the pan, and a small amount of oil helps to keep the cooking even and prevent sticking. You can get some really nice dark flavors from sauteeing, like when onions caramelize.

Roasting

Roasting vegetables, especially winter and root vegetables, is one of the best ways to bring out their inherent richer flavors. Cauliflower wasn’t one of my favorites unless it was thoroughly drowned in a cheese sauce — until a friend roasted one for me. It tasted incredibly sweet and nutty and needed nothing. So simple, just a little olive oil before going into a 450-degree oven for three-quarters of an hour.

Baking

Baking is a longer-term cooking technique, somewhat like steaming without the moisture. Baking will fill your entire home with aroma for hours. It’s probably closer to roasting, as it uses dry heat in the same way but just within a lower range. Baking is a really versatile way to cook things, as just about any kind of food does well with it. It’s especially nice because those delicious aromas that are so much a part of the food and cooking experience merge and develop over the time the food is baking. Makes me want to go bake a spice cake.

Whatever cooking methods you decide to use, one thing that absolutely makes the difference between a good meal and a great meal is the quality of the ingredients. That was the main reason that the cauliflower was so delicious — it had been picked out of a local garden and bought that morning at a farmer’s market. As with most other things, a lot is in the details, and the little things really do count. So the handier you get with a few different cooking techniques, the more you’ll be able to experiment and have fun learning what foods have to tell about themselves. Maybe people will even start to call you the “food whisperer…”

Greece is known for many different things, from the sunny weather to the fascinating Ancient history. However, one thing that most people love about Greece is their approach to food! Greek cuisine is delicious, and you do not need to catch a plane to Athens in order to enjoy it. There are a number of different ways you can bring some Greek influences into your everyday cooking. With that being said, in this blog post, we are going to take a look at some of the different ways that you can eat as Greek people do.

Start off by trying out some different Greek recipes – There is only one place to begin, and this is by taking a look at some of the traditional Greek recipes so that you can master these. You can start with these easy Greek food recipes, as they are simple and you should not find them too difficult to make. A  simple Greek salad would be an obvious starting point. Or, why not try your hands at making a Moussaka if you’re feeling a bit more confident? Of course, there are Greek desserts as well, with baklava being one of the most popular, and delicious too!

Focus on natural ingredients and simple cooking – One thing that we love about the Greek approach to food is that they do not overcomplicate it. Greek people focus on high-quality ingredients and simple cooking methods. They do not add in loads of different ingredients, and they don’t use processed food either. Instead, it is all about healthy food, with the fish, meat, cheese, and so on being the star of the show. Of course, you can be liberal with your use of seasoning, and this is something we will get onto. However, make sure you begin by sourcing quality, fresh food.

Lemon, olive oil, and oregano are a must – When it comes to seasoning and making sure that your food has that delicious Greek flavor, there are three key ingredients that you are always going to need to have handy in your kitchen. Of course, you need olive oil! Whether it is for use in cooking, as a salad dressing, or to top your tzatziki dip, you need to have olive oil handy. Greeks are also liberal users of lemon, which accompanies most dishes, and you will find oregano used to flavour a wide range of foods, from feta cheese to fries.

So there you have it: an insight into some of the different ways that you can eat as Greek people do! If you follow the advice and ideas that have been provided above, you can add some Greek influences to your everyday cooking life. It makes sense to start off by familiarizing yourself with some of the simple and traditional Greek recipes that you can cook in your home. Once you have done this, you can then adopt some of the typical Greek cooking habits to enhance your culinary experience.

So you’re planning on making chicken wraps of some kind, but you don’t know what kind of side dish to accompany it with? Well, there are plenty of choices but the best for your dish will depend on the type of wrap you have. Not every wrap goes well with a particular side dish, for example, a hoisin duck wrap won’t really go well with coleslaw, but will go well with a Korean salad of tofu, mixed greens, soya sauce and sesame seeds. But coleslaw will go well with a spicy wrap like Mexican jalapeño chicken wraps. As you can see, there is a rhythm and reason to side dishes and chicken wraps.

Southern chicken wrap

If you have made a southern chicken wrap, these are some simple side dishes that would go well with it. Southern chicken wraps are a good alternative to real fried chicken when you’re on  diet. 

• Mac n’ cheese. The classic, Monterey Jack cheese, with English cheddar and provolone would go well with the smoky spiciness of the southern fried chicken.
• Buttery mash. Southern comfort living, has mash potatoes in it’s repertoire of things you need in your life. Extra butter and mash go well together for this wrap.
• Paprika corn. Not corn on the cob, but with a sprinkle of smoked paprika, your corn can come alive for this southern style wrap.

Peri-Peri wrap

It’s very popular in Europe right now, the peri-peri wrap. The peri-peri wrap has spinach, red onion, red bell pepper and sometimes, tomatoes and sometimes, olives. So you need something that will be fresh and crisp, to balance out the spice and crunch. 

This is a beet salad recipe you’ll love to go with this spicy wrap. The beet calms down the palate and because of it’s slight sweet bitterness, brings out the best in the salad that’s already in the wrap. Beet salads are easy to make too, as they don’t require as many ingredients and a garden salad might.

And of course, the classic coleslaw would go well with the chili. The coleslaw tastes great with every other bite of your wrap. Make sure that it’s cold, i.e. has been in the fridge for a couple of hours before serving.

Bean wrap

Mexican bean wraps are complex because they usually have three different beans and lots of spicy mixed in. So selecting a good side for this wrap is a little difficult.

A corn salad would be brilliant for this type of wrap. It’s authentic and makes use of some great ingredients that you normally don’t see mesh together. Corn, mixed with black beans, red peppers, coriander, onions and jalapenos! This is a traditional side dish that doesn’t cost a lot to make but gives you that chili mix you crave.

Guacamole with a Mexican bean wrap just makes perfect sense. Why not? The thing is though, you should decide between a plain guac with a hint of lemon, or go with the red chili and feta cheese combination.

What’s your favorite side dish to go with these wraps? Do you want a balance, or do you want to take a bit of something that veers in the same direction as the wrap?

Cheese has a bad reputation. We are constantly told how unhealthy it is and how it will make us put on weight. Not that it stops me from eating a metric ton of it every day week.

However, cheese shouldn’t be avoided altogether, because it has many wonderful health benefits (and also because it’s GD delicious). If you’ve been wanting to add more cheese to your diet, but have been wondering about the benefits, here is a look at what cheese can do for you.

Help Aging Bones

When you were a child you may remember your parents telling you that you should eat cheese and drink milk to strengthen your bones. A few decades back this is one of the major advertising angles that was used to get people to buy more dairy products.

As it turns out these claims were not untrue. Your bone mass grows throughout your adolescence but when you are about 30 years old your bones will reach their peak density. 

From then on aging begins to reduce density in your bones. This will make your bones weak as you age.

If you don’t have adequate bone mass you may develop osteoporosis as you get older. This disease is problematic because it can make your bones easy to break as you age. Eating more cheese is one of the ways to actively prevent that.

Cheese is an Excellent Source of Protein

Protein is responsible for the repair, regulation, and overall protection of your body. This makes it one of the main sources of nutrients for your immune system. 

A protein-filled diet will give you a proper balance of fluid in your body, as well as healthy hair, and skin. Since your body does not store protein, your diet is one of the major sources of this nutrient. 

Cheese is one of the best sources of protein available. There are so many of them to choose from, you are sure to find something to suit your tastes.

Cheese Dishes to Try

One of the most popular and quickest ways to get cheese into your diet is by eating macaroni and cheese. However, if you prefer something a bit more fancy you can try eating fried chicken with waffles and grilled cheese.

This is a delicious sandwich and is easy to prepare. You can even use chicken nuggets to make this snack even easier to prepare.

If you prefer a more exotic option you should try making kadai paneer. This is an Indian cheese dish that is as tasty as it is exotic. You may also want to cook shrimp melted in parmesan cheese if you prefer a little seafood. 

These are just a few ideas, there are many more exciting ways to incorporate cheese into your diet. If you do a little research you will find them.

Healthy Eating with Cheese

While it is true, that eating too much cheese is bad for your health, this is true of almost every food we eat. To enjoy the benefits that can be derived from eating cheese, you must ensure that you eat it in moderation. 

Eating your favorite cheesy dish once or twice a week can only benefit your health.