Random Fodder

In life, there are lots of different hobbies, tasks, and jobs around. In order to live a fulfilled life, we need to make sure that we manage to up our skills in a few of them. Cooking – and sometimes baking – is a fundamental skill in life that is always good to learn. Not everyone is going to become a wonderful chef or amazingly talented baker, but we can all get to grips with a few things. 

For some, the idea of having to cook might be quite negative. Cooking is seen as a chore by a lot of people. It doesn’t have to be viewed that way, though. It can really do a lot for you as an individual in a positive way. Here, for now, are five reasons as to why it is such a possible job/pastime, and the exact things it can do for you: 

Provide A Cathartic Outlet

When cooking or baking, one can go from being tense, stressed, and on edge to so much more relaxed. The jobs you have in terms of the preparation all the way to serving them on a plate can not only keep you occupied but provide serious satisfaction. Whether you’re making a sweet puff pastry recipe or you’re hoping to create a savory, high-protein meal, the process can keep you in a good place from start to finish.

Give Us A Passion For Something

Life is all about learning things about ourselves and becoming more accomplished. It’s also about finding loves and passions. Without passions, getting out of bed in the morning can be quite difficult. Cooking and making all kinds of different foods can ignite a fire in so many people. It won’t be for everyone, but many people can become obsessed with this stuff. 

Educate Us On Something Extremely Important 

As mentioned at the top, this is a fundamental life skill that you’ll need to learn, to a basic degree, of course. As a grown man or woman, you’ll need to know how to make and dish up food for yourself and those around you. You’ll also need to learn about keeping clean and the basic levels of hygiene. If you can do these things, then you’ll be set. 

Make Us A More Well-Rounded Person

There’s something about cooking that makes a person more interesting. Perhaps it’s the passion for making something for another. Maybe it’s the fact that it makes a person more competent overall. Whatever it is, it makes people a lot more interesting than if they didn’t have the skills. If you have this kind of string to your bow, you’re going to have more friends and admirers!

Make Us Feel More Confident In Life

When all of these points add up, they create a very confident human being. We’ve mentioned how it serves as therapy and puts people in a much happier mood, but there are so many more aspects to it. If you know how to cook, then you’re going to be a lot more comfortable with yourself as a whole. You’ll certainly back yourself when things get a little challenging in the kitchen!

Mozzarella is a real superstar of the cheese world. When you first bite into it, it seems a little insipid. But once you combine it with other flavors, it comes alive and rarely disappoints. What’s more, it has that amazing stringiness which adds a little theatre to every dish too. 

So what weird and wonderful recipes can you make with this delightful cheese? 

Creamy Mac And Cheese

We tend to think of mac and cheese being made of a kind of gloopy, runny cheese. But if you want to give it a twist, try using mozzarella instead. Every bite is a sensation, and just lifting it off the plate is an exciting experience, as all the little strands of cheese hang below your fork. 

Grilled Eggplant

Not so keen on the mac and cheese idea? Why not combine your love of mozzarella with eggplant instead? 

The idea here is pretty simple. You take some eggplant, brush it with olive oil and then leave it in the oven until it is soft and roasted through. Then you place the entire grill pan under the grill with the mozzarella and tomatoes and allow it to cook, before topping off with some basil pesto – delicious. 

What’s more, it’s one of the lowest-carb recipes out there – ideal for people following a strict keto diet. 

Mozzarella Sticks

If you’re the sort of person who loves potato croquettes, then you’ll want to give mozzarella sticks a go. You can do this the easy way by cooking air fryer frozen mozzarella sticks or you can make them from scratch using fresh ingredients. The taste difference isn’t actually that great because of the properties of the cheese, so you’re good to go with either. 

Cheesy Pizza Pasta Shells

These are pretty much what they sound like, but using pasta instead of a conventional pizza base. 

Go to the store and try to find some large pasta shells. You’re looking for something about the same size as clam. Cook the pasta in salty water and then whip up some classic marinara sauce. 

Take each cooked pasta shell and carefully place the tomato sauce and mozzarella in each of them. Then arrange them in an oven dish and bake them for around 20 minutes until the mozzarella melts. Again, if you want to increase the intensity of the flavors, try adding pesto as a garnish. 

Meatball Sub

Here’s another delicious mozzarella-related idea: the humble meatball sub. 

You can usually whip this dish up in a few minutes if you already have the meatballs and sauce made. 

Find a sub, cut it down the middle and then add the meatballs and marinara sauce. Then add some chunks of mozzarella on the top and put it under the grill. Wait for the cheese to melt and, voila, you have a delicious sub snack, ready to eat. 

Bacon-Wrapped Mozzarella

These are pretty self-explanatory and make a great appetizer and parties and BBQs. You can also make them as a snack for when you watch TV. 

What are your favorite ways to use mozzarella?

Standing over a hot stove for hours on end will wreak havoc on your skin. But, regardless of the type of food you are cooking and the setting you are cooking in, there will always be skincare issues the average person won’t experience.

Changing skin due to the different ingredients you use, proximity to heat, grease, oils, and more, along with fluctuating energy levels and changes in your diet, can all play a part in your skin looks and feels. So how can you combat these strains on your skin and help it look and feel fresh every day?

Drink Plenty of Water

You need to be drinking plenty of water regularly regardless of where you work, but to combat the dehydrating effects of working in a kitchen for long periods, your skin needs water. Every action you do causes your body to lose water. Without replenishing water, your body will become even more hydrated impacting other areas of your life, such as your sleep and energy levels. Your body also needs water for cell function too.

Cleansing

You want to make sure you are using the right products for your face. Already oily skin will experience higher oil levels depending on the type of foods you are cooking and how often your hands touch your face. Check out this OSEA review to see the different ranges of products to help you cleanse your skin.

For during your shift or mid-cooking session at home, keep refreshing cleansing wipes to your hand. You can make your own wipes using a strong kitchen towel, water, tea tree oil, and baby lotion. All you need to do is soak your kitchen towels in a solution of 2 cups of water,  two tablespoons of baby lotion, and four drops of tea tree oil.

Regular face masks or beauty treatments can remove any dirt and debris from pores and are available for a wide range of skin types.

Avoid Touching Your Face

Did you know, on average, we touch our faces 16 times an hour. Add that up over the course of your shift or time cooking, and that is a lot of contaminants that will come into contact with your skin. Most of the time, we are unaware of our habits, but focusing on not touching your face is a more hygienic habit for the kitchen and life in general.

If you do need to touch your face, try to wash your hands both before and after to remove the risk of transferring anything from hand to face.

Reduce Make-Up

If you regularly cook while wearing makeup, it may be time to evaluate what you wear when in the kitchen or at work. Of course, there is nothing wrong with wearing makeup in the kitchen, but if you find your makeup is too heavy for your skin or the surroundings, then swapping to lighter-weight makeup can help your skin breathe easier. 

Try a BB cream or tinted moisturizer instead of full coverage makeup or one that offers your skin the chance to breathe and doesn’t clog your pores.

Burgers are a classic meal. They are perfect for quick lunches but can be grand enough to serve on special family occasions. That burgers are a favorite food for many is simply undebatable.

However, making a good burger can be quite challenging. This is because ground meat is highly affected by numerous factors ranging from temperature to seasoning and even handling.

If you have been trying to make the perfect burger but can’t seem to, here are a few mistakes you might be making. 

Use Fattier Meat

Every burger expert will tell you that good burgers come from fatty meat. Sure, doctors might frown on it, but your taste buds will thank you for your daring.

Fat in your burger meat makes your final product juicy and flavorful, like the burgers from this BBQ restaurant. If your burgers are often dry and crumbly, then you might find refuge in meat with higher fat content.

What’s better, you don’t need excess fat for your burger to be savory. An 80/20 lean meat to fat ratio is enough to produce a juicy burger. As long as there is some fat in your meat, you can expect it to be delicious.

Additionally, avoid using store-bought ground meat by all means. Fresh meat works best for burgers, and grinding it yourself gives you control over how finely the final meat is ground. If you don’t have a meat grinder, your food processor will do the job just right.

Don’t Overwork Your Meat

Ground meat is a fragile thing. If you work it too much, you risk ruining your burgers. 

For starters, only add salt to your meat after you have formed the patties. You don’t want to draw the moisture from your meat, leaving it dry and tasteless.

Additionally, when forming patties, be sure to create a well in the middle. This prevents the annoying air bubble from forming in the middle and gives your burger a perfectly round shape. 

Limit your meat seasoning to salt and pepper only. Too many spices distract from the essence of the burger, which is the meaty flavor of the patties. Additionally, if you have too many things in your meat, you will be forced to work your meat a lot, leading to an imperfect burger.

Use a Cast Iron Skillet

If you want the perfect burger, you have to use cast iron. It is a favorite of chefs and cooking connoisseurs for a good reason; even heat distribution. This ensures that your burger is cooked well on all sides, which is precisely what you want.

Additionally, try using butter instead of ordinary cooking oil before placing your patties on your pan. It will make a world of difference to the final taste of your burger. Alternatively, you can also use canola oil which is flavor-free to preserve the authentic taste of your meat.

Conclusion

Making good burgers is an art that you can perfect with time. However, you have to be careful during every step of the process to avoid ruining your burger.

Start by following the tips in this post. You will be surprised by how much better your burgers turn out if you do.

When you’re cooking in the kitchen, how do you generally approach the meal in question? If you are like most people, you will probably normally follow a recipe – whether a new one or one that you have been carrying around in your head for a long time. But by understanding some of the essentials of cooking, you can create better meals whether you are using a recipe or not. Let’s look at some of the basic cooking science facts you should know, so you can cook with more knowledge and understanding.

Heat Control

One of the most important cooking elements you need to get really good at is heat control. The better you can control the heat of anything you might be cooking, the more likely it is that you can actually cook it as it needs to be cooked. Something to remember here is that high heat is to be used for developing flavours, but gentle heat is important for avoiding overcooking.

For each ingredient you cook with, you need to understand which is the better option – and sometimes, it’s more of a combination between the two. Good heat control ensures your food is cooked so much better.

Balancing Primary Tastes

What’s a primary taste, you might be asking? It’s simply a taste that can’t be created by combining other primary tastes – in the same way that a color is one that can’t be created from another color. It’s good to have an overall sense of the different primary tastes, as this will help you to create amazing dishes. Essentially, good cooking is all about balancing these primary tastes as well as you can – combining your salt, sweet and umami foods just right will create the kind of flavor bomb that you might be aiming for.

Resting Meat

Whenever you cook with meat, one of the best things you can do at the end of the cooking process is to rest it. A lot of people do this without really knowing what it does, but having an understanding of what’s actually taking place can help you to appreciate the process a lot better. So why should you rest meat?

Essentially, when you rest meat, the fibers have time to form together more and more firmly. The more they do this, the more concentrated the flavour is in each bite of the meat. At the same time, good resting allows the meat to hold in its juices, rather than letting them out all over the plate – and losing taste in the process. If you have ever seen a steak look its juices after cooking, you will know that it leads to a tasteless piece of meat.

Seasoning Tips

Finally, a word on seasoning. It is always essential to use salt in savory dishes, but bear in mind that you do develop a tolerance for the taste. If you are not careful, you could end up needing more and more as time goes on. Consider this when cooking for other people.

Over the COVID-19 pandemic, more people than ever before have begun working from home. Most office workers around the world wound up working from their laptops at their kitchen tables, taking their full time job home with them during lockdown.

For many office workers, this has become a permanent situation. Working from home has its downsides, but one of the huge perks is that you can eat the food you have at home, rather than picking up something outside the office.

Working lunches can be tricky to navigate, because there isn’t much time to cook up a storm in between work meetings and assignments. 

In this blog, we will take a look at three working lunch ideas for home workers that can be whipped up in ten minutes or less!

Wraps with chicken, raw veggies and a simple sauce

Wraps are a great working lunch idea because they are easy to put together, quick, and require very few utensils to make. You will have little cleanup, and be able to eat a delicious, healthy and filling lunch in under ten minutes!

For your wrap, you will need:

• 1 Tortilla wrap
• Meat filling such as chicken, tofu, impossible beef, etc
• Salad or your favorite vegetables
• Sauce such as mayonnaise, ranch dressing, or honey mustard

To put these together, you don’t need to do any actual cooking on the day. With your grocery shopping you should buy pre-cooked chicken pieces or a rotisserie chicken if you’re feeding a family, plus fresh vegetables to be stored in the fridge.

If you need inspiration to make a tasty wrap, why not check out these thai chicken lettuce wraps that will blow your mind!

Soup and crusty bread

Buying soup isn’t the unhealthy choice that it used to be. In fact, you can find organic, healthy, low sodium soups in farmer’s markets and healthy stores that can be heated up very quickly for a working lunch. These soups are hearty, warming, filling and, of course, very good for your health too!

If you don’t like buying food but want to make meals entirely from scratch, you could make homemade soup for dinner the night before, making more than you need so that you can heat some up for lunch the day after.

When it comes to the bread, the choice is yours! Some people have become seasoned bakers during lockdown, while others prefer their favorite brand or type of store bought bread. 

A simple salad with nuts and dressing

People often think that a salad isn’t enough to sustain a person through their working day. However, this entirely depends on the type of salad you are making! You can bulk out a salad with nuts, cooked meat, cheese, vegetables, fruit, and bread on the side, to make a full-bodied, healthy and refreshing meal. 

Plus, one of the best things about salad is that it is so quick to make. Just wash a few veggies and throw them into the bowl, and you’ve got a lovely working lunch in under ten minutes.

Use this post for your next week of working lunch inspiration!

With Mother’s Day around the corner, you might want to start thinking about what you can do to celebrate! While it can be a tricky holiday to shop for, there are some foolproof ways to prepare a sentimental reminder of how much your mom means to you.

For example, one of the 5 love languages is Acts of Service, so becoming your mom’s personal bartender for the day may be a perfect way to channel that this year. Whether you fall back on classic brunch cocktails or take a slight spin on the ordinary, keep reading to decide what themed drink is the perfect one to whip up for this special day.

COVID19 safety tip: While restrictions continue to lighten up, there are still some personal safety precautions we want to undergo while reconnecting with loved ones this spring. For starters, with the weather warming up, opt to have your gathering outdoors. You can better keep yourselves distanced while simultaneously still enjoying each other’s company.

Another way to avoid too much public interaction and entering into stores is by putting your phone applications to good use. Online alcohol delivery is now commonplace among many communities. So have your cocktail ingredients brought right to your home, and while you wait, dedicate the extra time to your Mother’s Day plan!

Smoked Bloody Mary

Is breakfast in bed a Mother’s Day tradition? Or what about brunch in the backyard to celebrate your mom? Why not combine them? A Smoked Bloody Mary can seamlessly add to any of these options. Include bacon and olives and you have yourself a full brunch, right inside the drink!

For a full recipe, refer here.

Thin Mint

Girl Scout cookie season doesn’t have to stop when the box is empty! It can last all year with a good thin mint martini. Serve mom a delicious surprise and some childhood memories with this delicious drink.

For help on completing this sweet treat check out this recipe here.

Frozen Pineapple Margarita

As the afternoon glides on, you can opt for a more satisfying taste of summer with a frozen pineapple margarita. What could be better than that! If pineapple isn’t your flavor of choice, you can make an assortment of flavors for the whole family to try out. 

Looking for both alcoholic and nonalcoholic recipes? These Cinco de Mayo cocktails are perfect for celebrating Mom with your group.

Glass of wine

It’s okay to keep it simple. You can make mom’s day by ordering a bottle of her favorite red, or embrace the creeping summertime heat with a refreshing white. Whatever it may be, cheers! There are also plenty of ways to turn that simple wine into different cocktails. Combine some red wine, brandy, freshly chopped fruit, and sweetener. Now you have yourself a delicious Sangria!

If you aren’t a wine-o, you’re not alone. This list of the best Mother’s Day wine can be of assistance.

With these few additions to the day, it’ll be the best Mother’s Day yet! The focus on these small details will show your mom you care in a special way.

Comment your favorite springtime cocktail below!

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!