It’s been quite a while since the last time I updated this food blog , and I recently took my girlfriend out for her birthday.  We had a great night out and I decided that it would be an appropriate way to get back into blogging by starting off with how our night went and a bit of a restaurant review. African Food Emma Eating Ethiopian Food Recently Emma had gone to Africa for a month on holiday, and when I started thinking about places to take her out for her birthday, African food was the initial inspiration.  I have not eaten a lot of African food, and Emma had raved about her adventures on safari and all the wild meats she had eaten whilst over there. Delicacies including ostrich, crocodile, warthog (her favourite) , camel, impala and cudu (a kind of antelope), were all mentioned with the kind of wide-eyed excitement that comes from eating wild game that the average Australian rarely has a chance to taste, let alone the inclination in many cases. While you may think that many of these game meats could be very tough and chewy, she was surprised that it’s not necessarily the case.  Her description of the warthog was my favourite, “soft and tender meat stew that just melted in the mouth” , making me wish even more so that I could have joined her on this great adventure. Eating African Food In Perth Even though Perth isn’t particularly far away from Africa, in relation to the right of the world (a trip to Johannesburg is about the same distance as a trip to Melbourne) , African food isn’t really a common feature in Perth.  Having said that, I was actually surprised by the number of options there really are, hidden away in dark little corners of suburbs.

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Eating Ethiopian Food In Perth

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Fresh foods are full of nutrients and energy, so first of all remember that fresh foods are always best for your body. I’m sure you’ve seen the difference between a lettuce picked fresh out of the garden and one that has been sitting in the bottom of your fridge for a couple of weeks.  Frozen, canned, processed, reheated and leftover foods have much less ‘life’ than fresh foods – and organic food is free of chemicals. As you begin to appreciate the food you put in your body you might even feel inspired to grow your own herbs, fruits and vegetables in the garden! The Best Way To Satisfy Your Food Cravings Giving in to unhealthy cravings can sabotage your efforts.  If you experience cravings, it’s usually for sweet foods, and it shouldn’t be ignored. However you can make healthy choices from the ‘sweet’ family to satisfy your food cravings with more wholesome, healthy foods such as sweet fruits, whole grains and nuts. Eating well is a long-term healthy life choice , and there are some foods that can particularly help you to be a healthy weight and feel good about yourself.  Choose… Foods that are light, dry and warm; spicy, bitter and astringent (see the sense of taste chart for your health ).

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How To Choose Food That Nourishes Your Body And Emotions

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I’ve been on a bit of a theme lately – getting and staying healthy, with plenty of easy food recipes that are also good for you.  Now this doesn’t really have anything to do with New Years resolutions (I don’t believe they really provide much long-term benefits) , it’s more about just feeling fitter and healthier to enjoy a better lifestyle. People usually focus on either exercise or eating healthier, but it tends to be rare that both of these are taken into consideration at the same time. I’m not going to make out that I’m some sort of expert on this matter, but I do keep a very active lifestyle, as well as obviously being very aware of the sort of food I’m eating.  So I’d like to share what I know about the benefits of eating healthy , as well as plenty of easy food recipes to get the process started for you, and I hope that this helps to give you more energy and time each day.

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The Golden Rules Of Healthy Eating

Tags: cooking light recipes, easy recipes, special recipes, home cooking, diabetic recipes

I don’t usually like drinking a lot of coffee, however lately I’ve been a bit hooked on drinking iced coffees (especially with the weather being so hot!) .  Here is a good way of enjoying such a treat, even if you’re a diabetic . Diabetes And Coffee If you want a good iced coffee drink and you can’t have all the sugar that comes in them, you can make your own from home. Make a pot of coffee from your favorite coffee. Add as much artificial sweetener as you like, and cream if you prefer. To add a dash of home, there are sugar free syrups in flavors like hazelnut and vanilla, and you can add those too. Once you get the pot of coffee made to taste like your favorite cup, there are a few things that you can do with it besides just drinking it hot.

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How To Make Iced Coffee Drinks For Diabetics

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One of my most favorite easy diabetic recipes is a sugar free ice cream sundae because it’s a rich treat that you think is going to be deadly to your diabetes and it’s not. I created this when I was looking for a dessert to enjoy with my friend who has been a Type II diabetic for a long time. There are a lot of sugar free syrups and whipped creams that you can slather on this bad boy and have it taste exactly the same. While the calorie value still might be an upshot, it’s definitely sugar free. Since you don’t want to over do it, here’s a good sundae recipe to make that you can have a small helping of and share. Happy Sundae Recipe Happy Diabetic Sundae You start with, of course, a banana.

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Happy Sundae For Diabetics

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This holiday period is a time of over-indulgence in food and drink, and sometimes it can be difficult to keep up if you have particular dietary requirements, such as needing some easy diabetic recipes . A lot of diabetic recipes call for little or no sugar, and it can be very difficult to figure out how to make those tasty sweets with an artificial sweetener. How much of one equals the other after all? It depends on what type of sweetener you buy. Sweeteners For Use In Diabetic Recipes For sweeteners containing aspartame, about 24 little packets of the sweet stuff equals about a cup of sugar. This is about a ¼ cup

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How To Substitute Sugar For Easy Diabetic Recipes

Tags: easy recipes, cooking light magazine, super foods recipes, nutritious foods, campfire cooking

Christmas is a time for getting together with family, sharing gifts, reflecting on the year that was, and of course, indulging in large amounts of food and drink!  A traditional Christmas Day lunch in my family usually consists of a great big roast cooked up, often lamb or pork, with plenty of sides of salads overflowing on the table.  However this year, Christmas day is a very hot, sticky and humid 38C here in Perth , so something a little different was needed. Christmas Lunch Ideas Basically once I heard the weather reports coming out in the previous week, I just knew it was going to be way too hot for a roast Christmas Day lunch.  Out of all the Christmas lunch ideas I had, it really came down to a seafood feast for Christmas Day lunch . The Christmas Day Lunch Seafood Feast The reason I chose to have seafood is simply that it’s quick and easy to cook, as well as being a classic type of food to eat in Australia on any hot day, and seafood makes a great gourmet feast to indulge in.  I got myself some Pink Snapper, a good thick fillet, and fresh from the seafood market early in the day.  I also picked up some tiger prawns, all of the seafood is local produce for the freshest possible quality. Christmas Lunch Preparations Begin… Cooking Christmas Day lunch I start by marinading the prawns in some crushed garlic, chilli, basil, and a little olive oil and lemon juice.  This is probably the hardest part of the day, which shows you why this is one of my favourite easy food recipes.  Cooking the seafood is as easy as heating up a frypan to a medium-high heat, add a touch of oil, before adding the fillet of Pink Snapper. Just before adding the Snapper to the pan I seasoned it with some herbs and spices that I had lying around in my kitchen, like lemon pepper, just to add some nice flavour.  Sear the fish for 3-5 minutes on each side, and because it was quite a thick piece of seafood I actually decided to finish it off in the oven to make sure it was cooked through properly.  To do this I just added a little bit of water, almost poaching it in liquid, to keep the Pink Snapper nice and tender, moist and juicy (there’s nothing worse than dried out overcooked seafood).

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Christmas Day Lunch – Seafood Feast 2010

Tags: easy recipes, Healthy Food, german recipes, cooking light magazine, healthy cooking

Tomorrow is the day for the Big Breakfast Pizza Challenge , and I’m a little nervous but mostly excited.  It’s the first pizza competition that I’ve ever been in, and I think it will be lot’s of fun!  The battle lines have been drawn, and my weapon of choice will be the Eggs Florentine Breakfast Pizza . The Eggs Florentine Pizza Eggs Florentine Breakfast Pizza The concept is reasonably simple – a traditional eggs florentine is an English muffin, topped with wilted spinach, smoked salmon, poached egg, with some hollandaise sauce poured on top.  The trick is, how do you put this on a breakfast pizza? Well, this is how I did it… There will no English muffin of course, that will be replaced by the pizza base.  I cover the base with some spinach leaves, and then add some shredded Caboolture cheese over the spinach (it’s better to put the spinach under the cheese, to protect it from burning in the pizza oven) . Then I crack an egg, and carefully spread it around the pizza as best I can.  This part is a bit messy, but that’s half the fun of it sometimes! Putting a poached egg on the breakfast pizza is out of the question I think.  If you put a cooked egg on a pizza and then cook it again, it will just end up rubbery and terrible

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Eggs Florentine Breakfast Pizza

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Today our local radio station, 96fm , launched a competition to find the ultimate breakfast pizza .  Naturally my mind straight away went into overdrive coming up with all sorts of ideas to try out.  After some debate, and discussion with colleagues, I’ve narrowed it down to 3 different breakfast pizza options to test.  It was quite busy tonight and I didn’t get a chance to make any of them, but over the next few days I will make them and post the results. In the meantime, here are the breakfast pizza ideas I came up with, please feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments! Full Works Breakfast Pizza My initial thought was to put every kind of big breakfast ingredient together on the one pizza.  I mean really, what’s better than a big breakfast in the morning to start off your day anyway?! This will include a napoli sauce and cheese base, with pieces of bacon, slices of mushroom, slices of a nice spicy sausage like chorizo, and a few cherry tomato halves scattered around.  Add a few slices of par-cooked potato (to represent hash browns), crack a couple of eggs, and if you feel like it you could even dollop some baked beans around for good measure too! Egg And Bacon With Vegemite Breakfast Pizza To those uninitiated in the ways of the salty spreadable delight that is vegemite , this may sound quite strange as it is very much an acquired taste.  Even when I brought this up with other vegemite-loving Aussies, a slight look of bewilderment was noticeable. For a long time, I have been a happy little vegemite , growing up with the stuff from a very young age.  I remember my dad introducing me to eggs on toast for breakfast, with vegemite spread on the toast.  I don’t often hear of others going to such extremes to get their vegemite fix, but to this day if I eat eggs on toast without vegemite, it just seems like there is something missing. So this was my next breakfast pizza idea .  I have tried a vegemite and cheese pizza before, and it worked out wonderfully.  This time I plan to add eggs and bacon to the mix, and see if that will also live up to my high expectations Eggs Florentine/Eggs Benedict Breakfast Pizza Ok, so this definitely comes in at the more “gourmet” end of the spectrum.  I would probably like to make a half/half pizza and try both sides to see which I like better. Now, quite obviously there would need to be some hollandaise sauce on top, I’m just not sure if the hollandaise and the napoli sauce will work together, so I may end up trying both ways, with and without napoli sauce on the base

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The Ultimate Breakfast Pizza Challenge

Tags: crockpot recipes, home cooking, french cooking, super foods recipes, healthy recipes

The great thing about chocolate fondues is that not only are these great ways to feed unexpected guests but these are easy dessert recipes , too. You need not slave away at the stove stirring to make the right dip just to take a bow when your guests compliment you on it, when you can have an easy chocolate fondue set up in no time at all! Chocolate Fondue Is Back In Town! Chocolate Fondue Fountain These were a big hit in the 70′s (so my parents tell me) , and there’s a good reason that they’re coming back into fashion.  Chocolate fountains can now be found at some of the trendiest restaurants around the world, they look spectacular (it always brings back childhood memories of Willa Wonka’s Chocolate Factory for me) , and they are so easy to do! But you must remember to keep the chocolate fondue as warm as possible but not hot. A ceramic fondue pot, the butter warmer placed over low flame, or a warm bowl all works well.

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Simple Recipe For Easy Chocolate Fondue

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