Jimmys New Bike

So what do you want to do today? I don't know, lets see what our neighbor Jimmy is up to.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzjDad3_M5Q&hl=en

Beer And Food Pairing: Indian Brown Ale And Gumbo

Winter is definitely here and with it the colder temperatures. I've always found one of the best ways to cut the chill is to make a nice hearty soup or stew. One of our favorites is Gumbo, which is a Cajun/Creole inspired soup that uses roux(flour and fat) for the major flavoring component. It is usually a little spicy and contains some kind of meat or sausage. I decided to make the Gumbo with some leftover ham and smoked turkey legs. For the beer, a nice Brown Ale should pair up great. So I decided to try the Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale with the Gumbo



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8mwzf2oGeg&hl=en

Easy Hungarian Recipes : Meat Options For Hungarian Recipes

Get to know different kinds of meat to use for various Hungarian recipes; learn more about traditional Hungarian food in the free cooking video. Expert: Odon Hankusz Bio: Odon Hankusz is a chef and expert in European cuisine based in Budapest. Filmmaker: Paul (Leopold) Volniansky



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgPZI0XU8UQ&hl=en

2 Holiday Appetizers With Broccoli Soup

When you love to make, eat and serve broccoli dishes. You might want to consider making some easy to make appetizers to serve during the holidays. Whether you are planning a large social event or a holiday family get together, you want to serve your guests the very best. You also want to make a beautiful and mouthwatering impression while serving different types of holiday recipes such as holiday appetizers.

Easy Party Appetizers for Your Next Holiday Party

You can make some easy party appetizers for your next holiday party by following some of our recipes. Many of them are made from just a few ingredients, while others may include more than a few. However, they are easy to make and they make for an easy cleanup, which is essential when you want to make an impression with the recipes your serve as well as the ability to get out of the kitchen and enjoy the party with your guests.

Make Hot Appetizers or Make a Cold Appetizer Recipe

Whether you prefer to make and serve hot appetizers or make a cold appetizer recipe to serve at your next special event, if you love broccoli you might want to consider making a mushroom broccoli soup or a marinated broccoli dip. If you want, you can even make both. Imagine the holiday fun you and your family, friends and guests can have while you spend time together making holiday memories this year. Try either or both of these delicious recipes at your next holiday party.

Recipe for Mushroom Broccoli Soup Appetizer

What You Need

1 ½ cups fresh chopped broccoli
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
2 ½ soup cans full of milk
4 Tablespoons butter or margarine
½ teaspoons tarragon
Salt and pepper to taste

How to Make It

Cook the chopped broccoli by grilling, boiling, stir-fry, or steaming it until done and then drain.

Using a large saucepan on a medium high heat setting, you will add the mushroom soup, milk, butter or margarine, tarragon, salt and pepper to taste. Stir well to combine.

Add the cooked chopped broccoli to this soup mixture and heat for about 18 to 20 minutes until the soup is hot.

Recipe for Marinated Broccoli Appetizer Dip

What You Need

1 cup cider vinegar
1 ½ vegetable oil
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 Tablespoon dill weed
1 teaspoon garlic salt
Salt and pepper to taste
1 package raw diced broccoli

How to Make It

Using a medium size mixing bowl, add the vinegar, oil, dill weed, garlic salt, salt and pepper to taste and stir well until thoroughly combined. Stir in the diced broccoli to the marinade mix and place in the refrigerator overnight. Stir occasionally while marinating in the refrigerator to help cover broccoli and with the blending of flavors to the dish.

Drain before serving with a vegetable platter with such vegetables as carrots, cucumbers, cauliflower, mushrooms, zucchini, eggplant, cherry tomatoes and more.

Healthy Recipes - Low Sodium Chicken Soup

Would you say there are 10,000 different chicken soup recipes out there? Maybe more?  I always thought my mom made the best chicken soup, but little did I know she made the deadliest chicken soup. It tasted great, but it was killing me as a young boy- and now I know to shy away from it because of my experience in creating healthy recipes and living a life of making healthy food choices.

Mom's soup was made with chicken broth that amounted to nearly 9,000mg of sodium (for an entire pot). My healthy recommendation comes in at about 2,000mg (for the entire pot)!  Keep in mind, that's just the broth. You can get into serious trouble by adding high-sodium, high-fat ingredients to that broth. Not with my recommendation! Let's have a look:

Heart Healthy Mexican Chicken Soup:

First, use NO SODIUM chicken broth, mixed with broth that is REDUCED SODIUM- you will never tell the difference, and you are saving thousands of mg of sodium. I work off the 3 to 1 ratio (3 no sodium for 1 reduced sodium). Here's the remainder of ingredients:

Avocado (3)

Tomato (chopped)

White Onion (sliced)

Fresh Cilantro (chopped)

Chicken Breast (3 small, lean or extra lean)

Chipotle Pepper (canned, use 3-5 per pot of soup)

Cooking Instructions:  Fill the pot with your broth, cooking it at med-low.  Add the tomato, onion, chipotle pepper, chopped cilantro and avocado and allow to cook for 20 minutes. Be sure to use the chipotle sauce as well. Meanwhile, boil the chicken breasts in a different pot - keeping the fat run-off and high-sodium broth clear from your low-sodium masterpiece!  Once they finish boiling, shave the meat and add to your soup. Cook for additional 15 minutes... and get ready for a great soup, very low in sodium and very tasty!

The Forgotten Secret For Great Soup Recipes

Do you use soup recipes to make soup? Have you ever followed a recipe to the 'Letter' only to have your 'masterpiece' turn out just so-so or worst unpalatable and a complete disappointment? I'll bet you have.

It's happened to the best of us at one time or another. Often the reason can be traced back to a misread causing 'too much of this' or 'not enough of that', but there is one part of soup recipes which is so very important and just about everyone takes it for granted and never gives it a second thought.

I am talking about the water you use in the recipe. To make good soup you need pure, fresh clean water. And you might think 'Ok now that's a stretch!!'But let me ask you this would ever consider using the water from the ditch out by the street? NO! Why not it's water! Ah-it's not good enough for you soup recipes. So the water you use is a concern! And it of course will make all the difference in taste, aroma and quality of soup you make.

I discovered the value of fresh pure filtered water as an ingredient for soup quite by accident many years ago. A friend of mine - a Jamaican immigrant - had purchased an old rundown restaurant in the neighborhood. It was doing poorly at the time (so everyone thought he was crazy). But he saw something there the rest of us missed.

Trevor went to work fixing up the old place. He got the parking lot repaved - a fresh coat of paint on everything. Installed new fixtures where needed and went with a 1950s motif.

Then his marketing genius kicked in he began sponsoring local kid's sports teams and provided a free hot dog and soda at the restaurant as an after-game snack for all the kids. This of course brought the parents in, who would have otherwise never have visited.

Folks came in with their children and were struck at how nice the place looked. They wound up ordering the soup special for lunch and were pleasantly surprised. Just about everyone commented on how great the place looked and how amazing the soup was. People even commented on how good the tea and coffee were.

Trevor had turned the place into a going concern and soon it was insanely busy all the time.

So I asked Trevor "What's your secret?" He gave me a big Jamaican smile and said "I had a water filter system installed as soon as I bought the place, man."

That's the secret?! The ingredient is water!

He nodded, he was a very good cook and he knew that you had to start with the best and freshest ingredients including the best water to produce the best results.

Oh it might sound ludicrous, but if you filter your tap water and use that to make your soups, sauces and gravies you will have improved results no question. The vast majority of tap water comes with chlorine added to it. Remove the chlorine and improve the taste. This also holds true of tea and coffee.

Filtered water--tap water that has been cleansed of chlorine and other taste destroying contaminants really does improve your overall cooking. By eliminating chlorine and other contaminants right at your kitchen tap makes it so much easier than hauling big jugs of bottled water (for which there are no government standards-other than they must be at least equal to tap water) obviously no benefit there!

Don't fooled by these free standing pitcher units either. They will only remove up to 75% of the chlorine. Would you eat a sandwich that had 75% of the dirt removed? You want all the chlorine removed or at least brought down to undetectable levels and that takes a high quality counter top water filter system.

Install a high quality counter top water filter system and you will feel so much better serving this soup to your family and friends.

Chicken and Noodle Soup is Easy to Make

It's really not that difficult to make great tasting Chicken and Noodle Soup. Really! With the convenience of using a supermarket roasted chicken, you can get incredible flavor without starting from scratch. When I started testing recipes, I looked through all my conventional cookbooks, gourmet cookbooks, online, etc. All the recipes I found seemed to lack the flavor I was looking for - you know, that great 'chickeny' depth of homemade chicken soup? So, I started looking in those cookbooks from churches and women's organizations.

Although I didn't find the exact recipe there, I did have some thoughts that led to my current method. I use a noodle recipe from a very sweet lady who goes to my church, Delores Koster. Her soup recipe is in the St. Francis Xavier, Carbondale, Illinois Cookbook.

The struggle I was having lied in making the stock/broth/base for the soup. That's when I decided there had to be a better, easier, faster way to get the flavor I wanted without waiting for a whoe chicken, vegetables and some seasonings to figure out how to marry together appropriately.

One night after my daughter's basketball game, we stopped to get a rotisserie chicken and the grocery store for dinner. My family only likes the white meat, so we have part of the chicken left over. Rather than tossing it, because no one liked the dark meat, I froze the whole thing until I could figure out how to use up the remaining chicken.

My son had been asking for homemade chicken and noodles, and that's when I decided to give it a try. I added what was left of the rotisserie chicken into water with some vegetables and spices to make the base for the soup. After a couple of hours of simmering on the stove - and it smelled great - I strained the mixture and boned what was left of the chicken. Ironically, my kids don't really like a lot of chicken in their soup, so this idea works out great for us. And, for some reason, they eat the dark meat in this soup.

I add the noodles and let it simmer for at least an hour or two. Usually, I have towater prior to adding the noodles. The result is really good. It has become one of those meals that everyone looks forward to, and the kids always ask for when they don't feel well. I guess that's the true test of chicken soup, right? I hope you enjoy it, too!

By the way, feel free to add new carrots or whatever other kind of vegetables you would like to this soup. My kids prefer to have a bowl of steamed broccolli and cauliflower that they can dip in the broth, so I don't add anything but noodles to the strained broth for us.

Chicken Noodle Soup

1 Grocery Store Rotisserie Chicken - or the remaining part of one. (If you like a lot of chicken in your soup, you may want to add a chicken breast or two if not using a whole chicken)
1 Medium Onion, quartered
2 Stalks Celery, cut into 2 inch pieces
5 whole Peppercorns
1 T. Poultry Seasoning
1 T. Sea Salt
Water

In a Dutch Oven, or large soup pot. Add all of the above ingredients except water. Pour enough water over to cover ingredients by 1 inch. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer and leave uncovered for at least 1 hour, but preferably 2. I like to start this first thing in the morning to have for lunch, or at noon for an early dinner.

With a slotted spook, or spider, strain chicken, bones, and vegetables out of pot. Put pot back on burner, and add about 3 cups of water. Bone chicken, reserving meat for the soup. If you would like to add vegetables, especially carrots, do so now. If adding peas, you can wait until the last 10 minutes of total cooking time.

Noodles

1 egg
3 egg yolks
Cold water
2 C. Flour
2 t. Salt

In a medium mixing bowl, add all eggs. Whisk until light. Add 3 tablespoons of cold water and salt and whisk until well blended. Add flour and mix with a fork until you can gather it up in your hands and form a ball. Depending on the weather, I've had to ad a bit more water to bring it together; but, be careful not to add to much and make it sticky.

Let the dough sit for about 5 minutes. This is important because it allows the dough to be rolled out much easier, and less like elastic. Flour the area where you will roll out the dough.

Roll out the dough into a large circle. I get it as thin as I can, about 1/8 inch, although some people like their noodles thicker. If you prefer them thick, you will need to add for time for cooking to make them tender.

Using a pizza cutter, cut the dough into noodles the desired width and length you prefer. Put the noodles into the simmering broth and continue to simmer for at least 1/2 hour, but they are more tender if you have the time to let them simmer for an hour. You can add the chicken about the last 15 minutes. Taste for seasoning, because I usually need to add at least another teaspoon of salt at this point.