Food and Beverage

Soon our gardens, Farmer’s Markets, grocery stores and roadside stands will be flush with delicious home-grown tomatoes. This Hamburger-Tomato Pie recipe is another good tomato recipe to add to your files. With a tender delicious crust, crumbled ground beef, tomato, and onion seasoned with a little salt and garlic this pie only needs a simple salad and you have a great lunch or light dinner.

HAMBURGER TOMATO PIE

Dough:
1/2 cup melted butter
2 tbsp milk
2 tbsp water
1/8 tsp salt
dash of vinegar
1 1/2 cups flour

Mix butter, milk, and water together in a medium mixing bowl. Add the salt and vinegar; stir to mix. Add enough flour to make the consistency of biscuit dough. Do NOT work too much. Roll out, reserving enough for the top crust. Line a deep dish pie pan with the dough. Let it overlap sides of pie pan. Make filling, fill crust and add the top crust. Cut a few slits for air to escape during baking.

Filling:
2 tbsp butter
1 large tomato, chopped
1 lb hamburger meat
salt to taste
pepper to taste
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1 small yellow onion, chopped

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Melt the butter in a 10-inch skillet. Add the onion and saute until tender. Add the meat to the onion and cook until no longer red. Add the tomato, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Stir to blend well. Simmer for 5 minutes. Pour filling into the prepared crust. Top with top crust. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes then lower temperature to 375 and bake until the crust is browned and the filling is bubbling.

You need be careful when searching for Paleo diet food list that are readily available on the internet. I’ve came across many lists that are so inaccurate it seems odd they were allowed to be published online.

Okay I understand, inaccuracies and false information are normal on the internet, but as an avid follower of the Paleo diet, I find this issue unacceptable!

Not just food list mind you, even many Paleo recipes online are inaccurate! Later I’ll show you how to obtain loads of precise Paleolithic recipes that are delicious and compiled in a very accessible format.

See, I’ve been on this incredible diet for almost a year. It has benefited me in so many ways, therefore I want folks who are new to this diet, attain the same benefits as I have.

And this is not easily achievable if one were to obtain a Paleo diet food
list that is erroneous and full of inconsistencies.

You know, I already found at least 5 lists of Paleo diet menu (I won’t name the websites here) and each one listed green beans, sweet corn and yams as Paleolithic foods! How wrong…

If they really wanted to include the aforementioned foods in their lists, at least put them under the non-Paleo friendly category and indicate as foods that can be added depending on one’s strictness.

Look, a precise Paleo diet food list should note the following foods as not 100% Paleo friendly.

Vegetables and fruits – Sweet potato, raisins, chestnuts, beetroot, pickles, peas and of course green beans!

Meats – Ham and also bacon.

Alright, earlier I mentioned about obtaining a full collection of precise and tasty Paleo recipes. Just follow the link below to download a few digital Palo cookbooks that contain over 300+ recipes including recipes for breakfast, lunch/dinner, desserts and more.

Daylight savings time is the practice of advancing clocks so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less. Although it was originally designed to reduce electric usage, there’s controversy over whether it’s actually had this effect. Now, daylight savings is primarily used a marker for the beginning of a season and to take care of certain items like changing your clock and changing your smoke detector batteries. You may be saying, “But, Chef Todd! This is interesting and we love the info, but what in the world does it have to do with the art of cooking?”

I’m so glad you asked!

Whether we change the clocks or not, the days get longer naturally. This is a signal for the plants to start getting ready to provide fruits vegetables, herbs and spices for us in the coming growing season. Now we’re cooking!

If you have a love of cooking, there are some cooking tasks that you should associate with daylight savings time. The most cooking fun of the year is cooking outdoors. Some might say it’s an art form.

As with any artist, some preparation is in order for you to prepare for the season of fun, outdoor cooking. First, to be able to practice the art of cooking outdoors, you will need clean cooking tools.

Let’s start outside:

* Inspect and clean the BBQ grill, smoker, and/or your outdoor cookers.
* Look for spiders and dirt.
* Check your gas tank for leaks (put some soapy water on a pastry brush and brush the liquid mixture onto the top of the tank, turn on the pressure…you don’t want to see bubbles)

Cooking is a lot more fun when you have enough gas, charcoal or wood chips for your outdoor cooking. It’s certainly no fun to run out of gas in the middle of cooking a steak.

As soon as you feel the last frost has come, spend some time preparing your herbs indoors and outdoors. Window box herbs will give you a small, quick start, but your outdoor garden should be tilled and fertilized for the coming season. If you start putting some love into your garden now, you’ll be ready for some fun, tasty cooking early in the season.

But your outdoor herbs aren’t the only things that need attention for you to have some fun cooking. In my next post, we’ll talk about how the art of cooking outdoors also requires some inside preparation.

If so much doubt may be cast on laboratory experiments, does this mean that they should be ignored? Certainly not, because meticulously designed experiments can be of enormous benefit to the furtherance of knowledge. It is just vital that one carefully examines all research findings before religiously quoting or applying them, especially in the light of the most extensive practical experience in the same fields.

If we wish to assess the validity of research into local spot reduction, we must simultaneously examine the experience of the most competent practitioners. In body shaping and conditioning, we are fortunate that bodybuilding and weightlifting have provided an enormous base of experiential findings with which to evaluate research. For example, all bodybuilding competitors carry out a concentrated phase of training for definition or \’cuts\’ for several weeks before contests. Not only do they measure their food intake very carefully, but they concentrate on certain body regions to \’get ripped\’ in those deficient areas which appear to carry a little too much fat. What do they do? They do set upon set of high repetition medium resistance training which targets the offending areas. One can find their \’ripping\’ or \’cutting\’ programs in every bodybuilding magazine or book and physiques of their authors, usually prominent bodybuilders, certainly show that their programmes do work.

In other words, bodybuilders rely on training regimes both to enhance muscle mass and to increase definition (i.e. to spot reduce!), but research indicates otherwise. Is this possible? Isn\’t the difference in results between bodybuilders and ordinary gym clients who try spot reduction routines due to the restricted dieting of the former. Not necessarily, because the average client may be on an even more meagre diet. The difference may lie in the fact that bodybuilders do not simply execute unweighted sit-ups for defining the abdominals, but do them with much more concentrated effort to failure, plus other resisted routines using supersetting, forced reps, negatives and other techniques to ensure that sufficient metabolic demands are placed on the working muscles. On top of that, the bodybuilders use progressively planned programmes with each phase aimed to produce a different result, such as hypertrophy, definition and strength.

It would be interesting to undertake further research using the very demanding definition routines of serious bodybuilders to ascertain if spot reduction really works to some extent or not. The experiential observation remains that bodybuilders may have developed routines that may cause some local decrease in bodyfat, though this surely would be far less than is implied by those marketing all of those futile “fast fix” abdominal exercising devices.

Gift baskets are not a new concept, but they certainly are a great gift. They can be given all year round. It’s always a safe bet to give gourmet food baskets as gifts as hardly anyone says no to food! Companies offering gift baskets range from the very large to those working out of their basement, and quality can vary between the exquisite or nightmarish. The best part of these baskets is that there are options for nearly everyone.

Buying food for a diabetic can be a dilemma sometimes. It’s important to display sensitivity to their inability to regulate their blood sugar levels, yet you also want them to enjoy nice gourmet food gifts. Naturally, diabetic-friendly gift baskets offer sugar-free versions of the cakes, cookies and assorted pastries so beloved of sweet-toothed individuals everywhere. Savory food that is suitable for consumption by diabetics is also available for inclusion in these gift baskets. Best of all, a complete list of ingredients and their nutritional values can be included in the gift basket so that the recipient knows what they’re getting.

Living life as a gluten-intolerant individual can be quite difficult. Yet, there’s no reason to leave them out when it comes to giving out gourmet food baskets. A gift basket can be packed with gluten-free items such as pastas made from rice flour. Rice flour is also suitable to make rice chips. These are a more than adequate replacement for regular chips, as are chips made from non-GMO organic corn. What’s a chip without a dip, you say? A gluten-free gift basket should include high-quality olive oil as well as tapenades. These should be made from fresh, flavorful components like olives, garlic, capers and even anchovies. Vegetarian varieties include those made from peppers, carrots, eggplant and artichokes.

Sometimes, the best gift you can give someone is something handmade. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on gourmet food gifts if you make them yourself. The sheer number of gourmet recipes and tips available means you don’t have to take a cooking course to put together a gift basket of your own. You can personalize it accordingly too because you know what the recipient likes.

People will see me or write to me and say, “But, Chef Todd, how can you possibly understand my fear of cooking? You cook beautiful, nutritious foods for thousands every week.” First of all, I haven’t always eaten or cooked nutritious food because healthy cooking wasn’t on my agenda and as far as the fear of cooking…well, I certainly do understand it, because I still have it.

Let me tell you a couple of stories that developed my fear of cooking:

Story #1 – I was the executive chef at a very large hospital, I was also a chef at the National Security Agency (NSA) in Washington D.C. and we fed 15,000 people breakfast and lunch every day. Talk about a moment for fear of cooking! In fact, on my first day on the job at NSA, I had to grill cases and cases of chicken breast (remember, 15,000 people!!). I had the non-stick spray in one hand and the chicken breast in the other and began to spray the chicken, put it on the grill, spray the chicken, put it on the grill (you get the picture) until I began to smell something foul. I looked down and to my shock and horror, I was spraying the chicken with stainless steel grill cleaner! I had to throw about 100 chicken breasts into the garbage on my first day on the job.

Story #2 – This is my catering horror story that could strike fear in anyone that cooks (professional or not). I was catering a very large wedding with approximately 450 people in attendance. I had a warmer loaded with food for all of the wedding guests and placed it in my catering van using a big lift gate. Everything was great, we took the first turn and there was a sound from the back of the van, but we continued until we got to the event. We opened the back of the van and the warmer was tilted on its side with gravy pouring out of the bottom and all of the food smashed against the front of the warmer.

My fear of cooking is on a professional level, and I can’t avoid it. If I tried, I would be out of business. You, on the other hand, you can avoid cooking, but it would be a crime. It would be a crime against your stomach and your entire body. How do I know? Well, because I used to avoid cooking for myself at all costs.

I would cook all day long, beautiful nutritious food for my business, deliver my healthy cooking and think to myself, “Wow, now I’m tired and hungry!” And you know what I would do? I would pull my upscale catering van through the drive-through at McDonald’s and commit crimes against my stomach. I would be cooking healthy all day long and then not eat healthy myself.

And do you know how I know that I was committing crimes against my stomach? Because keeping myself from eating healthy, nutritious foods left me feeling badly, sometimes I would even feel depressed and lethargic, and on top of that, I didn’t sleep well. How embarrassing! To cook healthy foods all day long and then choose not to cook for myself and eat less than nutritiously sound foods. Even though I was cooking great food for others, I was committing a crime against myself.

Fast food, packaged foods, heavy-salt frozen foods are all ways to avoid being able to understand and handle whole foods. I have committed these crimes against my own stomach and now I want to help you with some community service on your intestines and start giving a few ideas to fill your stomach with more wholesome food, whether you cook or not.