Flower waters and extracts provide a light flavor to something that wasn’t there before. You can take the simplest item and take it up a notch. I love that.

Lately I have gotten into this kick with using flower waters, more specifically orange flower water and Rose flower water in my baking (and a few cooking adventures). I love the flavor that the flower waters give to treats that wasn’t there in the original recipe – it’s just an added bonus to an already delectable treat.

I have been hearing people talk about them for sometime and I knew I wanted to try out cooking with them, but I hadn’t found anywhere locally that had them, so I had to go online as usual. When they arrived, I was hooked and have since expanded my waters to extracts and am anxiously awaiting April 26 when I will be sharing a recipe I tried with Jasmine Water. It was amazing. I have several others that I have made with orange water including a chocolate cake that was absolutely divine, and the rose water I have used in morning muffins a few times and even pancakes last weekend – amazing and I will share the recipes soon. I love that they are so versatile and work in almost anything.

My favorites I have found to use in my baked goods are orange flower, rose, lavender and jasmine, but there are so many others that are worth trying too. I also just recently figured out I can make my own waters by using flower extracts. It’s about a Tbs. of extract to about 2 c. water or more if you don’t like such a strong flavor, but I do.  And as you all know, I like making my own stuff. So this works well.

Have you tried using any flower water or extracts in your baking? How were your results?

I admit it, I have a problem.

I think the problem stems from my simple love of books. I’m a writer, an avid reader and well, I have an overwhelming number of books in my house that easily reaches in the tens of thousands – no, I’m actually serious. I’m not kidding. Books of every shape and size, books of every topic both fiction and non-fiction and then don’t even get me started on how many I have on my Kindle. I can’t put anymore on right now.

So the other day we moved some stuff around our living room and I had to move books from one shelf to two and make it look pretty because in the past year or so I’ve bought so many they have no place to go anywhere.  It’s still not done, and it has a ways to go, but I noticed that I have a lot of cookbooks that I either A) have never even looked at or B) If I have looked at them, I haven’t actually used them to cook anything. This is not a good thing.

The biggest reason for this is because I cook everything from scratch and I love to create my own delicious food from my mind, and not so much from paper, that part is a good thing. But with that said, why am I holding onto all of these books and magazines if I am not going to do anything with them?

I’ve decided that after April’s A-Z Challenge, I am going to then create a challenge for myself to use a recipe out of every single cookbook I own. No rules, I can change it up, but it has to stem from the cookbook. And I pull a cookbook out, and I can’t find anything to make – that one goes in the garage sale pile. Cookbooks are taking over my life (well okay, so are writing related non-fiction books as well)

I wish these pictures showed even HALF of the cookbooks I have.

Do you find yourself collecting cookbooks and never using them? 

Where do you find most of your recipes now? Pinterest? The Internet? Other Food Bloggers? 

Tell me about it in the comments!

Learn more about delicious champagne by checking out this awesome infograph created as a toast to champagne. There’s all kinds of fun facts and history and information to be had in this colorful infograph. Enjoy!

Brought To By Wine.com, Purveyors of Fine Wine and Champagne

Shop Smart by Using the 5 & 20 Rule to Read Food Labels by Sunithi Selvaraj

If you are like me, multitasking due to limited time and like to just grab and go when you “Go Grocery shopping”, you don’t have too much time to be poring over Food labels. If you want the best bang for your buck, you probably SHOULD read labels. I am going to share a simple rule and some tips which will have you zipping through food items and reading Food labels like a pro.

Step 1
First, look at serving size and servings per container: Calorie and Nutrient information is for one serving only. If you plan to eat the entire box/pack you have to multiply X number of servings to get the right value .CAUTION: Some products can contain up to 6 servings per box. So, if you plan on eating the whole box…make sure you do the math.

Step 2
Next step, look at the %DV (Daily Value) which is the amount of a nutrient in one serving compared to the RDA (Recommended dietary Allowance) based on a 2000 calorie diet. The %DV tells you what percentage of a particular nutrient you are getting from “that” product. For example, if you are getting 25% calcium from that product, you can gauge that you only need 75% from other foods to reach your goal of 100%.

Step 3

Apply the 5 and 20 rule to the nutrients – General rule of thumb: anything that is 5% and lower is a POOR source and anything that is 20% and above is a HIGH source of that nutrient. Anything in between 5 and 20 is a MEDIUM source.

If you want to get more nutrients such as calcium, fiber, vitamins etc…. in your diet, aim for 20% or above. On the flip side, nutrients that you want to get less in your diet like sodium, cholesterol, saturated fat aim for 5% or less. Needless to say, you should probably not be looking for fiber in dairy product or calcium in a meat product….so use the rule “In Context”.

Important TIP

Look out for terms like “partially hydrogenated”, “trans fat” and steer clear of them. Personally, if a product had too many ingredients, especially ones I don’t understand I usually pass it on.

Sunithi Selvaraj aka Sue , is a Registered Dietitian with a sweet tooth and a passion for eating healthy. Working as a nutritionist with Head Start in Washington DC.  She’s a blogger, tea addict, Health Nut, interactive workshop speaker…. Most important : wife and  mom of two who always experiments her crazy concoctions on her family. Loves revamping recipes and adding some nutrition perks to them.Blogs at www.suesnutritionbuzz.com

So I decided to create a Google Customized Search Engine (CSE) specifically for food blogs. Let me just say, that I am aware there is another one running around the blogosphere. In fact, I used to have it on my blog. It was all fancy, schmancy and pretty and all. However, it is not updated anymore and has not been in a long time, I constantly get the same 5 blogs when I search for just about any recipe, and there is not a single food blog for any of my super awesome foodies I hang out with.  Not to mention that they have a few huge sites in there too  which are NOT blogs, making it NOT a food blog search engine. Just sayin’. Mine is different.

What you will find with the Food Blog Recipe Search: Food Bloggers like you and me. You can search for specific recipes, you can even type in a  food blog name and see if its listed in the search results. But the only results that are going to crop up are exclusively from Food Blogs. Thousands of them. At this point, I have about 1000 of them already in there, but I have a ridiculous list of about 4ooo+ more to add. They have to be added individually so I’ve been at this nearly all day, and it’s time to take a break for a bit.

Note to my personal foodie friends: If you participate in Secret Recipe Club, Crazy Cooking Challenge or you are in a food tribe with me, you can ensure that your food related blog has been entered into the database.

Let me also state, there was criteria I looked for on each and every single blog that I have listed already. Yes, that’s right. I have visited every single blog in this database and checked it out myself.

With the exception of the rare few, each blog needed to:

• be updated within the past 2 weeks with a recipe.
• contain more than 50 recipes across the blog.
• be more than 90 days old.

That’s it. That’s all she wrote. I will be updating this a lot in the coming weeks and you can start using it immediately. Do you see it over there on the right? I will be creating a way for you to put in on your site if you’d like as well. That option should be available Monday  or so.

So go give it a try. Search for cookies or stir fry. Whatever you’re craving. I bet there’s a bunch of diff. recipes in there. Enjoy! And please let me know what you think!

Have you ever tried using a leftover box of chocolates to cook with, or to add to a recipe in place of chocolate chips?

Last year, we received a box of chocolates for Christmas, and we’d eaten a few. I was growing tired of eating them plain and decided to cut up the chocolates and use them as “chocolate chunks” in a chocolate chip cookie recipe I made. I’ve done the same thing putting them in cakes, cupcakes, muffins and even a pie. You could even try them in pancakes or waffles. Yes, I’m a chocolate addict, I would put chocolate in a lot of the things I eat if I could figure out a way to do it. Won’t lie there. And I’m also not wasteful, so using them up this way ensures they get eaten.

What’s your Favorite kind of chocolate?

My favorite is dark chocolate
, and could eat it all day. I do love just about all chocolate, with the exception of white chocolate. I just don’t like eating white chocolate plain. I can put it in a recipe and it really adds flavor, but by itself? I can’t stomach it.

If you’re looking for some good chocolate recipes there are tons to be found right here. There are all kinds of yummy things listed like Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes, Chocolate Banana Pudding, and a rather odd recipe for Chocolate Covered Bacon with Almonds.

So what do you make with chocolate?

The biggest reason to buy organic is to avoid putting pesticides in your body. Much of the grocery store produce is sprayed with loads of it. They are harmful and if you are eating them regularly, you are risking your health and consuming large doses of over 20 different pesticides per day. That’s pretty scary.

These 12 fruits and veggies are known as the Dirty Dozen and are the produce that should always be purchased organic. The biggest reason for this is because most of them have no skin or a very thin skin, which is why they are so easily contaminated. The following is the list and they are listed in order from most to least contaminated.

1. Peaches
2. Strawberries
3. Apples
4. Spinach
5. Nectarines
6. Celery
7. Pears
8. Cherries
9. Potatoes
10. Sweet Bell Peppers
11. Raspberries
12. Imported Grapes

If knowing you’re consuming a large amount of dangerous chemicals isn’t enough reason to buy organic, I don’t really know what is.

So are you buying organic? And if you aren’t… why not?

I try really hard every Christmas to think of gift ideas that coordinate with the recipients goals, hobbies and interests. I have a lot of foodies I buy for each Christmas and that can be a lot of fun!

For instance, what foodie wouldn’t enjoy owning a new set of technique cookware? It’s a great gift idea for anyone, but especially a foodie! I think there are all sorts of gadgets and gizmo’s and appliances you can purchase to make any foodies heart go pitter-patter.

Have you seen these lunch boxes for adults? Not only are they cute and functional, but most have a larger capacity which makes it nice for brining all sorts of things to eat wherever you go. There are such fun patterns and styles to choose from, that not only foodies but any adult in your life will enjoy them.

I asked my husband this year if instead of a Christmas gift, if he would consider looking at kitchen islands with me, so we can get one for our kitchen. It’s the only thing I feel my kitchen is missing and I’ve wanted an island for so long. I really want the one in the picture. Please? Pretty please? It’s the perfect Christmas gift honey!

What are you buying your favorite foodie for Christmas this year?

Foods that change during the freezing process:

Sauces: Most sauces tend to thin out during the thawing process. Mostly due to the added water. You can try thickening them up with a little flour. Also if you notice that a thicker sauce tends to be too thick after thawing, you can thin with a little milk or water.

Flavorings: If you need to add onions, garlic or other things in a recipe, it is recommended to add these after you have thawed and you are ready to cook the dish. Seasonings lose much of their flavor in the freezing process. If you do add them ahead of time, you might add onion or garlic powder after you have thawed to further boost the flavor.

Gravy: Gravy is difficult to use after you have frozen it because the fat separates during the freezing process. You can blend the gravy or stir it once it has thawed to get it back to where you need it to be.

Veggies: These are mentioned in yesterday’s article. It would be wise to undercook them before you freeze them, so they can finish cooking when you are ready to prepare the meal for eating. If they are raw, they usually get a bit rubbery. You can however use them for cooking purposes at this point and you’d never notice the difference.

Cheese: They become more dried out during the freezing process. You can use them for grating or crumbling, but they will not slice.

There are many more, but this is a pretty good list to get started. Do you know of any others that are still edible but that will change during the freezing process?

One of the most common things I hear is that the meal they tried didn’t freeze well. During class I gave them a huge list of foods that don’t freeze well, yet some still continue to try and see if they might.

Some foods don’t freeze well, but are still salvageable after the reheating process because the food can be mixed up again and that ingredient might be mixed in again.

Here is a helpful list to get you going in your freezer cooking adventure.

Foods that don’t freeze well:

Cream: This is for just about any milk or cream related product. Milk and cream don’t freeze well at all, and it is safer and smarter to save that ingredient to mix in later if at all possible. Examples: Sour cream, cream fillings, frostings made with milk or cream.

Soft Cheese: Most soft cheeses do not freeze well. Cream cheese is one of such cheeses and it usually gets watery as it thaws or cooks. While sometimes it can be mixed back in and the taste not affected, it is recommended that you save that part for when the meal is thawed and you are ready to cook or bake. (other examples are blue cheese, goat cheese and any cheese that is softer and spreadable)

Greasy and/or Fried Foods: Have you ever tried to reheat French fries or chicken nuggets that have already been cooked? Fried foods tend to get soft and squishy when reheated and the grease is released during the process making the food taste less than desireable when reheated for a meal. Pizza is one such example of an item that gets even more greasy when reheated.

Mayonnaise: This is a bad idea in any item that needs to be frozen. The ingredients in the mayonnaise tend to separate during the freezer/thawing process and no matter how hard you try to mix it in, it doesn’t taste the same. It is recommended that you use a salad dressing instead, but you can also just add the mayonnaise when you are ready to actually cook the dish.

Cooked Vegetables: Cooked vegetables, as well as chopped up raw potatoes that have been put into a dish, tend to get very soft and mushy and sometimes even blend into the dish making it thicker and less appealing. The taste doesn’t change much, especially with a stew or soup, but it really doesn’t look very appetizing. One suggestion is to cook the vegetable in question (especially with potatoes) for only one quarter to half the length of time normally suggested. Then freeze immediately.

Watch tomorrow for a list of items that change somewhat during the freezing process, and offered up suggestions or solutions on how to fix the problem.