Sure, you could go get yourself a fanscy-schmancy garlic peeler — but there’s another way to get the skin off your garlic, fast and easy!

What’s the secret to peeling garlic?

For one single garlic clove, pulled from the papery skin of a whole head of fresh garlic, you just place the clove on a flat surface and press firmly with the flat of a knife or the heel of your hand. The tough base of the clove will split, given enough pressure, and the fresh white garlic clove will slip right out of its skin, ready to use.

Now, that is all fine and good, you may say — if you’re only going to need one or two cloves of garlic for a dish. But sometimes, if you’re making pickles, for example, or cooking up your end-of-season tomato harvest into a generous batch of pasta sauce for a crowd, you need to deal with whole heads of garlic.

One clove at a time? That could take forever!

Here’s how to peel a whole head of garlic in under 10 seconds, courtesy of Todd Coleman and the delicious team at SAVEUR magazine:

So, does it work?

Josh Whitkin says no; Mike Liv says no; but in my test — yes, it works. In fact, this is how I’ve always done it, as instructed by my chef friend Paul.

Here are a couple of tips that may help you, too:

1. You need to be absolutely sure that first smash of the hand is a good one, so the cloves are well separated from the base.
2. When you go to smash the garlic head, you might want to drape a dishcloth or something over it, so the cloves don’t go skittering and flying half across the kitchen.
3. Do use two large bowls. (In their tests, according to what we see in the videos, Josh used a bowl with a cutting board for a lid and Mike used two small bowls, instead of two large bowls. It’s my theory that it makes a difference in how the garlic tumbles around when you “shake the dickens out of it” — it’s all about the abrasion, baby! But we’ll leave that for the physics geeks to explain… Bottom line, however, in my books, two good big deep bowls are definitely the way to go.)
4. The fresher your garlic, the easier it will peel.

Have you tried this method of peeling garlic? Give it a whirl, next time you’re playing in the kitchen, and let us know how it goes!

Image credit: Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos

Photo: _nur

You know all these cans of vegetable broth lined up on the supermarket shelves? — a quick way to start a soup, or make a sauce, or juice up a simple casserole, sure enough. But while the convenience factor is tempting, I’ve never actually broken down and bought a can.

Why?

Because some things are thrifty, and some things are easy, but to go out and buy something in a can makes no sense to me (or my wallet) when you can get the same thing cheaper and just as easily, right in your own kitchen. Bonus, no extra packaging waste to burden poor Mother Nature!

Here’s the thing: You already know that the best way to cook vegetables is to use as little water as possible, right? That keeps all the vitamins and other nutritional goodies from getting washed away. Roasting, stir-frying, steaming — these are all great ways to cook your veggies.

But sometimes, you’ve just gotta boil. Mashed potatoes, just for one example. Or to cook carrots that will be mushy enough to make a batch of Becca’s Uber-fabulous Carrot Souffle, for another example…

So here’s what I do — a kitchen tip I picked up from my ultra-frugal mother, and her mother before her.

Make you own vegetable broth!

Instead of draining away the water you use to boil the vegetables, simply save it in a plastic container and pop it in the freezer. Save your vegetable cooking water for a few meals’ worth — any vegetables will do, the cooking water can pretty much all go in together — and you’ve got yourself a stash of vegetable broth to pull out, thaw, and cook with the next time you want to make wonderful homemade soup or a casserole dish.

Arts and Crafts

This was a spur-of-the-moment craft project, instigated by my young friend Kelly (who was spending March break with her grandmother, our next-door neighbour) and carried out on a stormy evening when our other entertainment options were limited.

Remember the Bendy Holdy Wondervase? If you’ve got a pair of them, you’ve got great fun! Kelly had had her heart set on playing with those flexible vases from the moment she laid eyes on them, so of course that was the very first project we had to do!

And what’s a vase without some flowers?

They’re a bit of a tough job, these flowers, since we didn’t have much in the way of materials — Kelly glued together popsicle sticks and painted them green to make the stems, for instance — but hey, we had fun doing it!

One of the tissue-paper flowers — the white one printed with tiny red hearts — went home with Kelly as a gift for her Grammie, because grandmother’s have a deep appreciation for such things.

Granny Squares

What can I say? For the better part of a year, I’ve been griping about the sad state of the throw pillows on the couch.

Scraps of yarn, a couple of crochet hooks, and an eager young helper with a week’s break from school… and now I’ve got plenty of “granny squares” to fashion into cushion covers!

Healthy Exercise with Dogs

The long-faced greyhound — who can’t get out to his running yard, with all that snow, enjoyed a Novice class in Rally Obedience. (That’s a dog sport that involves high-speed obedience moves around a timed course: great fun! You can learn more about it at RallyObedience.com.)

And when the weather wasn’t too bad outside, we had some doggie visitors… and some lovely brisk walks on snowy trails, coming back home to cinnamon buns and hot chocolate.

…and Nature Appreciation

Because winter in Atlantic Canada may last just a teensy bit longer than we’d really prefer… but, still, it does have its moments!

Gorgeous photos, easy recipes for tasty dishes, not to mention all the health and weight-loss benefits of the Mediterranean and Asian cuisines… MediterrAsian Cooking is my new favourite foodie site.

The blog is built on the idea that Asian and Mediterranean cuisines and lifestyles are not only delicious (who can disagree?) but also a great source of health. The purpose is to live long and healthy and eat gourmet-style along the way.

You’ve had a sneak peek introduction to The Mediterrasian Way cookbook, already, thanks to our friend Guilherme Zo’C — but don’t take Gui’s word for it (or mine, for that matter): you’ll want to go ogle this new blog for yourself. Especially if a tight waistband and the thought of impending swimsuit season *ahem* is making a new healthy diet look good about now…

And all the health and weight-loss benefits aside, we’re talking about the kind of gourmet food that real people (not just those overachieving Martha types for whom I harbour a secret envy) would actually make themselves at home.

There’s a Mediterrasian Cooking group at Flickr , too… but you might not want to look at those beautiful food pr0n shots on an empty stomach: a bit like going grocery shopping when you’re ravenously hungry! My suggestion? Have a nice apple and a bit of cheese, then go ahead and get your menu on!

If you want the word on authentic Italian cooking, where better to find it than in Italy? Today’s guest post is contributed by that modern-day Renaissance Man best known as Guilherme Zo’C — and I think you’ll enjoy his joyful approach to cooking! ~ Jen

How to cook original Italian style

Many of the delicacies gourmets use and abuse these days, were created to overcome food difficulties of the past.

Sun dried tomatoes, just as most other dried food, were invented mostly to overcome food shortage on winter. In southern Italy, people dried the tomatoes in the sun and, to make them last even more, they conserved them into olive oil, a mix that could easily last for a long winter.

These days, anyone can have dried tomatoes just because is delicious, and just because of this, about a month ago I decided to make my own conserve of Sun Dried Tomatoes.

Because I had never done one, I found it appropriate to google a bit before I start. I found many pages with similar, although different, procedures. After a bit of reading I put my thoughts in order and my hands into it.

You can dry the tomatoes yourself by cutting them into halves, cover them with a mix of sugar and salt and let them dry in the sun for a couple of days, but I decided to buy them already dried because it was the conserve I was actually interested in.

For the conserve, pick a clean and preferably sterilized glass pot and pour some Extra Virgin Olive Oil nto it. Put a layer of sun-dried tomatoes, then cover them with olive oil, then another layer of tomatoes and so on.

Be sure the olive oil covers entirely the tomatoes. Cover and let them rest for 2 weeks before using it. If the oil properly covers the tomatoes and you keep the jar from dust, they can last for the whole winter as in the old days before the refrigerator and canned food.

So far, so good, but what is so interesting in this conserve, why didn’t I just buy the conserve, once I have bought the tomatoes already?

Well, the fun part is that you can chose your favorite oil other things to go into the jar with the tomatoes and oil. Among the recipes I read, I found suggestions to add garlic, basil, oregano, peppers… but I also found a warning:

Sorry, I must disagree!

A good part of original Italian cuisine was developed by housewives, little local restaurant cooks and even the poor and the people in general trying to survive to winters, wars and misery. What makes it so good is the intimate cultural relationship they have with food, that naturally becomes a cooking instinct.

I think the only way to really cook Italian style, is to develop an instinct and invent your own dishes on a daily basis, even if your first attempts are so bad that Italians themselves would laugh at it.

Guilherme is a Web Designer and works freelance in northern Italy.

He is happily married to Anna, and in his free time he enjoys cinema, traveling, cooking and eating.

Beets and zucchini, I’m convinced, are devious twins in a secret vegetable conspiracy. Okay, perhaps not quite twins — but both are vegetables, and both are devastatingly good for you so you really have to make an effort to eat them periodically, and both are often grown with great success in home gardens.

This last point, of course, means that both beets and zucchini (and also Swiss chard, but I must draw the line somewhere!) have a habit of showing up at my back door, all unannounced and often in anonymity.

It’s wonderful to have generous gardening neighbours, of course, and over the years I’ve developed a fine collection of tasty zucchini squash recipes… The Free Beet Issue is a relatively new phenomenon around here, however, so I’m still figuring out how to cook them so they taste good enough for even veggie-hating men to try a few.

As a child, I myself was rather keen on both beet roots and beet greens, especially if the former were sweet-pickled and the latter were lightly steamed.

As I age, however, beets begin to thrill me less. A good bit of this can be attributed to the fact that beets, straight from the garden soil (as opposed to straight from the can) call for an awful amount of kitchen work before you can even think of how to cook and serve them.

That’s what I was doing yesterday afternoon: washing the worse of the mud off a gift of a half-bushel basket of freshly pulled beets, cutting the green tops off, washing the greens and taking them for a whiz in the salad spinner, and scrubbing the beet roots again with my little veggie brush.

Done with them yet? Oh no.

The thickest of the beet stems must be cut into manageable lengths for later steaming or other cooking methods — a bit like cutting over-fat asparagus into one-inch pieces so it will cook in the same amount of time as the rest of it. And the beets themselves must be heartily boiled for a half-hour or more, depending on size, then plunged immediately into cold water so the skins will slip off.

Not a difficult or highly skilled culinary task, to be sure, but if you’re a smidgen on the klutzy side (like me) the kitchen can end up looking like some terrible vegetable massacre has taken place — bright red beet juice everywhere! But at last you can get around to browsing the recipe books…

By the way, here’s a tip — save about a half-cup of the liquid you cooked the beets in, when you’re draining them after boiling. A remarkable number of recipes — Harvard Beets, Orange-Glazed Beets, most of the beet recipes in my little card index, it seems — will expect you to have done this and will call for the beet juice in making a sauce. If you try to use plain water instead, and I speak from experience here, there’s a risk that the whole beet dish will turn out to be a rather insipid and unappetizing pink instead of the traditional ruby (beet) red that does look so pretty on the plate.

And this is the point where I’d normally give a recipe or two, but frankly, after all that prep work yesterday, I’m totally bored with beets just now… For those who simply must know what will be on my dinner table tonight, however, you can find a close approximation of my own Harvard Beets recipe on FoodGeeks.com. Enjoy, veggie lovers!

We are the only ones to blame when the old family memories start to fade or our traditions are lost to future generations. Kate Walling suggests a way that we can help to preserve the past— put together a family time capsule! Hey, if it was good enough for our skyscraper-building forefathers…

Why not find a really special container (an antique sea-chest? a Chinese urn? a hand-crafted wooden puzzle box?) to make it a decorative accent to display, a conversation piece as well as a piece of treasured family history?

Preserve Family Traditions with a Time Capsule

by Kate Walling

American kitchens pretty much want for nothing anymore. From the ever-convenient microwave to electric ice cream and bread makers, we have access to tools that help us make just about anything we want in our own kitchens. There is no shortage of ingredients, either. I can get exotic fruits and spices at my local grocery store. I can buy as much flour and butter as I want.

My grandmother Betsy recently explained to me how cooking and meals changed during World War II. During that time, sugar, coffee, butter and beef-steak were among the types of foods that were in short supply. Women were encouraged to plant “victory gardens,” that would provide food for the family if even harder times arose – such as an attack on American soil.

I am amazed by these stories, but I have to say, I want proof! Not that I don’t believe my grandmother, but I want to hold a package of powdered margarine in my hand or see a ration ticket. Through mementos like these, we are able to experience what our grandparents and other relatives went through; know more intimately what was happening in their world. Keepsakes such as these provide us with a unique view of how our families evolved and why certain traditions came to be.

The simplicity of establishing a family tradition is making sure it is passed down from one generation to the next. Stories from the past, whether they involve recipes or what people did for a good time back then, are one of the best ways to keep those memories alive as well as help ensure that family traditions persevere. Another great way to safeguard tradition is to create a time capsule.

Time capsules never seem to decrease in popularity – they’ve simply evolved over the years. When you think of a time capsule, you probably imagine something you fill with mementos and bury, right? Well, today’s time capsules take many forms – from custom-made scrapbooks to video diaries. It is easier than ever to preserve our memories, so why aren’t more of us doing it?

The beauty of a family time capsule is that there are no rules. The dated, penciled-in lines that record your children’s changing heights on the door jam even qualify. Here are some ideas for creating a time capsule for your family that will withstand the test of time:

Birthdays: Create a time capsule that captures the memories of each family member’s birthday. In the beginning of the year, designate a box for birthday memories. Be sure to take pictures at each family member’s birthday celebration and record party attendees, birthday cake details, gifts asked for and those received. Place that year’s birthday memories in the box, date it by year and stash it away. Make a rule that you must wait at least five years to sneak back into a birthday box.

Christmas/Holiday Book: Purchase a large, hard cover journal with blank pages. Ask each family member to record an entry each year, listing three important things that happened to them that year. You can start the book when the kids are in elementary school and maintain it long after they’ve moved away and started their own families, returning each year during the holidays.

Summer Vacation: Does your family return to the same vacation spot each summer? Use this opportunity to capture memories and preserve them in a vacation time capsule. From photos to recipes and videos, be sure to note what the weather was like that week, who was there, and what was the best part? As children grow and start families of their own, they may return to this same place to start their own family traditions.

Family Meals: Do you need to pull out a couple card tables when your family gathers for a meal? If so, chances are there are some well-loved family recipes being served year after year. Ask family cooks to write down these recipes, take pictures of the family during mealtime, record memories and details on special event meals. This way, you can pass on the memories as well as your family’s traditional foods.

Whichever theme you decide on, or even if you don’t choose a theme, be sure to include some standard time capsule components: a recent newspaper, coins, postcards, or a listing of top news events. This will provide a backdrop for your memories when you crack open the capsule sometime down the road. Write names and dates on the backs of photos and other items and do not include perishable items! You may love your Mom’s chocolate chip cookies, but you won’t after 10 years in a box. Use the recipe instead!

We are the only ones to blame when it comes to fading family memories or lost traditions. Taking the time to protect these traditions now is the best way to guarantee that they endure.

About the Author:
Kate Walling is founder of Secret Ingredients (www.TheSecretIngredients.com). She so cherished the traditions passed down in her family that she came up with a way to help other families do the same by creating personalized heirloom cookbooks. Visit http://www.thesecretingredients.com or contact her at kate@thesecretingredients.com. Article Source: ArticlesOn.com.

Here’s a new recipe I snagged last month from the Sobey’s advertising flyer and then adjusted a bit to better suit our family tastes. Nice with that leftover turkey!

Ginger-Roasted Autumn Vegetables

1/4 cup olive oil
6 carrots, peeled
6 parsnips, peeled
2-4 red potatoes, scrubbed, not peeled
2 red onions, peeled
1 small acorn or butternut squash, peeled
1/3 cup fresh ginger root, cut into narrow strips
salt and pepper
juice of 1 orange
2 tsp fresh ginger root, finely diced

Pre-heat the oven to 400°F.

Put the olive oil into a medium-sized roasting pan and heat it in the oven for 5 minutes.

Cut the carrots and parsnips in half, cut the onions into 6 wedges each, and cut the squash and potatoes into fairly large chunks.

Put the vegetables and ginger into the hot oil, add seasoning. Roast for 40 – 50 minutes, turning the vegetables halfway through the cooking time. When vegetables are cooked, remove them to a serving platter and keep warm.

Pour the orange juice into the hot pan and stir in the finely diced ginger. Season to taste and pour the sauce over the roasted vegetables. Serve hot!

Technorati Tags: cooking, recipes

Doing a freezer inventory as part of my planning to have friends in for the evening, I found a shrimp ring that had been frozen for just a few weeks too long. The shrimp were still fine to eat, of course — just looking a little frost-bitten and rubbery.

Solution: buy a new shrimp ring for our guests, and turn the one from the freezer into a quick but slightly special lunch for the family.

Creamed Shrimp on Toast

1. Sauté the shrimp in butter with about 2 Tablespoons each of diced onion and diced green pepper.
2. Make up a batch of White Sauce in the microwave and add a splash of sherry at the last minute.
3. Combine the sauce, shrimp, onion and green pepper, and simmer gently if needed to bring it all to serving temperature and blend the flavours.
4. Spoon onto thick slices of toasted bread.
5. Sprinkle with a little grated Swiss cheese and pop it under the broiler for a minute, just to melt the cheeses.

Technorati Tags: cooking, recipes

This is the time of year for entertaining, and sometimes we get a bit tired of the same-old same-old cheese ball, dip, and veggie platter. Here’s a fancy and festive recipe for a hot appetizer spread that’s easy to put together but makes a big impression on guests!

Cranberry and Artichoke Spread

1 Tbsp butter
1 onion, finely chopped
1 green onion (shallot), minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
8-oz. pkg cream cheese
1/2 cup mozarella cheese, grated
2 cups ricotta cheese
4 or 5 sun-dried tomatoes, coarsely hopped
1/2 cup dried cranberries, chopped
19-oz. can artichoke hearts
1 Tbsp each of fresh basil, parsley, and sage

Melt the butter in a large skillet, and saute the onion, shallot, and garlic until golden.
Put the three cheeses into a food processor and process them until they are smoothly blended. Add the tomatoes, cranberries, artichoke hearts, and chopped fresh herbs, and process just until blended.

Place the mixture in an ovenproof bowl or small casserole (this makes about 4 cups of spread) and back at 350°F for 30 minutes. Serve hot with pita bread triangles or lightly-toasted slices of a French baguette.

If the sun-dried tomatoes are quite dry, soak them in hot water for a few minutes before chopping.

You can use either plain or marinated artichoke hearts for this recipe, and light or low-fat ricotta cheese instead of regular. Do use fresh herbs, however, and don’t try to substitute dried herbs here. It makes all the difference!

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This quick salsa recipe doesn’t call for any cooking, so there’s a nice fresh taste to it that’s extra-welcome in the wintertime.

Just mix together:

2 ripe tomatoes
1/4 cup green pepper, cut up fine
1 Tbsp onion, minced
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 Tbsp red wine
      (or 2 tsp red wine vinegar + 1/2 tsp sugar)
1 or 2 drops of Tobasco sauce
      (or Louisiana hot sauce, to taste)
1/8 tsp salt
a good big pinch of chopped fresh cilantro, if desired

It’s almost too good to use for a dip for tortilla chips, so our family has come up with a few other uses!

• Serve a spoonful on the side of the plate, like relish, with a piece of chicken or a pork chop.
• Spread the salsa on a slice of Italian bread and toast briefly under the broiler, with or without some grated cheese.
• Drop a spoonful into a bowl of plain tomato soup to jazz it up!
• Dollop it onto a baked potato with some sour cream — or use plain low-fat yogourt, if you’re watching calories.

Technorati Tags: cooking, recipes

Fresh herbs are still available in the grocery stores in early December, but they get more limited and more expensive as winter comes on.

To save money, and to be able to cook with the same wide variety of savoury flavours that are available to us in the summertime, I’ve been trying to convert my recipes to using dried herbs. Fortunately, this turned out to be quite easy!

Here are my 3 newly-discovered tips:

1. Use only 1/3 the amount of dried herbs, as their flavour is more intense. If the recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh parsley, for example, use 1 teaspoon of the dried parsley.
2. Crush the dry leaves slightly before adding to the dish you’re cooking, to help release the essential oils.
3. Add dried herbs to the pot near the beginning of the cooking process, so the flavour can develop in the moist heat. Fresh herbs, of course, generally should be added to a cooked dish as late in the process as possible, so that their more delicate flavour, texture, and colour can be best preserved.