Public Domain photo via pixabay.com
1. Keep your cooking area clean.
A cluttered kitchen can lead to adding the wrong ingredients. Worse, if the kitchen is not clean, it could lead to disease. You should disinfect the counters and any other surfaces you’ll be using, such as cutting boards, before and after preparing a meal. This is especially true if you are cooking poultry or any type of raw meat.
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Homemade Pasta, Part II
Using your hands, flatten the first ball of dough in your palm. You want the finished thickness to be roughly half an inch. If you are using a slot machine, you want to be sure that the width is the same size or smaller than the width of the pasta machine slot. When feeding the pasta machine, make sure you keep hold of your pasta, but avoid pulling it as it goes through the machine. You usually want the setting of the machine to be at a one.
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Photo Public Domain via pixabay.com
Did you know that Italian lasagna looks different from American? In the U.S., we tend to use lasagna noodles with ripples in the end. Whereas in Italy, lasagna noodles are usually un-rippled.
Did you know that the two main ingredients — tomatoes and pasta — of much of Italian cuisine are not native to Italy? Noodles were imported from Asia and tomatoes from the New World. But, they embraced those ingredients and made them their own.
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Photo by qoo monster (Flickr)
[CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Pasta History
The very first commercial pasta plant within the U.S. was founded in 1948 in Brooklyn, New York. Many more plants were build over the next few years that the manufacturers and retailers decided create the National Pasta Association. This way they could pool their resources and help each other with issues in marketing and manufacturing. The NPA was founded in 1981.
But noodles got their start much, much earlier than that. In the 4th century B.C., pasta was eaten by the Chinese and was even mentioned in Greek Mythology. There are two notable figures who have been credited with the introduction of pasta. Marco Polo, who brought noodles from Asia to the Western world, and Thomas Jefferson, who brought the first “maccaroni” maker to America n 1789 and later invented a pasta machine of his own.
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If you are a regular in your kitchen, then chances are you know exactly how frustrating opening a can can be. While sometimes you are able to get the can open without any incident, other times the can opener either stalls, forcing you to open […]
I’m here to let you know that choosing the right bread maker is relatively easy. All you need to do is visit your local store that sells kitchen appliances and choose the one that best suits your needs. Of course, the Internet can play an important role in helping you research before you drive around from store to store. So, how do you choose the right bread maker?
Take a Look at the Space in Your Kitchen
You need to make sure that you have enough room for your bread maker. Though not overly big, it will require some storage, so you want to make sure that you have plenty of space to place the bread maker when not in use.
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Photo via pixabay.com [CC0 Public Domain]
Do you feel that way about your special someone? If you do, you might want to share a special meal for two tomorrow in celebration of Valentine’s Day. You could go out and enjoy dinner together at your favorite restaurant or the restaurant where you shared your first date.
But then, there is something about a home-cooked meal that says “I love you” even more than an nice restaurant. The good thing is that cooking for two can be done and can be a lot of fun if you pour your heart and soul into the meal planning and preparations. (Of course, if you’re just thinking about this today, you might be a bit pressed for time.) That’s why I’m posting this today (besides it being a Wednesday, the day I usually post).
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