making fruit juice concentrate
(I’m posting this Kitchen Help along with this one to prepare for a recipe I’ll be posting soon.) Ever since I did a three-month fast from sugar (including maple syrup, honey, agave, and for the first two month, dried fruits), I haven’t had much desire to incorporate back into my diet. Not only did eliminating sugar eliminate a very annoying problem, I found it also drastically reduced my anxiety. However, the challenge is finding new ways to sweeten recipes (which is why I enjoy this one so much). Fruit juice to the rescue! White grape juice is especially sweet, but I’ve found it difficult to find it as a concentrate…
toasting nuts
I’ve burned many a thing in the kitchen either due to impatience or lack of attention…including my fingers. And sometimes I forget to account for minor, yet important, details in recipes. Like roasted nuts. Roasting brings out their flavor, adding new dimension to a recipe which is why it’s a good idea to use roasted nuts when a recipe calls for them. To save time, you could buy pre-roasted nuts, but it often costs more to do so and it can be hard to find certain roasted nuts which are free of added salt and oil. Sooo…that leaves roasting them yourself. Traditionally, nuts are roasted in the oven. When I’ve…
keeping fresh herbs fresh
This cooking tip is one I learned from my mom. Since a good number of my favorite lunch, dinner and dressing recipes call for fresh parsley and cilantro, but in smaller quantities than are available for purchase, I found I often was pitching copious slimy remains of unused herbs. Mom to the rescue. She suggested storing the herbs in a jar of water inside the fridge. It worked! Now my herbs last one-two weeks, which gives me more time to use them up in recipes. Since I still find I can’t use all the herbs before they wilt, my next goal it to explore how well they would keep in…
