Archive for February, 2010

Two Easy Gluten Free Recipe Ideas

Having a gluten free nutrition is very important when you suffer from coeliac disease. Eating out can be tricky, because you can never be sure of the ingredients in restaurant meals. This is why learning how to cook and preparing your own meals is a good idea, if you want to stay symptoms-free.

Here are two recipes which are delicious and gluten-free. One is for a main dish and the other is for some gluten free cookies which I’ve tasted at one of my friends and I can assure you they are great.

Southwestern Chicken Gluten Free Lasagna

Ingredients:

  • 8-10 uncooked Rice Lasagna
  • 1 pound chicken breats, coarsely ground
  • 1 egg (egg substitute is also fine)
  • 2 cups low fat ricotta (which can be replaces with  cottage cheese)
  • 1 cup reduced fat cheddar (if not available, try Monterey Jack cheese instead)
  • 2 cups cooked beans (kidney or pinto), mashed
  • 1 teaspoon cumin
  • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (or 1 garlic clove, minced)
  • 1 cup prepared picante sauce, divided in half
  • 1 cup chopped green chili peppers
  • 2 cups diced tomatoes in tomato sauce (canned or homemade)

Cooking:

Mix the egg with the cheese in a bowl. Saute chicken in a frying pan until fully cooked. Add the beans, about 1/2 cup of water, cumin, garlic powder, 1/2 cup picante sauce and the chili peppers. In a separate bowl, mix tomatoes and remaining 1/2 cup picante sauce. In a 9×13 inch baking dish, put the following ingredients in layers: tomato sauce, lasagna noodles, chicken/bean mixture, cheese mixture. Repeat until you finish the mixtures. Cover the dish and bake at 350 F for 1 hour or until done.

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies


This is a quick video showing you how to make delicious gluten-free chocolate chip cookies. The film is made by a newbie in the gluten-free world, but it’s really great.

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What Love Movies Would You Bet On?

After reading about the possibility of betting on love movies that make you cry or on any other kind of movies, I wonder what are some love and romance movies you’d bet on, if you were to invest some money into the new Cantor Exchange system of betting on a movie’s box office success or failure. I haven’t made up my mind yet if I really want to risk some money on this game, but I think it could be fun to try it at least once.

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Betting On Love Movies

It’s interesting how so many people have this desire to bet on something. After betting on horses, after “investing” in the stock market, in bonds, investment funds and other such things that make lots of people lose their money, now we can bet on a movie’s success or failure.

Cantor’s New Futures Exchange turns movies into commodities one can make wagers on, via their website, cantorexchange.com, where users can make bets on the future box office performance of various movies.

The money is real, but so are losses, in case your prediction fails to become true. It’s funny how love movies that make you cry can make you cry even harder now, if you bet on their success and they fail.
Read more on CBS News

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How to Spot a Fake Coach Bag

As designer handbags usually come with barely affordable price tags, there’s no wonder that fake bags manufacturers are thriving. Many girls wish to show off with a designer bag hanging on their shoulder, but few of them afford to pay that kind of money for a bag. Even cheaper brand names such as Coach bags or Botkier are subject to counterfeits. Many times, those fake leather goods look so well that it’s really hard to spot they aren’t original.

It can be hard to tell the difference between a real Coach purse and a Coach knockoff, especially if you’re at your first Coach purse and you don’t know what to look for when making your purchase. Learn these few simple tips to quickly and easily pick out an authentic Coach handbag, so you can be sure you pay for the real stuff and not for a cheap replica. For instance, did you know that Coach never wrap their bags’ hardware in plastic? If you see plastic wraps on the hardware, you’re 100% surely going to pay the real price for a fake purse. This video discloses other excellent tips to help you differentiate between an authentic Coach purse and a replica.

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Cleaning Mildew Off Bamboo Blinds

One of the most frequent problems with window blinds is cleaning. Depending on the material blinds are made of, cleaning can be easy or it can be a real pain. Moreover, natural materials such as wood, bamboo, reeds or grass are prone to develop mold and mildew over time, especially if they are installed in wet rooms. Cleaning mildew off bamboo blinds needs to be done at least three times a year or as often as needed. I’ll show you one way to do it, but I’m sure you know other methods too and I invite you to detail them here.

Here’s my method of cleaning bamboo blinds:

  • First of all, I remove them from the windows. It’s tempting to skip this step, but if you don’t take them down, it’s almost impossible to clean them thoroughly on both sides, so your work won’t be as efficient as if you sink the blinds in a cleaning solution.
  • I prepare a solution containing three parts water and one part laundry bleach, plus a few drops of vinegar
  • With the blinds fully soaked in the solution, I wipe them thoroughly with a soft cloth, until all debris and mildew accumulations are gone.
  • I then rinse the blinds very well with the shower, until the water runs clear.
  • I let the blinds dry completely at air, and only then I hang them back at the windows.

As a special cautionary measure, I’d recommend you wear latex gloves when wiping the blinds, because the bleach could harm your skin.  A preventive fungicide treatment could help keep mildew off your bamboo blinds for a longer time, so doing it could be a good idea.

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Pan-Fried Pork Chops Video Recipe


As I don’t have a good video camera, I can’t make movies to show you how to cook the recipes I’m publishing here. Nonetheless, I found another solution, which I hope will help you cook delicious meals: a video-recipes series of posts from famous and less famous cooks. For today,  chef Keith Snow demonstrates his very popular & delicious pork chops recipe.

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How To Freeze and Store Marinated Pork Chops

Marinated meat is much better than usual steaks. That’s because of the action active ingredients in a marinade have upon the meat tissues, breaking them up and dissolving connective tissue (which is responsible for the toughness of some meat cuts). The issue with marinades is that the process of marinating really calls for larger batches of marinade and pork chops, otherwise it’s wasteful of the marinade ingredients, especially of the more expensive herbs and spices.

Pork chops can be marinated in advance, then frozen separately for later cooking one at a time, but only in the following conditions:

  1. Freeze only fresh pork chops. If the meat was already frozen before you use it, do not freeze it one more because it’s detrimental to your health and may determine food poisoning.
  2. Use special freezer bags to store the marinated pork chops. You can add a bit of the marinade inside the bags, for preserving even more flavor.
  3. Make separate portions, small enough to be cooked at once and eaten within 1-2 days. Once frozen, cutting the meat or separating the chops will be almost impossible, so it’s wiser to think ahead when you make the packs for the freezer.

Can any of you offer us some more tricks for freezing marinated pork chops?

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Cranberry Pork Chops

Pork chop recipes are among the special dishes I enjoy cooking quite frequently. Nonetheless, pork meals can become boring if there’s no alternation of flavors and “auxiliary” ingredients. A touch of creativity is always needed, be it in the kitchen or in other areas of life. Please notice I said “a touch”. If you get too creative, people around you might get scared. It’s up to each of us to decide how far we can push our creativity in order not to trouble the fragile balance of our little personal world.

What I’m suggesting today is an unusual main dish recipe. It’s unusual because it brings together pork chops with cranberries and with orange marmalade in the same dish, in a sweet and sour surprise for your gustatory system and eventually for your brain.

Ingredients

  • 1/3 cup fresh cranberries, chopped (frozen ones are also fine, but the real taste and aroma are always in fresh foods)
  • 2 tablespoons orange marmalade
  • 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 pork chops (bone-in, about 1 inch thick)
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • salt and pepper to taste

Cooking Instructions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Oil an average size baking dish (cover is not needed, so don’t worry if your dish doesn’t have a lid).
In a bowl, mix the cranberries with the orange marmalade and with the ground cloves. With a meat knife, carefully cut a pocket in each pork chop by cutting into it toward the bone; spoon the cranberry mixture into these pockets.
Place the pork chops in the baking dish and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Pour one tablespoon of honey over each chop, trying to cover as much as you can of its surface. Bake the food uncovered for about 50 minutes. The honey will create a sweet glaze over the chops, which will combine with the sourness of the cranberries into an exotic taste you’ll either love or hate (there’s no middle way here).

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Hello world! This is Charlotte

Welcome to my website! I’m Charlotte and I can’t wait to meet you all, to share my stories with you. Hopefully, you’ll be sharing yours as well. That’s what the comments section is for.

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