Category: Tips

Pizza Dough

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Pizza Dough

  • Servings: 1 Medium 14 inch pizza, 8 slices
  • Difficulty: Easy
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Here is a pizza dough recipe that has 5 ingredients and is quick. Every recipe I’ve ever done for pizza dough required bread flour. I needed to use a bread machine or my large mixer. Right now, during this pandemic, flour is a commodity and bread flour is a rarity. This little recipe makes a nice 14 inch thin crust pizza.

Ingredients

  • 1 1/4 cup of white flour (I use unbleached flour)
  • 2 tbsp of cornmeal
  • 1 tsp of salt
  • 1/2 cup of low fat or zero fat milk
  • 2 tbsp of olive oil

Directions

  1. Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl
  2. Stir in milk and oil until a soft dough forms
  3. Turn dough on a lightly floured surface and kneed 10 times. Shape into a ball.
  4. Cover dough with inverted bowl for 10 minutes
  5. Roll dough into 14 inch circle
  6. Bake in preheated oven at 400 for 8 minutes. Top with your favourite toppings and bake for another 15-20 minutes until golden brown.

  • If dough is too dry while forming dough, add milk one tablespoon at a time
  • I use a pizza stone. If you do, preheat for 10 minutes at 400

Nutrition Per Serving

  • Calories 112
  • Sugar 0.7 g
  • Carbohydrates 17 g
  • Protein 3 g
  • Fiber 0.6 g

This is where the fun begins. What you put on it is the way to make it your own. You can use a bechamel sauce with chicken and peppers. You can use a salsa and ground beef. You can do traditional pizza sauce with pepperoni. If you are a meat lover you could do bacon, ground beef, pepperoni. The possibilities are endless. Have fun and make it your own. Let me know what kind of toppings you decide on.

The Virtues of Rice

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The Virtues of Rice

Rice and it’s flexibility

Someone told me this week that rice is boring. I sat there shaking my head as I couldn’t believe anyone could think that. Rice is the most widely consumed staple food in the world. As a cereal grain it is the third highest worldwide production after sugar cane and corn.

You have so many varieties of rice from long grain, short grain, white and brown, you have basmati, your have jasmine, just to name a few. And then comes their preparations. You can have them plain. By changing the fluid that you use you change the flavour. Example chicken broth or tomato juice vs water. Then there are spices. Examples oregano, cayenne, Cajun spices, Thai based spices, and so on. You can steam it, your can make it in a pot, your can fry it once it’s cooked. You can sweeten it and make rice pudding. It is a good source of carbohydrate with some protein thrown in for good measure. It is something that is relatively economical and by adding things like black beans or cheap cuts of meat you can have a good economical nutritious meal. The options and possibilities are endless.

Yesterday I made a pork fried rice with vegetables and edamame beans. Recipe to come at a later date.

This is one staple you can have so much fun with and never fear trying new things with rice and make it your own.

Tips : Preparation

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Something we often forget to do when cooking. Preparing all your utensils and ingredients before you start. If everything is ready and handy, you won’t stress yourself out by having to stop and look for your 1/2 teaspoon measure or your celery seeds at a critical moment making you lose your focus and feel stressed.

Prep

Cooking is supposed to be fun. Enjoy your time in the kitchen!

Tips : Making Your Plate Look More Full

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When you are watching portions, sometimes deceiving your eyes is key to success. I use a few tricks.

Smaller plates for me and larger plates for my husband. Correl has a great set for that. Another truck is filling the bottom with more veggies.

As you see below, it was pasta night. I added spinach to the bottom of the plate, put the pasta on top with tomato black bean sauce and a little cheese. This looks good, and I believed I had a huge plate. Don’t tell my stomach, it never realized.

If you have tricks please feel free to pass them on.

Tips : Inexpensive Protein

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Protein is an essential part of our diet. Some proteins are healthier than others and some are quite expensive.  One of the most inexpensive, versatile and tasty proteins I have found are black beans.

You can get them in a can which are precooked, preferable the sodium reduced kind. They are convenient and inexpensive. Personally I prefer the dried beans that I soak overnight and cook the next day to my preferred tenderness and flavour. I will sometimes add a jalapeno or two for some kick.  These great little beans can be used in soups, dips, with eggs and salsa, and even in brownies. Yes you read that correct,  brownies.  Don’t knock it until you tried it.

Amount Per 100 grams :

  • Calories 339
  • Total Fat 0.9 g
  • Cholesterol 0 mg
  • Sodium 9 mg
  • Potassium 1,500 mg
  • Total Carbohydrate 63 g
  • Dietary fiber 16 g
  • Sugar 2.1 g
  • Protein 21 g
  • Calcium 16%
  • Iron 48%
  • Vitamin B-6 15%

Tips : Maple Syrup

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SqueeseBottle

Often maple syrup crystallizes at the bottom of the glass syrup dispenser. By fluke our glass dispenser broke so we were left scrambling for another option.

 

We had just finished a ketchup squeeze bottle. After a very complete wash, we filled it with a can of maple syrup. It works likes magic. No spills, no sticky residue on the side, and best of all no crystallization at the bottom.

 

We are not sure why it works but we aren’t going to complain.