BOCA INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY

Friday, December 23rd, 2011

Good morning,

Have you had your breakfast yet? It is that time of the day for me. I am up, raring to go and I just had one of my favourite breakfasts, chicken slices and cheddar cheese with mayo on buttered Swedish light rye toast....lightly toasted, of course. Don't ask me how I started to eat that combination, it just happened that way. Not much cooking involved but lots of flavour to deal with. Here are a few variations I still have to try. Toasted rye bread with peanut butter and fried bananas, rolled in bread crumbs and fried a second time. I have a great passion for raspberry jam and cheddar cheese and then I also make a mean tuna fish salad. The one thing about food that is always important to the palate is flavour. What I have learned in cooking and through a decade of being in the food industry, anything is a flavour for food. If you can eat it, it is able to flavour food. I have used ginger tea in stews, cold coffee in cookies, chocolate mix in yogurt and all sorts of other things you would not think about. I cannot think about them at the moment either.

Another trick to learn about cooking is the balance between sweet and sour. If you put too much salt in a soup, balance it off with some sugar.....and vice versa. If you don't have any sugar, use honey, sweetners, whatever you substitute for sugar. They all do the job. Most important, don't hesitate to use spices. After a few years anything without spices seems very bland. I make sure that my dishes always include garlic powder, black pepper, and Italian oregano. The spices that come from the Caribbean under those names tend to be very different so be careful when you go shopping. Try a little nutmeg or mace in your mashed potatoes. It creates a whole new flavour for the palate to deal with.

Now, when it comes to cooking on the stove, move away from the traditional pots. I have found that having a bunch of stainless steel mixing bowls is a great way to cook. I can put them directly on the small burner and boil potatoes or spagetti without the worry of the water boiling over the top. The only tradeoff is that sometimes things stick to the bottom and burn a bit. Even so, the net result is good food and no spillage. They also make baking a cake really easy if you are not concerned with the final appearance. Mix the ingredients up in a mixing bowl and simply pop it into the oven. If you want a different shaped cake, oil another mixing bowl, then sprinkle it with a pile of flour and add the cake mixture. You will be able to gather out a great rounded cake for icing. I seldom make my own icing anymore. I leave that up to the experts at Duncan Heinz and I simply buy their icing. Heck, we cannot be experts at everything.

But alas, my days of the wonderful foods and all the cakes and cookies is coming to an end. I have about 8 more days of happiness and then  I stop eating for the rest of my life...well, I stop eating they way I do it now. My goal is to drop ten pounds per month and see where that leads me. Soon I will have a closet full of fat man pants and not know what to do with them. I will have to decide, buy new or head off to the tailor. I just solved a sandal problem yesterday at the Aldo shoe store at the discount mall. While everyone is selling winter shoes and dress shoes, they were selling off the remains of their summer shoes and I found a pair of Chinese made Size 13 sandals that fit me like the Size 10 that I am. Now all I have to do is wear them in so they stop cutting the top of my feet to pieces.

Have a great day and don't let the mosquitos bite....