I love Halloween because it’s the time of year where there’s candy at every turn but sometimes, you’ve had your fill and want something different. I know I’m not the only one so when I threw Halloween party last weekend, I served candy but I also baked some Halloween treat cookies and decorated them to looks like black cats, pumpkins and witches. They were a big hit with everyone and several of my guests asked for the recipe so I thought I’d post it for friends and family and anyone else who might be interested in baking Halloween cookies. So, here’s the icing recipe that I used. I snagged it from Celebrations and made some tweaks in the ingredients and preparation.

As Easter draws near, we’re often left scrambling trying to find the right ham recipe for easter dinner, or even the right demi-glaze to make for that ham. What about dessert? Surely you’re going to need a great dessert recipe, right?

Well, I’ve included a couple of my own for your own use. Please feel free to use these recipes for your next family gathering and enjoy the feast that is sure to come.

1) Cinnamon Pork Roast
Serves 6
Ingredients:
• 3-1/2 to 4 pounds boneless center-cut pork loin roast
• 2 tablespoons cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 onion (about 1/2 cup), finely grated
• 4 garlic cloves (about 2 tablespoons), minced
• 1 or 2 tablespoons of soy sauce
Recipe Properties:

Combine cinnamon, salt pepper, sugar, onion, and garlic. Blend in 1 tablespoon soy sauce. If not spreadable, add another tablespoon of soy sauce. Rub mixture into loin. Refrigerate 3 hours to overnight. Grill pork over medium-low indirect fire 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hours or until the internal temperature is 155 degrees F. Allow to rest for 5 to 10 minutes before cutting into thin slices.

2) Raspberry Glazed Ham
Ingredients:
1 (4-5 lb.) fully cooked boneless smoked ham
2 tbsp. lemon juice
1/3 c. seedless red raspberry jam
1/4 c. dry white wine
2 tsp. cornstarch
1 tbsp. butter

Recipe Properties:
Score ham in diamond pattern, if desired. Place on rack in a shallow roasting pan. Bake, uncovered, in 325 degree oven for 1-3/4 hours. Meanwhile, in small saucepan, blend wine and lemon juice into cornstarch. Add about half of the jam. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Stir in remaining jam and butter. Heat and stir until butter is melted. Brush ham with raspberry glaze. Bake 10 minutes more. Spoon remaining glaze over ham. Garnish with watercress, if desired.

3) Scalloped Zucchini

Ingredients:
• 2 small zucchini, cut up and peeled
• 1 egg, beaten with one fourth cup whole milk
• 1 ounce pepper cheese
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 to 2 slices white bread, torn in pieces
• 1-4 ounce can mushrooms or 4 ounces fresh, sliced if large
• 1 ounce smoked sausage
Recipe Properties:

Mix all ingredients in a buttered casserole dish. Bake at 350F for about 30 minutes. Easy dish to make, goes great as a side dish.

As you can see, there are some great recipes to make for Easter. Go ahead and stop by http://www.easterrecipes.org to find more recipes along with pictures and reviews of your favorites as well as ones you’ve never heard of. Good eating this holiday!

This article was prepared by Article Authors
for this Easter Recipe Site Easter Recipes

The following types of wheat are classified based primarily on color, hardness of the kernel, and time of year the wheat is planted.

• Hard red winter
• Soft red winter
• Hard red spring
• Hard white
• Soft white
• Durum

Generally, flours that are milled from hard wheat have high quality gluten and are considered strong.

Due to the difference in quality among many types of wheat, millers typically blend flours to achieve a consistent product time after time. Readily available to most home bakers, all purpose flour is actually a blend of hard and soft wheat flours.

Regardless of the type of wheat, milling the endosperm of wheat berries or kernels yields white flour. This process also removes so much natural nutrients and vitamins that subsequent enrichment can never completely replace them. Therefore, enriched white bread is by no means nutritionally equal to whole wheat bread.

In addition, “wheat bread” on the label does not mean that it is made from whole wheat flour. It is just to distinguish the bread from those made from other types of grains.

Breads made from whole wheat flour should normally have “whole” or “100 percent whole” before the term “wheat bread”.

Compared to whole wheat flour, white flour

• Has a longer shelf life
• Contains more gluten proteins per weight
• Is more digestible

To produce whole wheat flour, the entire wheat kernels that include the fibrous bran, nutritious and fatty embryo or germ, and the starchy endosperm are ground uniformly.

Although whole wheat flour and graham flour are often used interchangeably, there is a minor physical difference. In the milling of graham flour, the outermost part of the wheat berries(bran) is not as finely ground as the germ and endosperm.

Finally, all flours tend to lose moisture during storage. Moisture content also varies by brands and seasons. Therefore, as home bakers of breads, cakes, and cookies, we may sometimes need to adjust the amount of flour used in a particular recipe. This is to maintain a desirable flour to liquid ratio.

The author of this article loves to bake breads and cookies. Visitors to her Web site, Baking Perfect Homemade Cookies With Five Essential Rules, can enjoy insightful information on cookie ingredients, helpful baking tips & techniques, and many easy cookie recipes with illustrative images.

Copyright 2006 by Trinh Lieu

Low carb diets are known as the diets that let you eat well, enjoy your food and still lose weight. But, what are low carb diets?

Popular well known diets that are low in carbohydrates are the Atkins Diet, the Zone Diet and the South Beach Diet. All these diets work by restricting carbohydrates in the diet and replacing them with fats and protein using low carb recipes. Some doctors and nutritionists think that low carb diets can reduce weight, lower cholesterol and blood pressure and also treat hypoglycaemia and type 2 diabetes. A low carb diet means reducing your carbohydrate consumption to less than 10% of your daily calorific intake.

How Do Low Carb Diets Work?

When we consume a meal high in carbohydrates, our raised blood sugar stimulates the production of insulin in the pancreas. Insulin is needed by the body for blood sugar to be used but a side effect of insulin production is the depositing of fat and a feeling of hunger, so we eat more carbs and the vicious circle starts again. If we start to reduce our intake of carbs by eating low carb recipes we can reduce the body’s production of insulin and increase the body’s production of glucagon. Glucagon helps the body to burn fat.
If we dramatically reduce our intake of carbs, the body can go into a state of ketosis where fat is burned, insulin levels are reduced, blood sugar is balanced and we lose weight.

Benefits of Low Carb Diets:-

• Weight loss through fat burning
• Control of blood sugar levels
• Lower cholesterol levels and blood pressure
• Control of appetite - don’t feel hungry and restricted like with some diets.
• Lower levels of insulin

Tips for Following a Low Carb Diet

Following any new diet can be tricky at first until we have learned the basics but there are many resources online with instructions on how to follow a low carb diet and low carb recipes. Here are a few tips to make life easier:-

1. Lower your intake of carbohydrates to less than 10% of your daily calorific intake.
2. Drink plenty of water.
3. Avoid caffeine.
4. Supplement your diet with a good vitamin and mineral supplement and take psyllium husk capsules to prevent constipation.
5. Look online for tasty low carb recipes, most collections of recipes will include some low carb ones.
6. Cut out foods containing white four and white sugar.
7. Stick to the “allowed” lists of foods and concentrate on this list rather than thinking about what you can’t eat.
8. Check food labels for carb content.
9. Plan ahead and prepare - go shopping, sort through cupboards and rid your fridge of foods you’re not allowed and make a recipe collection of low carb recipes.
10. Buy a pocket carb counter or use an online one to help you count the carbs in foods and in your low carb recipes.

The history of American soul food can be traced all the way back to the days of slavery. More often times than not, the slaves were given the most undesirable part of the meal, the leftovers from the house. Pairing this with their own home-grown vegetables, the first soul food dishes were invented. After the slaves were freed, most of them were so poor that they could only afford the most undesirable, inexpensive cuts of meat available to them. (The leftover, unwanted parts of a pig such as tripe, tongue, ears, and knuckles). As in the days of slavery, African-Americans used their own home-grown vegetables and things they could catch or kill to complete their meals.

In the modern United States, soul food has truly evolved. It has become part of the African-American culture, bringing family members together on all occasions from birthdays to funerals, to spend time together preparing meals. The history of soul food is mainly an oral one; recipes were never really written down so while two families may be preparing identical meals, chances are that they don’t taste very much alike. Different ingredients, cooking methods, and techniques go into preparing soul food meals, causing the end results to come out differently.

One of the most obvious and widely-recognized characteristics of African-American soul food is the fact that hot sauce and more intense spices are incorporated into meals as often as possible. For this reason, soul food is not for those who can’t take the heat or are prone to heart burn!

Another characteristic of true African-American soul food is that nothing is ever wasted. Having originated from the leftovers of just about anything. Stale bread was quickly converted into stuffing or a bread pudding. Over ripe bananas were whipped up into banana puddings, and other ripe fruits were put into cakes and pies, and leftover fish parts were made into croquets or hush puppies.

Sunday dinners are definitely the times when soul food is most commonly seen on tables. Sunday dinners are a time for African-American families to get together to prepare and partake in a large meal. Sunday dinners normally take up the entire day (normally following a church ceremony), and family members come from far and wide to partake in this meal together. Sunday dinners took place in the form of potlucks, also, where various family members contribute a dish or two and form a big, fine meal. Collard and mustard greens, kale, ribs, corn bread, fried chicken, chitlins, okra, and yams are all excellent examples of African-American soul food that might be found at a Sunday meal.

Soul food is not generally a healthy option for a person that must monitor their diet. Fried foods are generally prepared with hydrogenated oil or lard, and they usually tend to be flavored and seasoned with pork products. Since this may be what contributes to such a high percentage of African-Americans that are significantly overweight, soul food preparation methods are now slowly starting to be refined, bringing a lot more healthy options to the table. Rather than the increasingly unhealthy pork products, use of turkey-based products is becoming more and more popular as time passes. The fried foods that are so beloved of the culture can now be prepared using a lower fat canola or vegetable oil.

Kirsten Hawkins is a food and nutrition expert specializing the Mexican, Chinese, and Italian food. Visit www.food-and-nutrition.com/ for more information on cooking delicious and healthy meals.

How should people go about acne skin care? This article enumerates some basic guidelines to go by. For example, you should clean your skin gently, avoid frequent handling of the skin, avoid sun tanning, and lastly, women should choose their cosmetics carefully and men must shave carefully for good acne skin care.

People with acne may try to stop outbreaks and oil production by scrubbing their skin and using strong detergent soaps. However, scrubbing will not help acne skin care; in fact, it can make the problem worse. Most doctors recommend that people with acne gently wash their skin with a mild cleanser for acne skin care, once in the morning and once in the evening.

Patients should ask their doctor or another health professional for advice on the best type of cleanser to use for acne skin care. Acne skin care also means washing your skin after heavy exercise. Patients should wash their face from under the jaw to the hairline; rough scrubs or pads should not be used. It is important that patients thoroughly rinse their skin after washing it. Astringents are not recommended for acne skin care unless the skin is very oily, and then they should be used only on oily spots. Doctors also recommend that patients regularly shampoo their hair as part of acne skin care. Those with oily hair may want to shampoo it every day for proper acne skin care.

People who squeeze, pinch, or pick their blemishes risk developing scars. Acne lesions can form in areas where pressure is frequently applied to the skin. Frequent rubbing and touching of skin lesions should be avoided if you take your acne skin care seriously.

Men who shave and who have acne can try electric and safety razors to see which is more comfortable for acne skin care. Men who use a safety razor should use a sharp blade and soften their beard thoroughly with soap and water before applying shaving cream. Nicking blemishes can be avoided by shaving lightly and only when necessary.

A suntan or sunburn that reddens the skin can make blemishes less visible and make the skin feel drier for a little while. But the benefits are only temporary and cannot take the place of proper acne skin care. The sun can seriously damage skin, promote aging of skin, and cause skin cancer. Furthermore, many of the medications used to treat acne make a person more prone to sunburn.

People being treated for acne often need to change some of the cosmetics they use. Acne skin care demands that all cosmetics, such as foundation, blush, eye shadow, and moisturizers, should be oil free. Patients may find it difficult to apply foundation evenly during the first few weeks of treatment because skin may be red or scaly, particularly with the use of topical tretinoin or benzoyl peroxide.

Lip products that contain moisturizers may cause small, open and closed comedones to form. Hairstyling products that come in contact with the skin along the hairline can cause burning or stinging in people with acne. Acne skin care products that are labeled as noncomedogenic (do not promote the formation of blemishes) should be used for acne skin care; in some people, however, even these products may cause acne.
Mike Spencer is committed to helping people promote and protect their health, and has been doing so for many years. Here Mike talks about some help tips and techniques to combat acne. Read more about Mike’s Acne Prevention Tips here Acne Prevention Tips
Mike Spencer
http://www.acne-products-reviewed.com
http://www.best-buy-acne-treatments-that-work.com

Acne Skin Care Tips that Work

Consuming two or more cups of tea a day over a period of time
may reduce the risk of ovarian cancer dramatically, suggests a
new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. And
each additional cup of tea per day appears to provide
significantly more protection, investigators found.

Because tea is the second most-consumed beverage in the world,
its potential health benefits could have important implications
for human health and disease prevention, says the Tea Council of
the USA.

“An abundance of research suggests that tea may play a role in
the reduction of risk of cardiovascular disease and various
types of cancer,” notes Joe Simrany, president of the trade
organization. “These new findings suggest that drinking tea
regularly may help to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer as well.
This is good news and points to yet another area where tea may
have a positive effect on health.”

46 Percent Lower Ovarian Cancer Risk

Researchers at Sweden’s National Institute of Environmental
Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, examined the association
between tea consumption and risk of ovarian cancer in 61,057
women 40 to 76 years of age who took part in the
population-based Swedish Mammography Cohort.

The participants completed a validated 67-item food frequency
questionnaire at enrollment between 1987 and 1990, and were
followed for cancer incidence through December 2004.

At baseline, 68 percent of the participants reported drinking
tea — primarily black tea — at least once a month. During 15.1
years of follow-up, 301 women were diagnosed as having
epithelial ovarian cancer. The researchers found tea consumption
of two or more cups of tea per day had a significant inverse
association with risk of ovarian cancer.

Specifically, women who drank two or more cups of tea per day
experienced a 46 percent lower risk of ovarian cancer, compared
with women who drank no tea. Each additional cup of tea was
associated with an 18 percent decreased risk of ovarian cancer.

Additional Health Benefits

A multitude of research studies suggest that drinking tea may
contribute to overall health. Potential benefits include the
following:

- Reduced risk of heart attack and stroke, and improved blood
vessel function;

- Less risk of certain cancers, including colorectal and skin
cancers;

- Decreased levels of oxidative DNA damage and increases in
antioxidant levels in the bloodstream; and

- Oral health benefits — researchers believe certain compounds
in tea may inhibit bacteria that cause bad breath and plaque,
and the fluoride content in tea supports healthy tooth enamel.