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How Healthy is Mexican Food

If you ask majority of Americans on when the last time they ate Mexican food, usually it is within the last week. Mexican foods have become very popular in the United States. The problem is that the Mexican foods in America are not the same as they are in Mexico. Americans have added super fat and super sized the meals. If you go down to Mexico, you may not even find the same dishes because the dishes were created in America. Authentic Mexican food is rich in fresh vegetables, protein, and nutritious vitamins and spices.

Taco Bell comes to mind as a popular food chain that serves Mexican foods. You will find tacos, burritos, and quesadillas. People in Mexico usually do not eat big platters of tortilla chips in their everyday meals. Because of the food sold in the United States, it is not very healthy. The Mexican foods in America are not as rich in nutrients. It contains high fat, sodium, and calories. It also does not include as many fresh vegetables.

Most traditional Mexican dishes have less fat and calories. This doesn’t mean you cannot enjoy the foods served in American restaurants. You can add more healthy foods to the dish. Tomatoes are high in vitamins and have lycopene which has cancer-fighting properties. Tomatoes can be added to many Mexican dishes. Beans carry high protein and fiber. Instead of eating the beans refried, try getting them whole. It cuts back on the fat. Corn is another vegetable that is healthy in Mexican foods. It is high in vitamins and contains fiber. Adding these to your Mexican dishes will make them healthier than what you are served at Taco Bell.

You may be wondering if people in Mexico eat healthier foods. In America we have the choice to go to health food stores where we can find organic foods and foods not as fattening. The only drawback is that not everyone can afford to buy these foods whenever they grocery shop. In Mexico, healthier choices are available. Each year the health food market in Mexico makes over $500 Million. The consumers make up 5 percent of Mexico’s population. Their age range is from 20 to 50 years old. They usually live in metropolitan areas and can afford to buy these types of healthier foods. If they cannot afford it, they still are not getting all the fats and calories that we find in American foods, especially fast-foods. Authentic Mexican foods still carry many vegetables and ingredients that are good for your body, and also the way the food is cooked is healthier.

You are probably wondering again, is Mexican food healthy for me. Authentic Mexican dishes are, because they carry many vitamins and are generally low in fat. America has fattened up the Mexican dishes making them not a good choice. If you want to go out to eat, try avoiding the major Mexican food chain restaurants. Find a restaurant that serves authentic dishes. It is healthier and will taste even better knowing you are giving your body good foods.

Manual Drip Coffee Makers

Many people don’t really know the difference between automatic and manual drip coffee makers. It’s really very simple. An automatic drip coffee maker pours the hot water over the ground coffee for you while a manual drip coffee maker requires that you do it yourself.

Manual drip coffee makers typically come in single cup to twelve cup varieties and basically give you similar results as an automatic drip coffee maker. Many people feel they get a better tasting cup of coffee when they have the ability to pour the water themselves and choose from a variety of filters and filter holders. A good thing about manual drip coffee makers is that they don’t use electricity and can be used wherever you happen to go. This makes them a great choice for camping. You can boil water over a fire or portable stove for your coffee.

The main components of manual drip coffee makers are the pot or cup, a filter, and a filter holder. There are more complicated varieties available but for most of them, this is all you will need. First you set your pot or cup on a counter, set the filter holder on top, add a filter and fill it with ground coffee. You boil water on a stove and pour it into the filter. It’s pretty easy but if you don’t know what you are doing or have the proper pot to boil water in, there is a potential to get scalded. Using a teapot or special pot that has a place for pouring is the best way to go as a saucepan isn’t designed for pouring water out.

Every manual drip coffee maker has a special filter and filter holder. The filters can be permanent metal ones or your basic disposable paper ones. Many people like the metal filters because they can be used many times and provide the same water flow each time. Paper filters, though cheaper, can end up costing more in the long run and each brand might let water flow a little differently. The filter holders come in hundreds of varieties but you usually get one with your manual drip coffee maker. If you buy a different one, you run the risk of overflow. Filter holders can be porcelain, plastic, metal, or glass and come in many different sizes.

The manual drip coffee maker pot or cup is an important thing to consider. Do you want to make a single cup or ten cups? A single cup version will take up almost no counter space and is a great choice for people who live alone or in a very small place. The ten to twelve cup versions are great for homes that drink a lot of coffee or for big camping trips. They aren’t as big as an electric coffee maker and can be taken apart for easy cleaning and carrying.

The most important part of any coffee maker is the type of coffee you use. Expensive coffee that is freshly ground will taste much better than coffee from a discount store. Try different types of coffee and decide what kind you like the best.

The Not So Sweet History of Belgian Chocolate

How It All Began

It all started with Leopold II of Belgium in the year 1885 when he colonized Congo. It was a territory eighty-six times bigger than his country. Leopold II was the very first one to commit genocide during the 20th Century.

The chocolate industry first took off during the 1880s, supported by getting hold of the Belgian Congo that has aided an easy way in to Africas cocoa grounds. The truth is that it is very hard to imagine that the Belgian Chocolates history may be that far from being sweet.

There was an estimated 10 million Africans that passed away under the orders of Leopold II. Despite of the war that was happening, Belgians were able to maintain the cocoa importing connections. On the other hand, the Belgian contribution in the chocolate industry is the introduction of their chocolate product which is the praline. It was created and expanded by a Swiss family in Brussels, the Neuhaus family in 1912. The praline was the very first butter cream-filled bite sized chocolate. It was either filled with nuts or cream or coated with milk or milk chocolate or filled also with a very good quality of dark chocolate.

In the year 1912, chocolate started as a gift in Belgium. A Belgian chocolatier created the very first praline, a chocolate that absolutely complied to the gift career it was building. Not later on, a packaging called Ballotin was developed and patented for praline. At that moment the pralines in Ballotin were the most desired gift in every chance somebody has to give someone something as a present.

The Making

Chocolates start with the seeds of a cacao tree. A fruit bearing tree that has large football-shaped like pods, in which the seeds are contained. The cacao tree was first discovered in the United States but now can be grown in many countries near the Equator. These pods are gathered and the seeds are then dried in the sun. After drying, they undergo roasting. When the beans are roasted, they will now be crushed to produce cocoa powder, and then squeezed to get the cocoa butter.

When the powder is ready, it will be mixed with butter. Adding the milk powder and sugar creates chocolate. Each component of the mixture determines the color of the chocolate. Therefore creating different kinds of chocolate like black or the dark chocolate that can be made with up to seventy percent of cocoa in the mixture; milk chocolate containing more milk powder than the others, and of course the white chocolate that does not contain cocoa but cocoa butter only mixed with milk and sugar only.

Trivia

Did you know that if not most, all the pralines during those times were hand made? Presently chocolates are considered as an energy giving food because of its very high content of sugar and calorie. Another fact about chocolate is that it is also considered as one of the many sexual stimulant foods. In fact, aside from being an exceptional energy booster, one of the Aztec emperors drank chocolate to have access to women. It is also known to be use as an anti-depressant. It is known to contain a substance called pheryletylanine that has a positive effect in the event of a nervous depression but not only that, there is something in chocolates that gives anyone a lighter mood every time it is drank.

The Wonderful Tools of Cooking

Far too often people overlook the importance of using the proper tools when cooking fine meals. While there is nothing in the world that can quite compare to cooking with the finest and freshest of ingredients, these things can only be enhanced by making use of the perfect tools for the job at hand.

When it comes to pots and pans and skillets you should keep in mind that conductivity is of extreme importance. You should also select pots and pans that are made of a heavier gauge. This allows your pans to heat evenly avoiding hot spots, which can lead to food that may ‘stick’ to your pan or scorch during the cooking process. This means that simply stopping in at your local mass market retailer and purchasing any old set of pots and pans is probably not the best course of action for the best possible quality in your kitchen.

Kitchen knives are also important ingredients in the kitchens of today. If you plan to prepare many meals in your kitchen, then the quality of your knives is of the utmost importance. Your knives are an investment you shouldn’t have to make too often in your lifetime. For this reason, select a really good set and be prepared to make a sizeable investment in your knives. You will never understand, unless you’ve tried to prepare foods with knives of inferior quality, just how important it is to purchase good quality and well-balanced knives for your kitchen. You should also try the handles in your hand to see how comfortable they feel before purchasing a set of knives. If you do a lot of chopping and cutting during your meal preparation and cooking you will want to make sure that the knives you are using feel comfortable in your hands.

If you are like me and plan on cooking a great deal of meat then you should also invest in a jacquard. This useful tool helps not only when it comes to tenderizing rather rough and tumble cuts of meat but also pierces the surface so that rubs and marinades can penetrate for a more flavorful experience. This is by far one of my favorite kitchen gadgets and it isn’t a sizeable investment for the added value it provides to meals.

A good quality grater is another tool that no kitchen should be complete without. There are many who feel that with all the pre shredded cheese products on the market today this tool is obsolete but nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, pre grated and pre packaged cheese simply doesn’t touch the quality of flavor that freshly grated cheese provides. Second, cheese isn’t the only thing that these graters are useful for grating. Graters are excellent tools for grating citrus fruits, spices, garlic, chocolate, and even onions. If you do a good deal of baking in addition to your cooking you should not overlook the value of having a quality grater in your kitchen.

Of course there are many more cooking tools than I could possibly mention here. Those mentioned above simply happen to be among my personal favorites. There are all kinds of appliances that in my humble opinion no kitchen is truly complete without. In addition to these great appliances there are many tools that are simple matters of preference. Do you peel enough potatoes to warrant a special device for doing so or do you simply opt to purchase an ergonomically designed potato peeler and peel them by hand? There are no one size fits all answers when it comes to kitchen tools and many of us are often limited by serious budget constraints and restrictions. My best advice if this is the situation for you is to purchase the best possible quality you can afford and build from there. Even if it means replacing one pot or knife at a time until you can manage a complete set of superior quality cooking tools you will find it well worth the price you’ve paid in the long run.

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How a Coffee Maker Works

We all wake up in the morning and depend on our old friend to start our day – the coffee maker. The only effort we have to put in when wanting to enjoy a mug of coffee is to add a scoop of coffee, add the required amount of water and turn the machine on. We stand back and wait for our coffee to be ready before we can enjoy it. Think about it, have you ever stood there and tried to understand how the water gets from the compartment to the top of the machine? Have you ever wondered what that gurgling sound was? Here is what goes on inside.

If you open the top of the coffee machine, you will find the bucket that holds the water when you pour it in before the cycle starts. If you look inside, you will find a hole in the bucket’s bottom, and this will become clear to you very soon. You also see a tube, and the purpose of this tube is to carry the water to the area where it drips out. The drip area is the part you see from the top that contains all the tiny holes. This is where the water arrives from the tube and then simply drips through the tiny holes.

If you turn the bucket upside down, you will see another tube and this is called the hot-water tube. This tube (tube2) connects to the black tube (tube1) that you see when looking at it from the top. Remember the hole in the bottom of the bucket mentioned earlier? Well, this is where tube2 picks up the cold water – from that hole. Also visible inside are the power cord and the on and off switch of the machine.

Next is the heating element. This little part is what makes the water hot. The heating element is just a simple coiled wire. This is similar to filament in your standard light bulb or the element in your every morning toaster. The coil in the coffee maker is held firmly in plaster, and this makes it rugged. This element has two jobs.

* The heating element (or the coil) boils the water when it is put in the coffee maker.
* The element makes sure the coffee stays warm once the cycle is complete.

The heating element inside the coffee machine is pressed firmly against the warming plate. A heat conducting grease ensures that heat is transferred competently to the warming plate. The conducting grease is messy and is extremely difficult to get off yours hands. This grease can be found in power supplies, amplifiers – basically anything that squanders heat.

There is a part that’s not visible in a coffee maker and this is the one-way valve. This valve can either be in that hole that was mentioned earlier or it could be in the heating pipe, and this pipe is aluminum. If a coffee maker had no one-way valve, the hot water would just flow back into the bucket after trying to make its way up the tube.