The other day I was having dinner with a friend at an upscale, expensive Indian restaurant. We noticed that most of the items in the menu were variations of curry, a recipe that both rich and poor people eat daily. I am sure Indian gourmet food also includes recipes that you won't see people eat every day, but what is interesting is that most recipes on the menu or what people order the most in a gourmet Indian restaurant are curry variations with fresher spices and ingredients, better cooking and obviously better taste. (read more)

How would you feel if you sat with your friends in a restaurant and they offered one menu for all to share? That's the custom in traditional Japanese restaurants. If you ask the Japanese why they serve one menu only, they will tell you they don't know why. They don't know where the custom comes from either. Weird!! I searched online but could not find the reason for it. There are two questions. Where does the custom come from and why do they still keep it to this day? (read more)

Pour a bit of lemon juice over the fruits. Works great on fruit salads or fruit juice. Lemon helps aroma and colors to prolong their fresh state. A peeled apple, for example, will take more time to lose its fresh color if you pour lemon over it. Lemon is also a natural preservative and healthy. If you pour just a bit, it won't affect the taste :)

Food without salt is hopelessly boring. Life without sweetness is life without pleasure. To eat something sweet and salty is a complicated taste sensation. I believe that at the apex of all culinary sophistication lies the tasty conundrum of a sweet and salty life...

if you wake up in the middle of the night with a strong crave for chocolate cake try this super quick recipe. all you need is flour, sugar, cocoa powder, egg, milk, oil and a cup. first mix 2 tablespoons of flour sugar and cocoa, then add the egg, a bit of milk and oil and mix again. insert the cup in the microwave and warm it up for no more than 3 minutes! when it stops swelling it's ready to eat. super quick and simple!!

The other day in the office I had to clean the filter of my espresso machine because the coffee had clogged up those small holes. I tried using one of the metal brushes with very fine threads but could not get the threads to go into the holes.
Solution? I put the filter basket in a cup with hot water, added some dish soap and let it there for 30 minutes. Amazingly the holes had cleared up on their own. I did not have to do it anything more. Pretty cool! (read more)

When you invite someone at your place for dinner would you ever consider passing out (some) take-away food or home-delivery recipes as your own cooking? If most dishes are yours, what's wrong with passing one or two you didn't have time to make as yours? I see nothing wrong with ordering extras and mixing it with home-made dinner. My question is would you tell your guest or pass it as yours?

If a light food product you buy in the supermarket means a product with less calories, then you can turn every food into light food by adding water to it. Most calorie measurements in food are based on samples of 100 grams, so if you add water the 100 grams become 200 but the calories stay the same or are less as percentage of the overall intake (read more)

A vending machine dispensing gourmet sandwiches in addition to Snickers bars would be a nice new product to have into offices and buildings for people who arrive for work early and stay late. By gourmet I also mean fresh, so daily restocking of ingredients will be required. On busy days, I wouldn't mind paying a bit extra to get fresh a sandwich right off my desk.

The history of Corn Flakes, I read, has to do with one man's horror with sex, his fear that by eating wrong foods people will become sex addicts and flake society apart. Meat especially was believed to stimulate longings of the flesh. So it was in 1906 that John Harney Kellog introduced a number of foods designed to promote health and decrease interest in sex. One of those foods was Corn Flakes! It is a big mystery then how the word corny today means...horny. Based on the history of corn as a food designed to decrease interest in sex, it should have the opposite meaning. Perhaps a pheromone-fortified new food designed to restore corn's true libidinous effects might be just the right product to introduce into our daily, sexually-enhanced diets. Me so corny darling, can you get me a potent start of the day with a bowl of Horn Flakes?? I'll add the cream later, thanks...lol