Eating flowers is a time-honored culinary tradition, from nibbling on nasturtiums to grazing on candied violets. And why not? They look beautiful and lend a unique floral flavors to salads, desserts, and anything in between.
I have a thing for black foods, whether it's mysterious, lovely black garlic (the secret to its color: fermentation) or adding charcoal powder with its reputed health benefits to cookies, cakes, and breads.
At first glance, mandolines seem like such a good idea. After all, who wouldn't want a tool that can create picture-perfect and paper-thin slices of fruits and vegetables that would put even the sharpest chef's knife to shame? Your French fry game would never be the same. Salads would become works of art. Your casseroles would cook perfectly evenly, since the ingredients would be cut uniformly.
Hops have always been known as the driving force behind beer, but now they're starting to grow their own culinary wings. Slowly but surely, this bizarre and bitter plant is showing up on more and more menus across the country as it catches on as a trendy and up-and-coming ingredient. What Are Hops?
Poaching, the cooking method that gently cooks food at the barest simmer, is awesome because it keeps in moisture and flavor. The no-cook poaching method is even better, because you don't add heat to your kitchen on hot days, and you don't have to watch the pot.
A salad can mean everything from fruit to meat and everything in-between, but it never means finger food. Forks are required. So that means that even though salads are versatile, delicious, and customizable, they are hell at cocktail parties. How do you hold your glass and take a bite of your salad at the same time? It's awkward.
From parents and other family members to friends and peers, personalities are built by environment. Though people are important in the development of our own individual personality, there are other, different influences, including what you choose to read. The books you take the time to enjoy can make you nicer and more understanding, or leave you overall unchanged.
It's easy to take the food we eat for granted, but the truth is, there are a lot of bizarre, wonderful, and just plain weird things about what we eat and drink, the effects it has on our bodies, and vice-versa. Read on to learn how bugs provide food dye, the Japanese grow square watermelons, and more.
With only a few days left until Halloween, your options might be rather limited if you still don't have a costume. You may have laughed while some people spent the entire month of October painstakingly crafting their ridiculously detailed costumes, but now that the big day is so close, the joke's on you because you still have nothing to wear.
Wondering how to get long hair naturally? How do you grow your hair? In this video Rachelle and Sam give you 10 tips to get those long locks naturally!
We don't generally think of medicine as being very relevant to Steampunk, but it was a big part of Victorian science fiction. Notable examples that you may be familiar with would be Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Sometimes I forget that I'm also a fiction writer, so I thought it might be a nice change of pace to share one of my stories with you. I wrote this piece awhile ago for an anthology that never came together and I'm tired of just sitting on it.
Timely costumes for Halloween are awesome—especially really obscure ones—because they're indicative of social awareness. In 2010, I remember seeing several Chilean Miner costumes, which I thought were great. 2012 brings new stories, new characters and more importantly...new Halloween costumes.
For some people, a costume is just a necessary prerequisite to get into Halloween parties. If you're female and you're going the sexy route, it's not too hard to find something to wear, but transforming yourself into something terrifying takes a little more work.
If you're like me, you've already spent a ton of money on your costumes, your badge, and your hotel room, and now you're looking for ways to cut costs. There are all kinds of ways to save money at DragonCon, but many of them involve violating the rules in some way, such as not buying a badge, sleeping on the floor in a hallway somewhere, etc. However, the one thing you can do that is totally not against the rules is eat for free. It requires a little self-discipline and a willingness to eat w...
Candy is not just for the kiddies. You’re wedding guests will feel like they’re in Candyland when they are presented with the whimsical wonderment of a candy buffet. You can easily match candy to your wedding’s color scheme and theme.
Perform tasks when you’re at your best, hormonally speaking, by scheduling around your menstrual cycle.
All day I dream of eggs: scrambled, poached, over easy, hard-boiled, fried, baked, raw... Okay, the last one is a joke (unless you're Gaston, which means that you eat five dozen of them and you're roughly the size of a barge). But eggs are freaking good in just about any cooking prep, and more often than not are the foundation of your favorite baked goods.
Fight me all you want, but it ain't a party without alcohol—whether it's a Halloween party, Christmas party, dinner party, or even a damn wedding. (If you think that people will stick around after dinner for a dry wedding, then you're sorely mistaken.)
There's a common saying that separates cooks from bakers: baking is a science, while cooking is an art. When baking, one little misstep can alter the texture, taste, and consistency of any recipe.
Once upon a time in America, there was coffee and there was decaf. That's it. No capuccinos. No espressos. And certainly no Starbucks. Coffee was just coffee, something that you bought at a gas station or donut shop. If you made it at home, it was either in a metal pot or instant coffee.
Foodies and big-time chefs like Thomas Keller go crazy for fleur de sel. This finishing salt appears in fancy eateries and cookbooks the world over, and in the early 2000s, it was not uncommon to see diners in a high-end restaurant sprinkle a pinch of fleur de sel on their plates from their own personal stash.
Many of the beauty products you buy at drug and department stores are loaded with potentially toxic ingredients like parabens, while their active ingredients are made of things like glycolic, lactic, malic, and alpha hydroxy acids and retinoids, which are all derived from foods.
About ten years ago, Western research figured out that green tea was a nutritional powerhouse. After all, in Asian countries where green tea is consumed throughout the day, cancer rates tend to be much lower, although there are probably other factors contributing to that fact, like less processed food and red meat in the standard Asian diet.
In this article, I will be showing you how to make a crude form of aspirin from the bark of a willow tree. It is a great remedy for headaches, hangovers, and other minor pain. The use of the willow tree as a mild pain reliever goes back to the Native Americans, who used it in much the same way that I do.
Pastry Chef Anne Heap demonstrates how to use a pastry bag, as well as techniques for decorating cupcakes. Frosting a cake or cupcakes with a pastry bag is much easier than using a knife. The bags come with many different styles of tips. Just choose the tip you want to use, fill the bag with frosting, squeeze to apply the frosting, pull up and let go.
It is important to have healthy teeth not only for your appearance but for your overall health as well. You can keep your teeth white by avoiding foods that stain your teeth and having a good cleaning routine including fluoride
In this video series, our expert will teach you how to make your own spa body and facial scrubs. You will get step-by-step instructions for making a homemade sugar scrub and sea salt scrub.
In this video series, our expert Neha Gera will teach you how to make a sapodilla lassi. She will teach you how to cut the sapodilla, add sugar, water, rosewater, yogurt, and milk to your lassi, and create a balance of flavors.
In this video series, our expert will teach you how to make a delicious spritz cookie recipe. You will learn each easy to follow step for mixing the dry and wet ingredients, adding sugar and butter and coloring the cookie dough. Get tips for using and filling a cookie press, as well as advice on decorating and baking this easy cookie recipe.
In this video series, our expert will take another look at the traditional yule log cake, and make yule log cookies. Learn how to cream the butter, add the sugar, flour and wet ingredients for the Yule Log cookie dough.
In this video series, get an introduction to West Coast swing dancing from a renowned competitive dancer and instructor. Learn the basic swing steps and moves, including the sugar push, the left and right side pass, the locked and open whip, syncopation, and the ronde, with an added hip circle.
In this video series, watch as master Korean chef Kathryn Lynch teaches how to cook bulgogi, tak gogi, and dae ji gogi. Learn the ingredients for bulgogi, how to score meat, how to slice meat, how to prepare garlic, how to prepare scallions, how to mix coat sugar, how to mix coat soy, how to mix scallions with garlic, how to coat sesame oil, how to heat oil in a wook, and how to serve bulgogi, tak gogi, and dae ji gogi.
In this online video series, learn how to make zucchini bread from expert homemaker and cook Carolyn Saylors. She will teach you what ingredients you need to make zucchini bread, how to beat eggs and mix the sugar and oil, how to mix vanilla and flour to make zucchini bread, how to add oats and cinnamon to the zucchini bread dough, how to add baking soda and salt to the zucchini bread dough, how to shred zucchini for zucchini bread, how to add walnuts and shredded zucchini to the zucchini bre...
The Holy Grail of chicken has just been found by an unsuspecting reporter of the Chicago Tribune. Yes, that's right: The secret 11 herbs and spices in Colonel Sanders' Original Recipe chicken has finally been revealed, and it looks legit as hell.
Vampire Wars is a Facebook game that allows you to erect the best theme park in the world! Get Vampire Wars hacks, cheats, tricks and tips! Watch this video tutorial to learn how to get Pyro's quickly in Vampire Wars (05/24/09).
You want to create a delicious and flavorful meal for your guests but you don’t want to ruin everyone’s diets with a bunch of unhealthy calories. Grilled salmon is not only moist and flavorful but is extremely good for you.
This how-to video is about how to reduce belly fat with the help of a better diet.
With a little bit of planning, you can avoid a lot of blood-pressure-raising traffic messes. You Will Need
In this video series, learn how to make an easy homemade zombie costume. Matt Cail shows you step-by-step instruction for making this Halloween costume. Learn how to transform old shirts and pants into a zombie costume. He shows you how to cut, apply dirt, and stain blood all over your clothing.