We have a tradition with my parents, whenever it is someone's birthday they treat us to dinner out. Whenever it is on the menu, I order a steak! Usually a ribeye if they have it, medium well ... closer to the medium side. (I am becoming braver and might just go medium next time!) My mom usually has the same two remarks; first that she doesn't like steak and then a squeamish look and a "yuck" when she sees the pink in my meat. I tell her that the reason she does not like steak is because she's never had a good one and she's never had a good one because she won't eat it less than well done.
As you can probably guess, growing up I was not fed steak and I was certainly not fed any meat that was less than well done! It took a while, but I finally gained the courage to try a steak with some pink a few years ago. It was AMAZING! I never thought I could stomach the idea of eating raw (as I called it back then) beef!
I am trying to learn how to make and amazing steak at home. I think I am definitely getting there! An important thing to know is the differences between the levels of doneness, which in my experience is not always consistent from one chef to another.
Through my research, I have found this to be consistant through cooking websites, magazines, restaurants and steak companies.
Levels of doneness:
Rare - 125 degrees; very red, cool center; 75% red
Medium Rare - 130 degrees; red, warm center; 50% red
Medium - 140 degrees; pink, hot center; 25% pink
Medium Well - 150 degrees; hint of pink, hot center
Well - 160 degrees; no pink at all
I found a great "Doneness Chart" at Cook Perfect Steaks. It also shows you how to test the meat while cooking it with out cutting into the meat. I didn't want to risk copyright infringement by pasting their picture here.
When cooking meat, you should remove it from the heat when it is 5 degrees below desired temp and then let it rest. The residual heat creates what is known as carry-over cooking and will bring it up to the desired temp.
So there you go! Be brave, try something new! I did!!
Monday, February 13, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Make Your Own Laundry Detergent
I decided to try making my own laundry detergent this past fall. I had heard how much money you can save and how great the detergent works. I went to the store and purchased my items, which cost me roughly $20, and I used the empty bucket from my store bought detergent (it says 32.5 lbs on the bucket). I honestly do not remember where I found the "recipe" for this detergent, it was a long time ago.
- 12 c. Borax
- 8 c. baking soda
- 8 c. washing soda
- 8 c. Fels Naptha soap, grated
To use this detergent you only need 2 tablespoons per load!! That is A LOT less than the huge scoop that my old detergent called for!
To wrap up this story, that bucket of store bought detergent supposedly washed 200 loads. I filled the empty bucket with my homemade detergent, it was approximately as full as it was when I originally bought it. I have been using that ONE recipe of detergent for FIVE MONTHS and it is still about half full! I average one load of laundry per day, there are only 4 of us so I can get away with that. Five months is approximately 150 days, which means approximately 150 + loads of laundry (some days I do two or three loads). If I got 150 + loads out of half the bucket ... I will get over 300 loads out of $20 worth of detergent! Wow!! Previously I was spending $10-$20 per month on detergent, this is averaging out (so far) to just over $20 per year!!
If you have a larger family or go through more laundry than us, it will not work out quiet the same, but I bet you could still save quiet a bit of money!
Some extra info: I use warm/cold setting and it works just fine; my hubby's clothes were always very tough to get odors out because of the smoke, sawdust, grease, etc. smells and this works great!! I think the baking soda makes a huge difference there.
Oh, and mix as you go ... do not try to dump it all in and then mix. That's what I did, and it was very difficult!
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Fat-Free?
I have been hearing some things about diet foods that were a little, make that a lot, disturbing. I decided to do some research and here is what I came up with. This is meant to be informative only, use your own discretion when making food choices.
We try so hard to make wise choices with our food. We select fat-free, light or diet versions of various foods in hopes of cutting calories and losing or at least not gaining weight. Is this a good solution? You may be surprised to hear this, but NO it is actually more harmful for your overall health than the full fat versions!
• According to USDA and FDA labeling laws, foods labeled fat-free do NOT have to be fat-free! They just have to have less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving. Low-fat foods must have 3 grams or less per serving. Reduced fat must have 25% less fat than the full fat versions, and Light must have 1/3 less calories or 50% less fat than the full fat version. So now you can see how the labels can be misleading. Also, many times people tend to eat MORE of the food because of the label, and may end up inadvertently eating more calories and fat than they would have with a standard serving of the original!
• Next time you are at the store, compare the labels of a full fat and a fat free counterpart of any given food. We will use Daisy brand sour cream as an example. The ingredients in Original Daisy Sour Cream: Grade A Cultured Cream. Fat-Free Daisy Sour Cream: Cultured Skim Milk, Modified Food Starch, Carrageenan, Vitamin A Palmitate. One, natural ingredient compared to four ingredients! Modified food starch is a starch that has been changed through chemical, enzymatic or physical ways to enhance some quality of the starch (ie gelling, thickening, stabilization). Carrageenan, do you even know what that is? I had to look it up! It is extract from seaweed used as a thickening agent. Vitamin A Palmitate is found in fish and fish liver oil but is most commonly made synthetically by chemically altering Vitamin A (which is very unstable on its own). Why do I need all these extra ingredients when the original version only needed CREAM? I know what cream is, where it comes from and how to pronounce it! I had to look up all the other ingredients!
• Basically, to make foods fat free, light, etc the manufacturers take out NATURAL ingredients that contain the fat and calories and replace them will modified or chemical ingredients to try and achieve a flavor that resembles the original version. To me it seems obvious that if something is NATURAL, it has to be better for me than a chemical! Your body knows what to do with the natural ingredients; it was made to process them. When you eat synthetic foods your body doesn’t know what they are or what to do with them so your body reacts adversely and sometimes toxically to them; creating free radicals that damage healthy cells or being broken down and stored as fats! They create the opposite effect for which you were trying!
Sources: WebMD, 100 days of real food, shop well, Bodyecology, Grocery.com, Dairy-House, Be Food Smart, Experience Life,
Collaborators: Laura Schaefer, Lisa Harman
We try so hard to make wise choices with our food. We select fat-free, light or diet versions of various foods in hopes of cutting calories and losing or at least not gaining weight. Is this a good solution? You may be surprised to hear this, but NO it is actually more harmful for your overall health than the full fat versions!
• According to USDA and FDA labeling laws, foods labeled fat-free do NOT have to be fat-free! They just have to have less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving. Low-fat foods must have 3 grams or less per serving. Reduced fat must have 25% less fat than the full fat versions, and Light must have 1/3 less calories or 50% less fat than the full fat version. So now you can see how the labels can be misleading. Also, many times people tend to eat MORE of the food because of the label, and may end up inadvertently eating more calories and fat than they would have with a standard serving of the original!
• Next time you are at the store, compare the labels of a full fat and a fat free counterpart of any given food. We will use Daisy brand sour cream as an example. The ingredients in Original Daisy Sour Cream: Grade A Cultured Cream. Fat-Free Daisy Sour Cream: Cultured Skim Milk, Modified Food Starch, Carrageenan, Vitamin A Palmitate. One, natural ingredient compared to four ingredients! Modified food starch is a starch that has been changed through chemical, enzymatic or physical ways to enhance some quality of the starch (ie gelling, thickening, stabilization). Carrageenan, do you even know what that is? I had to look it up! It is extract from seaweed used as a thickening agent. Vitamin A Palmitate is found in fish and fish liver oil but is most commonly made synthetically by chemically altering Vitamin A (which is very unstable on its own). Why do I need all these extra ingredients when the original version only needed CREAM? I know what cream is, where it comes from and how to pronounce it! I had to look up all the other ingredients!
• Basically, to make foods fat free, light, etc the manufacturers take out NATURAL ingredients that contain the fat and calories and replace them will modified or chemical ingredients to try and achieve a flavor that resembles the original version. To me it seems obvious that if something is NATURAL, it has to be better for me than a chemical! Your body knows what to do with the natural ingredients; it was made to process them. When you eat synthetic foods your body doesn’t know what they are or what to do with them so your body reacts adversely and sometimes toxically to them; creating free radicals that damage healthy cells or being broken down and stored as fats! They create the opposite effect for which you were trying!
Sources: WebMD, 100 days of real food, shop well, Bodyecology, Grocery.com, Dairy-House, Be Food Smart, Experience Life,
Collaborators: Laura Schaefer, Lisa Harman
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)