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Here are some of my favorite gadgets for quick and healthy cooking:
Here's an example of a quick dinner using several of the gadgets listed above. Boil angel hair pasta in your pasta pot. Chop tomatoes and basil on your cutting board with your sharp knives. Heat olive oil in a nonstick skillet with minced garlic; add tomatoes and basil and heat through. Serve over hot angel hair with shredded fresh parmesan cheese.
If you have great tools to work with, cooking becomes easier and even fun! So, invest in some quality equipment and the use it to create great healthy dishes in a flash.
About The Author: Erin Rogers, a work-at-home mom of two, is the founder of Health-E-Meals.com, providing practical healthy living resources for busy people. Visit her website (http://www.health-e-meals.com) to sign up for the FREE newsletter, 'Dinners on the Double' - offering a quick and healthy, no-recipe dinner idea each week. Other available services include quick and healthy recipes, healthy cooking articles, fitness and motivation tips, healthy living web links, and lots more! Erin can be reached via email at mailto:erin@health-e-meals.com.
By
03/02/2006
Here are some modifications from my kitchen, and I am an executive chef at home--I subcontract everything. hahaha
1. Stainless steel are just as non-stick, if you rinse or wipe them out immediately. This way you aren't eating teflon or whatever. I buy mine at HSN, the best bargain for pans in America.
2. My oldest toddler use to walk around the kitchen wearing a large Pyrex measuring cup on her head. Thus her nickname "Twocups," which was short for "two cups of brains." She's grown now, and still doesn't believe us. Make sure the glass measuring cups are Pyrex, accept no substitutes. They won't break with sudden temperature changes.
3. Forget expensive knives that need to be sharpened. Buy the cheapest set with the best looking handles you can find. A serrated knife, one that can cut through a box of frozen food, one that lasts forever, is my idea of a knife. I am a doctor and I am picky about knives, but not in the kitchen. Get the set with 6-8 steak knives. That way, you have a lot of knives for chopping, slicing and keeping the hungry at bay.
5. Mine, very costly, sits alone, basically unused. Unless you're making your own butter or mayonnaise, this is a very expensive affectation. Learn how to cut, chop like a pro by watching them on TV. Buy the small, plastic, hand-turned chopper and mixer; you'll use it a lot. Put the money in your jewelry budget. hahaha
7. For small amounts of pasta, put your steamer basket in a saucepan. Break long pasketti (that's what we call it) in half. No one measures what's on their plate, do they?
8. Cutting boards--just turn it over. Why buy two? Measure your dishwasher, so the one you buy will fit in it, and wash it in the dishwasher.
9. Never, ever burn charcoal in the house. Got that?
10. Zip-loc bags are not inexpensive. Alternatively spend your money on excellent plastic-lock containers. They aren't that hard to clean, and you are recycling.
11. At the dollar store or Target, buy small spray bottles, 2 cups max. Use one for spray bleach--it disinfects the cutting board and gets plastic dishes and utensils really white if they're dirty. Rinse off the bleach until you can't smell it any more.
Use another spray bottle for rubbing alcohol from the dollar store. This works fine on spot cleaning woodwork, switchplates, hard surfaces and ashtrays.
Don't forget to label your spray bottles. If it's really hot, use water or witch hazel--for you.
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