Flavours of Germany

As you wander through the many traditional Christmas markets, discover a piece of German hospilitality. Sniff the aroma of freshly roasted almonds and gingerbread spices. Warm your hands and your heart with a hearty swig of mulled wine and let yourself be enchanted by the sound of christmas trumpets and choirs.
In Germany, Christmas is symbolized by the famous stollen, a traditional holiday bread that derives from a tradition more than 500 years old. Stollen are traditionally made from the end of September until the end of December. They are a breakfast fruit bread, filled with marzipan, served either hot or cold. The pleasure of stollen is even greater the second day at breakfast explains Bernd Kütscher, when you bite into a toasted slice, slathered with butter! There are numerous varieties of stollen, including one that looks like a large filled crêpe. In fact, it's a cake studded with rum-soaked candied fruits, filled with almond cream and folded over to enclose the filling. This particular variety symbolizes the baby Jesus wrapped in his swaddling clothes. If you ask bakers in Dresden for their recipe, they won't tell you. What they will say is that you'll need the finest candied fruits and nuts, the freshest eggs and butter for this holiday sweet bread.
But The Worldwide Gourmet knows the secret! Click here for the recipe! (see below)
Glühwein (Mulled Wine) At Christmas many German town centers have street markets with stalls selling cookies, arts and crafts, wooden toys and other festive items. Almost every street corner seems to boast Bratwurst and Glühwein stalls. It's amazing how revived one can feel after a small glass of warm, spicy red wine. This is a basic recipe, but in Germany, stalls will offer you additional flavorings such as elderberry cordial or a shot of dark rum. Heat your Glühwein in a large saucepan on the stove or in a large jug in the microwave, but don't let it boil or the alcohol will evaporate.
Menu
Stollen - Christmas cake

Lebkuchen
An original German Christmas specialty, a soft, cake-like nut cookie with a very high degree of nut content and a low flour content.
The production of Lebkuchen dates back to the Middle Ages, formerly produced by German monks in Frankonia, in Bavaria, the region around Nuremberg. Elisenlebkuchen have been known since 1808 and are named after the wife of a Bavarian Count. As the tradition calls for it, you can find the Lebkuchen either coated with rich, dark chocolate or sugar glazed. on wafers soft freshly made.

Asparagus ABCs.

Man, I love asparagus! Although it’s in peak season right now, (February through June) I eat it year round by the plateful. I like the spears best quickly steamed to crisp/tender, al dente perfection. Melted butter is good, but I prefer it plain with just a light sprinkling of sea salt. Asparagus has so many attributes and just one detractor (that weird stinky-tinkle factor, but I’ll get to that later). It is a powerhouse of nutrients. A heavy 5-ounce serving has only 20 calories, no fat or cholesterol and is low in sodium. Packed into that 5 ounces is 60 percent of the folic acid we need for the day. Folic acid helps blood cell formation, fights liver disease and is thought to prevent neural tube defects in forming babies. Asparagus is also a good source of vitamins B6, A and C as well as potassium, thiamin and fiber. Asparagus is part of the lily family and is related to onions, leeks and garlic. It was first cultivated in Greece, 2,500 years ago. It is a plant that takes patience to cultivate. Spears don’t grow for two years after the crown has been planted, but once the plant begins to produce, it will do so, in season, for as long as 15 years.The rate at which asparagus grows is remarkable. Remember those lapsed time movies we used to see in biology class that showed grass growing in hyper-speed? Asparagus shoots up almost that fast. Depending on the heat of the sun, some asparagus plants can grow as much as 10 inches per 24-hour period.Preparation of asparagus is as versatile as it is user-friendly. Steaming or simmering is the most common means of it. In a large sauté pan, bring about 1 inch of water to a boil, add trimmed asparagus (keeping the burner on high) and time 5 minutes as soon as the spears hit the water. Remove, drain and serve. Roasting is a great hands-off way of preparing. Simply spray a cookie sheet with a non-stick spray and place the trimmed asparagus in a single layer (no oil or butter needed). Roast in a 400-degree oven for 6 to 7 minutes. Grilling brings a slightly nutty flavor to asparagus that I love. Simply place plain, non-marinated asparagus on a prepared grill and roll occasionally for 6 to 8 minutes.Now, back to the stinky-tinkle thing. It seems to be a derivative of the breakdown of amino acids during digestion. Because there doesn’t seem to be any way around it, you could chalk it up to the cost of eating asparagus. Although, curiously, some people don’t experience this side effect. Asparagus is a unique, versatile and delicious vegetable. It is also one of the most nutrient-packed. Who knew that health food could actually taste this good?

Table for one?

So you’re living alone and you’re hungry. Nobody’s around asking you what you want for dinner. Poor you. Sure, you know your diet is ridiculous and not especially healthy. Maybe you’ve tried cooking for yourself but it’s just you, so why bother? And I know all about you single vegetarians. The cheese sandwich solution, the nachos…Poor you. Poor you.Hey, wait a minute. Lucky you! Cooking for one is cheaper than eating in a restaurant. You’re saving money. You can afford to buy small portions of the most expensive food. You can even go organic. So set the table and cook your dinner.You don’t have to go out and buy fancy cooking equipment (except a salad spinner, if you don’t have one). I also know that to get you started, the recipe has to be easy. So what’s easier than a one-dish meal? But first you need to set the mood. You deserve to be pampered, and if you live alone it’s up to you to do the pampering most of the time. Put on some music and light some candles. Are you feeling frazzled? There’s nothing like Ella Fitzgerald for jangled nerves. She can sing “Why Was I Born?” and leave you feeling uplifted.When I first got my CD player, just about every CD I had was Ella Fitzgerald. I’ve been gradually expanding my collection and most of it is jazz. Another delightful jazz performer is James Moody, who sure plays a sweet saxophone. He was recently at the Blue Note in Manhattan with the Dizzy Gillespie “all stars.” Of course, you should put on the music you like—whatever makes you happy and feel good. A lot of single folks tend to eat their dinner standing up the kitchen. If I’m talking to you, get over it. That is definitely not treating yourself nicely.I usually work at home and I tend to cover every flat surface with papers. I’ve found a great way to clear off my dining table—the box top from my 10 reams of paper. I pile everything in it and put it away for the night. That way I have a nice neat table to sit down and enjoy my dinner. Now break out the nice dishes, cutlery and stemware. Oh go ahead – you deserve it. And there will only be one place setting to wash up, so it’s no huge bother. But using the good stuff will make a huge difference in your mood. It’s so elegant.If you’re not eating broccoli, you ought to give it a try. Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli are anti-carcinogenic (translation: protects you from the Big C). This recipe can be made vegetarian or with meat. I eat meat, but not as much as I used to. I’ve found that going even partly vegetarian makes me feel better, and meatless usually means lower in calories. Now that I’ve lost the weight I gained on a meat-and-potatoes diet, I don’t want to gain it back.Enjoy your dinner and remember – you’re worth it.Sweet Potato, Broccoli and Fill-in-the-Blank HashIngredients:4 ounces chicken, pork or baked tofu1 sweet potato – if you have a big appetite get a big one.Broccoli from 1 stalk (or more if you love broccoli)Salt and pepper to tasteLemon juice from ½ (one-half) lemon for the meat or 2 tablespoons of soy sauce for the tofuSour creamPreparation:Put some water in a pan with the steamer and turn the heat on. Peel the sweet potato. Chop it into big slices or chunks. Steam, covered, for about 4 minutes. Cut whatever you like of your broccoli into chunks and throw it on top of the potatoes for another 4 minutes (a minute or two longer if you don’t like crispy broccoli). In a large skillet, sauté chicken approximately 3 minutes per side. (You want to be able to cut into the thickest part and see only white, no pink.) Squeeze lemon juice over the chicken. (I heat my tofu in the microwave for a minute, but if you don’t have a microwave, you can throw the tofu into the steamer a minute before the broccoli is done.) Cut the chicken, pork, or tofu into bite-sized pieces. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and add the potatoes and broccoli. This is also the time to cut the potatoes and broccoli into smaller pieces, but don’t use metal in a nonstick skillet. Put it all into a big bowl and spread a tablespoon or two of sour cream on top. I really prefer Tofutti’s “Better Than Sour Cream” to the real thing and soy is so good for us—not just gals either. Soy is thought to prevent prostate cancer.

All you need to know about Oysters.

By Jennifer Brule`Jennifer Brule` is a classically trained chef, food writer and mother. Each of her hip and sassy columns feature an ingredient demystified with humor and facts. Contact her at jennifer@thefoodsyndicate.com.Oysters have forever been the object of myth and intrigue. Coveted by some because of their crisp, delicately salty, oceanic flavor. Repulsive to others because of their gelatinous, gray appearance. And of course, who can discount the bivalve’s infamous, if not altogether dubious aphrodisiac reputation. When live oysters are eaten raw, eager diners wedge the shellfish open, drizzle them with a bit of lemon, cocktail sauce or maybe sauce mignonette (a classic French sauce of vinegar, shallots, parsley and peppercorns), and slide them off the shells into their mouths where they ease down the gullet and into the gastric abyss. A brief, but addicting experience for those who favor them. But oysters are also lovely grilled right in their shells on top of a hot grate. Or heaped into a wet burlap bag, as southerners like, and roasted outdoors. There’s the cornmeal-dredged and fried recipe with a side of tartar sauce. The Native Americans perfected oyster stew. And a colonial Chesapeake Bay treat was the oyster pie. There are a thousand ways to enjoy eating oysters.The Romans are credited with first discovering oysters in the cold waters of Britain, bringing them back to Rome where they cultivated them in the 4th century B.C.. It is thought that they appreciated the oysters legendary properties of l’amour and paid a premium for them, in gold. One could say that the oyster was to ancient Romans, as Viagra is to American baby boomers.The oysters’ famed aphrodisiac qualities seem to be a mix of fact and fiction. Oysters do contain a high amount of zinc. Zinc controls progesterone levels in men, a lack of which can cause male impotence. And the word ‘aphrodisiac’ came about when the Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, popped forth from the sea on an oyster shell and gave birth to Eros. The combination of fact and fable seem to have forever imbedded into our minds, the oysters’ reputation. Today, in the U.S., oysters are mainly cultivated off the shores of Long Island, the Gulf coast of Louisiana, the Chesapeake Bay and in the waters off Washington state. A female oyster releases between 10 and 100 million eggs annually. Of these, only a very few will live to become larvae and grow into mature oysters. Most will be eaten up while in the larvae stage by fish. After 1 and ½ years (in warm water) or 5 years (in colder water) the oyster will be between 2 and 6 inches in length and be ready to harvest.When looking at a shucked oyster it’s hard to imagine that it is actually an animal, but it is. It breathes much like a fish does, it has kidneys, and a heart that pumps clear blood through blood vessels. It even has a male or female gender. It is at this point though, that the oyster takes a sharp U-turn in the ‘normal animal’ road. You see, although every oyster is either male or female, at least once in an oyster’s life span, it will switch genders (their little oyster parents seem to be okay with this, though). Ah, oysters. You may love to slurp them down, raw by the dozens or prefer them grilled, fried, baked or broiled. You may avoid them altogether, or devour them for the aforementioned side-effects. No matter how you feel about them, oysters are anything but boring

Healthy lifestyle

Take everything you hear about sugar with a grain of salt. It's probably not as bad as a lot of people think, but it might be more damaging than most people realize. Those of us who blithely munch on muffins at breakfast and Pop-Tarts at lunch don't seem to pay much heed to refined sugar and its many vehicles, including non-sweets such as peanut butter and bread. Those of us who have read William Dufty's “Sugar Blues” - or any number of other anti-sugar rants - avoid it like the plague, which was caused by sugar, according to Dufty. If the mayonnaise in our cole slaw contains high-fructose corn syrup, we fear the imminent onset of gout, acne, dropsy, scurvy, depression and premature death. Which is silly, because sugar has only been linked to acne, dropsy, scurvy, depression and premature death.If only it was that easy to indict, or acquit, sugar. According to most experts, it has only one direct negative effect that has been reliably documented: tooth decay. But even at its most benign, refined sugar is the only food that provides calories but no other nutrients. (Refined, or processed, sugar is added sugar, as opposed to those that occur naturally in, for example, fruit and milk; they come alongside folate, calcium, fiber, Vitamin A and other nutrients.) According to Barry Popkin, nutrition professor at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, “Americans consume up to one-fourth of their energy from added sugar. Either this added sugar is in the form of empty calories and affects issues such as poor bone density, etc., or it increases total energy,” and therefore contributes to weight gain. “So my feeling is that this is bad but there is not a lot of evidence for a specific direct linkage of one calorie of sugar to anything.”In other words, we often eat sugar calories in place of those that carry the good stuff that helps us fight osteoporosis, cancer, etc. Or we eat sugar calories in addition to the nutritional sort and start packing on pounds. But a brownie will not kill you, or even give you dropsy. However, some doctors (including diet guru Robert Atkins) maintain that refined sugar can be seriously harmful. What to do? Who to believe? Well, even the most sugar-friendly experts recommend replacing many of those empty calories with more nutritious energy vehicles. Soft drinks and commercial cakes, cookies and muffins are the all-stars of the nutritional void, according to the United States Department of Agriculture and many health organizations. But if you bake at home, you can moderate what goes into your treats. It's not very hard, once you try, to make everybody in your house happy and sneak in all kinds of vitamins and minerals while nobody's looking. This moist, tender and unique muffin won raves from my whole family. The peppers are fairly subtle, but they can be omitted if you have kids who don't like spices. Mona Blaber, a freelance journalist who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., with her husband and three stepchildren, puts extensive research, and trial-and-error, into her fantastic (refined) sugar-free baking recipes. Her mom never let her have the cereal with sugar in it when she was little. Blue-Corn Apple MuffinsIngredients: (makes 12 muffins)1 1/4 (one and one-fourth) cup unbleached all-purpose flour3/4 (three-fourths) cup whole-grain blue cornmeal3/4 (three-fourths) teaspoon baking soda1/4 (one-fourth) teaspoon baking powder2 teaspoons cinnamon1 teaspoon ground chipotle pepper1/2 (one-half) teaspoon nutmeg1 pepper, such as habanero or jalapeño, with pods removed and finely chopped in food processor1 large egg1/2 (one-half) cup nonfat plain yogurt1/3 (one-third) cup 1 percent milk 1/3 (one-third) cup thawed apple-juice concentrate1/2 (one-half) cup tart apples (Granny Smith and Golden Delicious are in season year-round2 large, very ripe mashed bananasPreparation:Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 12-muffin tin. Sift together flour, cornmeal, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and chipotle. In separate bowl, beat egg. Mix in milk, yogurt and concentrate. Add mashed bananas, apples and pepper. Mix egg mixture into flour mixture, using as few strokes as necessary. Immediately spoon batter into muffin tins. Bake for about 15 minutes. Cool for five minutes and remove muffins from tins while warm. In each muffin, there are about 118 calories and 0.6 grams of fat, about 0.13 of which is saturated.

Cuisines of Nepal

Nepal is best known for one of the nine wonders of this world-The Mount Everest.Just say the magic word,'Mount Everest' and everyone will be nodding their head and going,"ohhhh...".But the one thing unknown to the tourist is the cuisines of Nepal,ranging from the Newari dishes and the thakali and etc.It is not as simple as it sounds and one will be surprised and perplexed;which restuarants should they dine in at and what should they pick out from the menu for there are different cuisines originated by their own cultures. 'Dhal bhat masu'[lentils,rice,meat] are the staple food served in every household in Nepal.Be it lunch or dinner,rice is always served no matter what the side dishes are.If you really want to experience living as the local here in nepal,be sure to order your 'dhal bhat masu' for a change. Another very popular food in Nepal is 'Momo' or also known as dumplings.It is filled with minced chicken,pork or beef meat and wrapped into the dough they have kneaded.And for the vegetarians,fear not for they have momo filled with vegetables only.Though I would not promise the taste would be as good as the traditional momo. The other equally sought after food is Choyela-a delicacy of the Newari people.There are two types of choyela; haku choyela (roasted choyela) and mana choyela (boiled choyela). It is made up of buffalo meat. For those of you who are a dare-devil,try your hands on these spicy mouthwatering delicacy-Pani puri.It is sold along every road in Nepal.It is by far my personal favourite. And for those who just can't do without their daily burgers and fries,Nepal has a good deal of western restuarants and lo and behold...KFC and Pizza hut just opened it's first ever branch down in Durbarmarg[King's way].But nothing beats the BK fries in Thamel.You will be licking your fingers when you are done!Be sure to try the local cuisines for your stay here won't be completed without them

Pokhara

Pokhara is a city of close to 200,000 inhabitants in central Nepal located at 28.25°N, 83.99°E, 198 km west of Kathmandu. It is the third largest city of Nepal after Kathmandu and Biratnagar It is also one of the most popular tourist destinations of the country. The city offers a combination of nature and culture with a distinct tourist district in the southern subdivisions of Baidam, Lakeside and Damside. It is mostly known as starting and ending point for Annapurna treks. Pokhara is quite a modern city with only few touristic attractions in the town itself. Most interesting is the old centre in the north of the city (purano bazar) where still many old shops and warehouses in the Newari style can be found. Temples worth visiting in the older part of town are Bindhyabasini temple and Bhimsen temple. Another temple, Barahi temple, is located on an island in the Phewa lake. It is accessible only through boats available at the shores of the lake. The modern commercial city centre at Chiple Dhunga and Mahendrapul (now called Bhimsen Chowk, named after a Shahid (Martyr) in Jana-aandolan II, April, 2006) is halfway between the lake and Purano Bazar, the old centre. Apart from this there are several subcentres in other parts of town: in the north in Bagar, in the south between Prithvi Chok and Srijana Chok (mainly hardware stores), and in the east, on the other side of the Seti, in Ram Bazar. On a hill overlooking Phewa Tal from the south is the World Peace Stupa built in 1996 with a view of the lake, across the city and of the snow peaked mountain range consisting of namely, Fishtail, Annapurna and Dhaulagiri Himals (mountains). The shortage of touristic sites in Pokhara is made up by its scenic views in and around town. Most of them are not mentioned in any guide or map. The Seti Gandaki (White Gandaki) and its tributaries have created spectacular gorges in and around the whole city. The Seti gorge runs through the whole city from north to south. At places it is only a few metres wide, but 100 m deep with a water depth of 20 m. Another place worth visiting is the Patale Chhango (Hell's Falls), more commonly called "Davis Falls", named after a tourist who fell into the gorge. The water of these falls comes from the Fewa Lake flowing to the Seti. The falls plunge into a hole and disappear. In monsoon this sight is most spectacular. Nearby, across the street is a little cave (Gupteshwor Cave). A more exciting cave is at the opposite end of the city in Batulechaur (Mahendra Cave). Betulechaur is known for the musicians caste of the Gaines. Pokhara is the gateway to the trekking route "Round Annapurana", which is usually a trek of 25 days.