Cooking

I love to cook and spending time in the kitchen gives me lots of pleasure. Unlike many people, I prefer the quiet and like to concentrate on the issue at hand. New recipes plus a creative approach provide me with many challenges.

I've been working on the elimination of white sugar and white flour from my baking; neither has much nutritional value. Many experiments go on in the kitchen. When possible I'm using Xylitol (see below) and/or raw honey to replace the sugar.

We concentrate on eating many vegetables and fruit during the daily meals while using little meat. One of our favorite meats is ground buffalo purchased at the Kroger Store. Ground buffalo can be used in any recipe that calls for ground beef and has a wonderful flavor. We like the idea of our meat not having any hormones or antibiotics, which most beef products have. The Healthy Buffalo site has lots of nutritional information.

For general baking I use the following for converting white flour to wheat flour.

Replace no more than half of the all-purpose white flour with whole wheat flour.
If using baking powder in your recipe, add half again as much baking powder plus a bit more liquid.
Compared to all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour makes baked goods denser and coarser in texture.
It does provide more fiber but about the same nutrients as enriched all-purpose flour.

The microwave oven is no longer used for either cooking or re-heating any food.

I now use Xylitol in place of refined white sugar for most of my cooking and baking. Xylitol is an all-natural sweetener found in many fruits and vegetables, including raspberries and plums. It tastes and looks like sugar. Because it is all-natural, it differs substantially from artificially created chemical sweeteners like Splenda®, and aspartame and is safe for people of all ages. Some of the benefits are:

It has 40% fewer calories and 75% less carbohydrates than sugar (we've mentioned the bad effects of refined sugar on our health page).
It has a Low Glycemic Index (7) and has little effect on blood sugar levels.
Reduces ear infections and upper respiratory infections.
Protects teeth.

XlearInc is a web site with lots of information. Xylitol is available in most health foods stores, but we have found it somewhat cheaper online. Epic Dental is the most reasonable we've found (check for sale prices).

The honey most of us buy in the grocery store tastes great and is a good sweetener, but it is all pasteurized and most of the beneficial aspects have been negated. If it's clear, it has been heated and cooked. The best honey of all is raw honey since it retains all the healthful properties and tastes even better than the pasteurized version.

Honey in Cooking: You can use honey in cooking instead of sugar. Because it is sweeter than sugar, you need to use less. The first thing to consider when using honey to cook with is that it is judged to be twice (2 X) as sweet as sugar. Therefore, to get the same sweetness as sugar, use one half as much as you would of sugar. Honey is about 18% water. If you round that off to 20% you can easily figure that about 1/5th of the honey you add to your recipe is water. Therefore, you cut back on the moisture in your recipe by 20% (1/5th). Honey is hydroscopic (meaning it attracts water) so it is good for baking cakes as it keeps them moist for longer.

Health Benefits: Honey's unique composition makes it useful as an antimicrobial agent and antioxidant. Honey has long been recognized as a natural remedy and has been used as a medicine for thousands of years. It has antiseptic properties, can be very successfully used in wound management and can be used as a remedy for ailments from sore throats to burns and cuts.

The World's Healthiest Foods has a very good article covering many of honey's benefits.
eBeeHoney.com also has a lot of information about raw honey.
The National Honey Board has a wealth of recipes along with even more information.
Really Raw Honey also has a bunch of recipes.
Stakich, a Michigan company, is our favorite source with competitive prices and prompt shipping.

Microwave ovens have become an American staple due to their convenience in both cooking and warming foods in a short period of time with minimal use of energy. But an astounding amount of research over the last 30 years shows that their use is detrimental to health due to the effects on the food and liquid; they change the molecular structure of the heated item and in many cases create dangerous results. For an interesting visual effect created by a child's science experiment look at the Raw Living Foods words about microwaving (the pictures are down the page). Other views:

Microwave Madness, a site with a lot of information and links to other articles.
Natural News has a cartoon about microwave use, but it is followed by a more serious article.
The Effects of Microwave Apparatus on Food and Humans is an older article, but still accurate.

The research convinced us to stop using microwave ovens completely.

General Information

The Cook's Thesaurus is a cooking encyclopedia that covers thousands of ingredients and kitchen tools. Entries include pictures, descriptions, synonyms, pronunciations, and suggested substitutions.
100 Top Cooking Sites: just what it says.
KraftFoods.com: Four major categories include the Cookbook, Food and Family, About Kraft and For You.
About.com covers just about every aspect of home cooking that you can imagine.
Cooking Light: Companion site to the magazine, lots of information.

Recipes

RefDesk.com Food and Recipes has literally hundreds of cooking-related links.
The Recipe Link is home to thousands of recipes and lots of additional information.
AllRecipes.com: Thousands of recipes searchable by category.
Recipe Archives: 3,678 recipes indexed in over 67 food categories.
W H Foods has several hundred recipes with a good filtering system. Their home page is loaded with information.
My Recipes is a classy, good-looking site with a wealth of information.
RecipeSource is the new home of SOAR: The Searchable Online Archive of Recipes.