Quick Dinner Recipes

Where to travel, which restaurants are good, what about your health? How to have the most spare time for recreation? The Skinny Cook culinary travels' tansformed into quick dinner recipes. Use more cooking ware for less preparation time. Your gourmet vacation starts here! (Traveling chefs and authors login)

Here 3 great Skinny Cook sites about chocolates, smoothies and gourmet coffee:

• Belgian Chocolate Truffles
• Fruit Smoothie Recipes
• Gourmet Coffee Bean

Try the following home made remedies if you have puffy eyes from allergies.

Visiting my niece yesterday, she was wearing dark glasses indoors… Not a weird teenage fashion statement but she wanted to hide her eyes. No, don’t get me wrong, she isn’t on drugs, just that her eyelids where a bit swollen.

It started the evening before and the whole eyelid was a bit puffy. Since her general health further on is OK and I am a chef, of course I was thinking about food allergy and some food remedies for reducing puffy eyes.

Treatment for puffy eyes

Puffy eyes allergy can best be treated in finding the sources causing the allergy. Therefore you should start noting down everything you do during the day related to:

• make up on your face
   
• soap, shower
   
• what you breath in and
   
• what you eat

Then try to find a pattern : you will get rid of puffy eyes once you eliminate the source of puffy eyes.

Reduce puffy eyes

The following puffy eye remedies at least relieved my nieces puffy eyes. At this moment she feels fine again, which led me to believe she must have had some allergic reaction.

If none of the below puffy eyes remedies work, do go see a doctor and ask for a deep diagnosis and treatment for puffy eyes. There also exist creams against eye puffiness, but when you have an allergy, sometimes it’s not that wise to add a cream. Ask your doctor!

If you really want to self medicate using a cream, then try an Aloe Vera based cream: Aloe Vera will hydrate your eyes.

Tea remedy for puffy eyes

The age-old remedy against dark circles under the eyes, also works against fluffy eyes.

• normal tea reduces swelling,
   
• chamomile tea soothes redness and inflammation.

Put the tea-bags in hot water for three minutes. Let cool until the bags are comfortably warm, lie down, close your eyes and put the bags over your puffy eyes. Unlike on the picture, it’s better to wrap the towel around your eyes! Relax your fluffy eyes for at least 10 minutes.

Make sure you drink the tea, as sometimes puffy eyes indicate water retention in the eyes. The more you drink, the better excess salts can be flushed out of your system.

Herbal home remedy for allergy

When your fluffy eyes are caused by an allergy, then drinking homemade barley drinks twice a day could solve the problem. This is my favourite barley drink recipe, deliciously aromatised with screwpine leaves and dried fruit:

Ingredients:

• some screwpine leaves (pandan-leaves: screwpine is "Malaysian Vanilla" and a delicious ingredient in Malaysian desserts (read more about delicious Malaysian recipes at Kuih Rose Recipe)
   
• 1 handful dried winter melon (winter melon, sugar, sulphide dioxide) (Kundur Manis)
   
• a handful of the best quality barley
   
• some bean curd skin (tofu-skin, fu chuck) tear into pieces
   
• water

Preparation:

• wash the barley until water is clear
   
• put in a medium sized pot, add the other ingredients and fill the pot for 3 quarters with water
   
• boil until the water turns white in colour (about 1 hour)

Please leave a comment if you know more home remedies against puffy eyes from allergies!

Bookmark to:

Technorati Tags: allergies, barley, puffy eyes, puffy eyes from allergies

Bite This!

Velveeta soup is a delicious rich soup with Velveeta cheese and preferably Guinness Stout beer.

Of course you can use this beer cheese soup recipe with Velveeta as a guidance to substitute with your favourite beer, cheese or cheeses like Parmesan.

A great tip is using Velveeta recipes, substitute it with your favourite Cheddar cheese and you have your personal cheddar beer soup recipe!

Velveeta soup ingredients

• 2 liter (4 pints) chicken stock : freshly made, bought or from chicken cubes
   
• 500 gram (16 ounce) Velveeta cheese (substitute with your favourite cheeses or the cheese left overs in the fridge)
   
• 1 small bottle of Guinness Stout (330ml or 11 fluid ounce) (substitute with your favourite dark beer)
   
• 60 gram ( 2 ounce) butter
   
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
   
• 2 potatoes, cut in small cubes
   
• 30 gram (1 ounce) corn flour : dilute in a few spoons of water of chicken stock
   
• 1 big onion diced finely
   
• 2 carrots diced finely
   
• 1 green celery (without leaves) diced finely
   
• olive oil to fry

Velveeta soup preparation

1. Take a very large pot (you will find out why when you add your beer…), heat some olive oil and saute the onion, leek and carrots for a few minutes.
    
2. Add black pepper and saute further until the onions are soft and almost translucent.
    
3. Add the chicken stock and puree the sauteed vegetables with a hand-mixer.
    
4. Bring back to a boil and add potatoes and Velveeta cheese. Simmer for the next 15 minutes.
    
5. Add in the corn flour mixture and boil for 1 minute more.
    
6. Turn off the fire, transfer your pot to the sink and stir in your beer (especially when this is the first time you make this Velveeta cheese soup).

   Once you add beer, your Velveeta beer soup will start to foam big time, so that’s why we recommend to start off with a huge pot.

   (you could also let the beer go stale first, but I can’t leave any opened beer just standing there…).
    

Serve your Velveeta soup with a huge loaf of bread and some baked sausages for a one meal dish.

Bookmark to:

Technorati Tags: beer, beer soup, Cheddar, cheese, cheese soup, guinness stout beer, rich soup, Velveeta, Velveeta soup

Bite This!

Start cooking our easy recipe for the cabbage soup diet. This recipe of cabbage soup is delicious when you use only organic vegetables.

Although personally I have had much more success with the Japanese Banana diet, I am convinced that there is an ideal diet out there for each person.

So for those wanting to try the cabbage soup diet, read below how the diet works and how you can make a not too fat cabbage soup.

What is the cabbage soup diet?

The cabbage soup diet is mainly a one week effort to change your eating habits without having to starve yourself. The diet goes as follows from day 1 till day 7:

1. Eat all the fruit and cabbage soup you want. Strangely but true: the cabbage diet forbids you to eat bananas…(see day 4)
    
2. Eat all the vegetables and cabbage soup you want. Try not to eat beans nor peas but stick to green leaf vegetables. Cooked or raw doesn’t matter
   and you can add a big baked potato to your meal!
    
3. Combine day 1 and 2 but without the baked potato treat.
    
4. Go bananas! Eat at least 8 bananas and drink as much skimmed milk or cabbage soup as you feel like.
    
5. 10 to 20 ounces (300 to 600grams) of beef or skinless chicken, at least 6 fresh tomatoes, 2 liters of water (4 pints) and all the cabbage soup you want (that is if you still feel like eating anything after 4 normal servings of meat…)
    
6. Eat as much beef, green leaf vegetables and cabbage soup as you want.
    
7. Try brown rice, vegetables and fresh fruit juices. Of course keep on drinking your cabbage soup.
    

After 1 week of the cabbage diet, people do loose weight.

On top of that this change in eating habits will open your taste-buts for other food than fastfood. You will discover the taste of brown rice, fresh fruit juices and healthy green leaf vegetables.

Make sure you write down a list of all the flavours you loved during the cabbage diet and base your new diet on those.

Simple recipe for cabbage soup diet

Cabbage soup ingredients

• 1 litre hot (boiling) water
   
• olive oil
   
• 1 organic head cabbage
   
• 2 pounds (1 kg) fresh organic tomatoes
   
• 3 big organic onions
   
• 1 bunch organic celery
   
• 4 stems of organic leek
   
• 1 green organic pepper
   
• 1 red organic pepper
   
• 4 cloves garlic, peel removed
   
• 2 cubes of organic low fat vegetable broth
   
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
   
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
   
• salt and pepper to taste curry powder and your favourite spices
   

Cabbage soup preparation

1. Slice the leek in rings and cut the onion and celery in cubes.
    
2. Put a little olive oil in a non stick pot and saute the onions, celery and leek on a low fire. Stir in the cayenne pepper and curry powder after 5 minutes and let simmer for 5 minutes more.
    
3. Meanwhile start slicing the rest of the vegetables - except the garlic - in strips and add after the onions and leek are sauteed.
    
4. Dice the tomatoes.
    
5. Add tomatoes, the still intact garlic cloves, water and stock cubes and bring to a boil.
    
6. Cover the pot and simmer until the cabbage soup is ready (1 to 2 hours, depends on your cabbage, on your cutting and on how hard or how soft you want your cabbage to be).
    
7. Taste and add salt or pepper if needed. Add skimmed milk if you find your cabbage soup too spicy, but next time just add less cayenne and curry powder!

Happy dieting and leave a comment with your favourite recipe for cabbage soup diet please!

Bookmark to:

Technorati Tags: cabbage soup diet, DIET, easy recipe, organic vegetables, recipe for cabbage soup diet, weight loss

Bite This!