Soul Food Recipes From The Caribbean, Yummy

Soul food recipes come from the earliest inhabitants of the Caribbean islands. They were the three Indian tribes of Arawak, Carib, and Taino. Their daily food comprised of vegetables and fruits. It was the Taino tribe that first started cooking meat and fish, using large clay vessels.

 The Arawaks used a different method. They used thin strips of green wood to cook meat more slowly and allowing it to absorb the flavor of the wood. The wooden grate they used was called barbacoa. This is where the term barbeque comes from.

 Not to be left behind, the Carib tribe made their fish and meat recipes really spicy by adding pepper sauces, lime, and lemons. In fact, the Caribs are credited with having cooked the first pepper pot stew. The last of the above three has had a tremendous impact on Caribbean food.

 This should not be surprising because the Caribbean Sea was named after this tribe. Caribbean soul food recipes are still representative of the food that was originally eaten by the early inhabitants. It includes okra, fish cakes, callaloo, ackee, salt fish, pudding, souse, cassava, yams, sweet potatoes, plantains, and mangoes. The concept of jerk cooking also originated in the Caribbean. Early African hunters would often leave their homes to go on long hunts.

They would take with them pork cooked in a very spicy recipe over hot coals. In the post slavery era, Indian cooking culture was introduced into Caribbean soul food recipes and still remains an active part of the Caribbean cuisine. Most of the curried meats and curry powder recipes that are found today are directly derived from original Indian cuisine. Rice was introduced to the Caribbean by the

Chinese and is now a staple. The Chinese also unleashed mustard on the islanders while the Portuguese sailors did the codfish. Most of the fruit trees that are familiar to the visitors to the island were actually brought here by the Spainish.

 This included orange, ginger, lime, figs, plantains, sugar cane, tamarinds, grapes, and coconuts. America brought with it the various beans, squash, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, and chili pepper. In fact, some of these foods spread to the rest of world through the Caribbean.

 Caribbean cuisine is truly a mix of several cooking styles from all over the world. It retains much of the original culinary skills of the islands native inhabitants. If you are bored with what you eat daily Caribbean food will cure that. If you do not have time to go on a lengthy Caribbean vacation then bring the beaches and the sunshine right into your home through your kitchen using a Caribbean recipe.

These are but a few reasons why Caribbean food is so unique and creative. Flavors from all over the world have found a home in Caribbean food through countless generations and the flow of history.

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Healthier Food Choices For Your Family

In today's world, we all look for the quick meal. We sacrifice our health in an effort to make our food quick and easy. We purchase store-made bread, boxed potatoes, canned vegetables. There is very little in our diets that is not heavily processed and laden with preservatives. In order to work toward a healthier lifestyle, we must begin making changes in our food choices.

It used to be enough to just say "I'll add more fruits and vegetables to my diet". But not anymore. The food that we are putting in our mouths has little to no nutrition left. It has been pasteurized, homogonized, and processed. Each of these processes breaks down the vitamins and nutrients in our foods. It is impossible to break all bad habits at once.

When you change your entire routine, it becomes difficult to sustain the changes. The best way to begin changing your lifestyle is to adjust one thing at a time. Let the change become a way of life, and then move on to adjusting something else. One of the best things you can do for your body and your family is to slowly change your food over to its more natural state. Start with your vegetables.

Vow today that you will not eat vegetables from a can. Choose fresh vegetables (or frozen if you can not get fresh), and cook them in a more healthy way. Instead of boiling your carrots, take an extra 10 minutes and steam them.

Learn to use herbs (fresh if possible) to add interesting flavors to your meals. (Thyme on carrots is just fantastic). When you have made the change over to fresher vegetables, begin looking for new ways to cut the preservatives and over-processing from your foods. Invest in a bread maker, and set it to make bread at night while you are asleep.

You will wake to fresh bread that cost you .20 to make instead of $2.00 to buy. It will be healthier and you will be happier. Make pasta with a quick healthy sauce instead of relying on boxed products with powdered sauces. Boil and mash your own potatoes, adding a few other root vegetables at the same time, for a healthy alternative to box potatoes or potato flakes.

 You can easily control what you eat and what you make. With a little planning, you can have the healthy food you want with only a little more time investment. Your health is worth it.

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The Taste Of Mexican Food

The saga of today's Mexican food began in 1519 with the arrival of Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes in the Mexican territory. After he conquered Mexico in 1521, a remarkable thing happened. The Spanish and Aztec cultures combined and the result was the birth of the newly formed Mexican food.

The newfangled cooking was based on an original mixture of ingredients, some of which are still used today in traditional Mexican food - for example lemons, cheese, garlic, corn, milk, and red wine.

 The national Mexican food didn't stop evolving. In the last three centuries, the well established Mexican brand blended with South-western American food and transformed to the public's delight. Even though this new cuisine is based on traditional Mexican food, it's a lot spicier then its ancestor.

That's why Americans consider Mexican food as being highly seasoned. Of course, it's not the exact case. Mexican food can taste savory, sourly or even sweet, and not just hot. Many Mexican free recipes for all types of dishes are available to stand for this statement.

 The main ingredients in modern Mexican food are corn and the famous frijoles, or beans. Frijoles are the essential vegetable in the majority of Mexican kitchens as they are easy to prepare (free recipes are at hand), cheap and quite nourishing. The above mentioned free recipes include dishes like tortilla soups, which have become extremely popular over the last decade.

 There is a large variety of web pages that still offer free recipes for customary Mexican food. This is why contemporary Mexican foods and beverages (e.g. tequila) have surpassed simple burritos and beer (cerveza") and have become more and more extravagant. Mexican food today includes different delicacies like salsas, cacti or guacamole.

The main advantages of these new dishes are the numerous manners in which they can be cooked, manners that are now available to anyone thanks to the very popular free recipes. All Mexican food appears to combine easily with the aftertastes and ingredients of other foreign cuisines.

Common free recipes can help anyone prepare Mexican pizza, pancakes, tortillas, chump and salads - dishes that seem to mix up conveniently with African and Asian cooking as well as Italian cuisine. The USA melting pot might be a recent unexpected occurrence, but Mexican food is nowadays as American as lasagna, pizza, or polenta.

 Incredibly, not few visitors to the southeastern border are usually astonished to realize that traditional Mexican food isn't the same with the Mexican dishes across the American border. Mexican food served in the United States doesn't represent the real traditional Mexican food, but an adaptation that resembles it. However, the Internet offers several hundreds of free recipes for miscellaneous dishes like mole sauce and other delicious seafood that can help you enjoy the traditional Mexican food.

 Mexico is an eclectic country that has different regional cooking specialities encountered in the diverse free recipes available throughout its territory. For instance, in the region around Puebla, the most frequent Mexican food that the average tourist will find in the free recipes, will be a mixture of sweet herbs, hot spices and cocoa.

In other cases, around the dominion of Veracruz, one will encounter free recipes consisting of dishes that rely on fish to a great extent such as the local tacos or tamales served with juicy olives and fresh tomatoes. In other regions such as Yucatan, traditional Mexican food is based on fruit sauces.

For example, the free recipes that serve Seville oranges on a banana leaf are very appreciated by the locals. All these Mexican food specialties are key ingredients for the world-famous Mexican cuisine. Therefore, because free recipes are at our disposal, what we should all do is start enjoying them one by one.

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