Have you ever been out for dinner and been confused by the number of knives and forks? Don’t know what to do with that napkin? This is a list of the top 10 tips to help you get by if you are invited to a fine dining experience. The rules may vary from place to place but this should serve as a good guide.

1. Knives and Forks

This is one of the most common problems for people that are used to flatware (knives and forks) being brought to the table with each course. On a properly set table you usually see a series of forks on the left side of your plate, and a series of spoons and knives on your right (the table is always set for right handed people). The very simple rule is to always work from the outside in; the cutlery farthest away from your plate is for the first course. If you are still unsure what to do, wait and follow your hostess or host.

Always take small portions of food at a time and put your cutlery down between each mouthful. When you put your cutlery down, place it on the plate (never back on the table and do not rest it half on and half off the plate); cross the tips of the two pieces (if there are two) or angle it if there is just one. This tells the server that you are not finished. When you are finished, place your knife and fork together in the centre of the plate vertically. The tines of the fork should point up and the blade of the knife should point to the centre towards the fork.

You should always hold both your knife and fork - you should not cut your food up at the start and then use your fork only (this is an American tradition and is generally fine in America, but not in Europe). The tines of your fork should always point down toward the plate - for difficult foods like peas, you should use your knife to squash them onto the tip of the fork. The fork is not a scoop, do not use it like one.

Do not pick up any cutlery that you drop to the floor. It will be replaced by the server.

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Everyone knows that what you eat affects how long and how well you can live. Read on to discover how the question of meat factors into your longevity goals.

Vegetarian Benefits
Becoming vegetarian has more rewards in store than ethical integrity; it can also offer some wonderful health benefits. In general, vegetarians suffer from fewer degenerative diseases than their carnivore counterparts.

It has been estimated that one third of all cancer patients developed their disease because they did not include a sufficient amount of whole plant fibers in their diets. Studies have also shown that vegetarians - when following a well-balanced, low-fat, high-fiber vegetarian diet - often have lower incidence of coronary artery disease, hypertension, and obesity.

Save the Meat for the Weekend
The recent Western obsession with protein diets is turning out to have potentially fatal results, namely osteoporosis and kidney failure. During protein metabolism, your kidneys must excrete the excess components of protein, known as amino acids.

To complete this process, the kidneys neutralize the acids by binding them to calcium, which in turn, depletes your body’s store of this essential mineral.

The rate in the U.S. of osteoporosis is strikingly higher than China, where almost everyone eats a lower protein vegetarian diet. Evidence has also been found that excess protein weakens the kidney function. But you don’t have to give up meat entirely to attain longevity.

In studies of animals with chronic kidney failure, simply reducing their intake of protein extended their lifespan by up to 50 percent! Take this advice: limit your meat eating to only the weekends, and you will be taking a balanced and healthy approach to your diet.

Choose Fish
If you do decide to eat meat, you will want to make educated decisions about the meat you choose. Of all animal products, fish is the healthiest choice because it is high in protein and low in fat. The omega-3 fatty acids that are found in fish protect your blood vessels from plaque, prevent high blood pressure, reduce inflammation, and help you maintain good respiratory health.

Populations that eat a diet consisting of mostly fish, vegetables, and local fresh fruits experience practically no cardiovascular disease and have a high percentage of healthy seniors.

Ladyironchef comment

This is just a article i found somewhere, i still eat meat, but i eat it with lots of greens and fruits : )

Managing your weight is based on three simple equations: Calories in = Calories needed: When the calories you consume are equal to the calories that your body needs daily, your weight will stay the same. For example, most women, depending upon their age and activity level, consume from 1,600 to approximately 2,200 calories daily. When they consume this amount of calories daily, they are able to maintain their body weight. Men typically need from 2,200 to 2,800 calories or more daily, depending upon their activity levels, to keep their weight stable.

Calories in > Calories needed: When you consistently consume more calories than you need over an extended period of time, your weight will begin to increase as your body will store these excess calories as fat. Unfortunately, many peope are finding themselves a product of this unbalanced equation, as over 60 percent of Americans are currently overweight or obese. In other words, Americans are chowing down more calories than they need on a regular basis, and their bathroom scales are constantly reminding them of their overindulgence.

Calories in < Calories needed: If you routinely consume fewer calories than you need, you will begin shedding your excess weight. Since a pound of fat is the equivalent to approximately 3,500 calories, a deficit of this amount of calories, over a period of time, will produce a loss of a pound of weight. For example, if a person who needs 2,200 calories daily to maintain her weight begins to consume 1,950 calories, or 250 calories less daily, she would pleasantly find that there would be one pound less of her by the end of a two week period (250 calories X 14 days = 3,500 calories).

Live like never live before, eat like never eat before, but do watch your calories won’t you?

Credits: foodnetwork 

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A heart-healthy diet is one that limits saturated fat, trans fat and dietary cholesterol while adding heart-healthy foods in an attempt to lower your blood cholesterol levels and reduce your risk of heart disease. According to the American Heart Association, saturated fat should not exceed seven percent of your total calories, trans fat should not exceed one percent and cholesterol should be less than 300 milligrams.

Always check with your health professional for personalized advice.

The strategy for minimizing your intake of these dietary components is fairly straightforward. In general, you need to eat lean and eat less (animal foods, that is).

• Saturated fat is most abundantly found in fatty cuts of meat and in the skin on poultry, using leaner varieties of these foods and eating less by limiting your servings to approximately six ounces daily, will automatically reduce the saturated fat in your diet.
• Dietary cholesterol is ONLY found in animal foods, keeping a six-ounce, upper limit on the amount of meat and poultry you eat daily will also harness the amount of dietary cholesterol you eat.
• Trans fats are found in foods made with hydrogenated oils, and show up in commercially-baked goods, stick margarine, shortening and many fried foods.

While high-fat dairy foods such as whole milk, cheese, and many premium ice creams can provide a substantial amount of saturated fat as well as dietary cholesterol, using the low-fat and nonfat versions of these foods will dramatically reduce both of these dietary substances.

Foods from plant sources have negligible amounts of saturated fat and ALL are free of dietary cholesterol. Have a field day with plant-based grains, fruits and vegetables as long as you don’t also need to restrict your daily calories to manage your weight. While palm, palm kernel, and coconut oils are the only foods from plant sources that are extremely high in saturated fat, all the other vegetable oils aren’t. In fact, olive oil and canola oil are high in heart-healthy omega-3s.

There really isn’t a downside to consuming a heart-healthy diet. While you need some unsaturated fat for a healthy diet, you don’t need to eat a morsel of saturated fat or trans fat. Your daily dietary fat requirements can be easily met by enjoying foods that provide predominately heart healthy unsaturated fat, such as olive, canola, and soybean oils, nuts

The same good news holds true for dietary cholesterol. While cholesterol is needed in your body to make important substances, such as certain hormones and vitamin D, your body can make all the cholesterol that it needs. You don’t have to rely on your diet to provide any cholesterol.

Article taken from foodnetwork.com

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We have always been curious to find out why a hotdog is called a “hotdog” and not a “colddog”?

The origin of hot dogs started all the way from the main ingredient - the sausage. There is some disagreement though as to whether the Austrians or the Germans invented the sausage. However, most people will credit the origin of sausages to the city of Frankfurt in Germany around the late 1400s. The frankfurter sausage was later nicknamed as “dachshund sausage” by a Frankfurt butcher who happened to own a dachshund (a dog with a pretty long body).

It is from Europe that the “dachshund” sausage was introduced to North American. Again it not quite clear who actually was the first to introduce sausages with bread roll in the States. Whoever it was, the “dachshund” sausage roll became a very popular fast food in Chicago where it spread to the rest of the country. People began to serve the “dachshund” sausage rolls in baseball parks and soon having hotdogs at the games became an American tradition.

It was in 1901 during one of such games that the vendors were peddling pipping hot “dachshund” sausage rolls. A sport cartoonist, Tad Dorgan heard the vendors hawking their “dachshund” sausage rolls and drew a cartoon of barking dachshund sausages nestled warmly in break rolls. The term “hotdog” was immortalized when Dorgan was unable to spell “dachshund” and instead settled with the term “hotdogs”

And that’s how hotdogs came to be !

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1. If I said you had the body of an all-natural, organic-living, animal-loving, environment-nurturing,whale-saving sex machine, would you hold it against me? Please?

2. May I take your picture? It’s for the World’s Sexiest Vegetarian competition.

3. Could you help me out? I’m trying to decide if I want to keep these new hemp sheets, but I need a second opinion.

4. Your organic cotton t-shirt looks really soft. Can I feel it?

5. Wanna come up and see my Vitamix?

6. What’s your favorite thing to do with agave nectar?

7. Do you like my new skirt? I love pleather but it makes me all hot and sweaty.

8. Mmmmm. I could really go for a hot veggie dog right about now.

9. I’ll eat Hip Whip on anything.

10. How do you get your protein?

- courtesy of the March/April ‘06 VegNews

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In choosing to read this article beyond its headline, I suppose it would be safe to assume that you are either a) A man looking to boost his already substantial ego, or b) A very cheesed off female.

Since I have no interest in pandering to my fellow man’s self belief (genuine or otherwise) in his ability to cook, this article shall therefore be spent defending an incredibly controversial statement - which I happen to agree with.

Try listing ten TV chefs or food personalities and you will find that you inevitably name more of the masculine variety. Who hasn’t heard of Jamie Oliver, Anthony Bourdain, Martin Yan, or even our very own face of local food, K.F. Seetoh?

In contrast, the pink corner could only conjure up the delectable Nigella Lawson, Violet Oon, and, after much thought, the extremely old school Fang Tai.

This phenomenon is in no way limited to the idiot box. In commercial kitchens all over the island, you would be hard pressed to find more than a handful of female chefs, with the prized position of head chef an almost exclusively male domain.

Yet, most of us would have grown up weaned on a diet of our mum’s food. My mother has cooked at least three-quarters of my meals growing up. That?s ? × 365 × 18! An incredible 3285 meals!

I’m sure that it was the same for Jamie, Anthony and Martin (JAM). How, then, did they evolve to become the super chefs that they are today?

I believe the answer lies in the fact that women continue to refuse to step into the world of professional cooking.

In the past thirty years, women have made huge advances in the workplace. Female CEOs, once a novelty, are becoming more commonplace. Women’s rights groups all over the world continue to battle - and rightly so - for the right to equality in offices everywhere.

Hail the coming of the modern career woman. She leads with an iron fist adorned with diamonds, refuses to take the full period of maternity leave accorded to her, and, damningly, simply refuses to cook.

The professional kitchen remains the domain of men simply because the modern career woman, who has all the attributes of a head chef (A leader, by the book, has the ability to multitask), refuses to step into what they deem to be a woman’s job.

After all, spending the whole day cooking and cleaning dishes is exactly what these newly empowered women are seeking to avoid. The irony is that their peers who decline the rocky road of career superstardom are often more comfortable staying in the kitchen - the home kitchen that is.

These women, content to pursue the socially acceptable role of home maker, prefer to hone their culinary skills at home, rather than cook for money. I’m sure everyone would agree, though, that skills are best honed when faced with competition. And where better to find competition than at the workplace?

Thus, men will continue to don their starched white uniforms and chef hats, if only because women don’t want to. And it is for this reason that I agree that men are better cooks, though it could be added that it is largely because they are the only ones who want to.

I’ve got to go, my mum’s calling: Dinner’s ready!

Credits: By Danny Tan

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Saw this interesting article although its not really about food, but please give it a read
Appear in your gym/yoga/soccer attire. Whatever happened to personal grooming and dressing to kill? The first impression of a person is formed within… some say 5 seconds, some say 30 seconds, some say 5 minutes - but to sum it up - in a very SHORT time. Appropriate attire would definitely help you score some points.

Order your food before your date arrives or better still, start eating before your date arrives. Yes, I understand you might be hungry after a long day, but try to grab a quick bite prior to your date at the nearest sandwich bar if you know it’s going to be a late lunch or dinner.

Challenge your date’s religion beliefs. Till today, I still cannot figure out why people go on dates to pick a fight. Enough said.

Complain about your past dates/boss/mother/ex-spouse(s). Nobody likes to sit opposite someone who’s negative and constantly complaining. Like job interviews, always put your best foot forward on your first date. You might not be Mr./ Miss Sunshine, but at least present your most positive self on your first date.

Interrogate your date. What does your father do? Can you do housework? When do you forsee yourself settling down? Why did you quit your last job? Why are you still single? The key to a successful communicator is the ability to make the other person feel comfortable. Facing “a machine gun that keeps firing away” leaves the person with no space to breathe.

Walk out on the date / Leave when your date is in the midst of paying for the meal. Even if you totally hated your date’s guts, at least have the courtesy to leave the restaurant at the same time as him/her. Do not rush off as if he/she has some sort of disease.

Whip out your handphone/PDA to split the bill into half… down to the last cent. You might not fancy the lady that much, or you are really broke this month. You do not need to pay for her share, but seriously there’s no excuse for such ‘cheapskate’ and ‘ungentlemanly’ behaviour.

by Violet Lim from lunchactually

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