Dennys Food and Recipes: Turkey Cooking Tips: How Good Is Your Holiday Roast Turkey?: From Denny: Roasted my Thanksgiving turkey a day early. Sure beats stressing on the Big Day. Also, my husband, affectionately known as "Satan" misses out on trying to micro-manage the cooking, driving me absolutely crazy. He never did learn to cook but thinks he knows how to tell you all about how to do it anyway. Getting the Big Bird done a day early is a win-win for everyone as he was less stressed just as much as me!
Though he did try only twice this season to be ever so irritating: once, when taste testing the fabulous gravy he made The Yuck! Face but could not keep his composure for long, laughed, and then raved about it as one of the best yet. Later he decided he just had to tell me how to cut the French bread for sandwiches his way rather than the normal slices I was doing for hot garlic bread, his favorite. Since I'm basically The Spatial Engineer in this house (just ask me to pack a car for travel and I am The Expert on finding every nook and cranny to fill) I explained to him how his way made no sense but cut a few slices for him anyway. He was so disappointed to realize I was right after all. "Satan" lost that round. Never a dull moment at our house, that's for sure!
Hey, we should all be challenging theWhite House chef to a Roast Turkey Cook Off. Bet mine is one of The Best! We love spices at our house and every year I create something different. This year's wet rub spices were swimming in clarified butter: sea salt, black pepper, garlic powder, smokey paprika, cumin, curry powder, marjoram leaves, lite sodium soy sauce, Moscato wine and Remy Martin cognac...
When I found this recipe on the ABC Recipe site, they referenced it to "Stew Leonard's." Of course, I asked the obvious question, "Who is that?"
I live in south Louisiana so had never heard of the Connecticut grocery store chain. So, I googled them and found a wonderful site worth the visit. They started out as a dairy farm in Norwalk, Connecticut and branched out from there over the decades into a full blown grocery chain. Check out this wonderful chocolate recipe.
From Denny: These unusual chips and dips are packed with flavor and spice sensations, both familiar and exotic that will make you the hit of the party. The food director of Prevention Magazine, Lori Powell, created some winners here.
We love creative uses of spices at our house. What is really a winner is that munching all night long on these combinations and a glass of wine or beer will keep you under 1,000 calories - and that's if you stuff yourself silly. Considering most hamburgers come in at 1,200 calories at most restaurants, well, this is good news.
The latest trend in cheap highs for teens - your kitchen spice rack.
From Denny: The latest idiot "get high" trend among kids is to rummage through the family kitchen spice rack. So, what spices can get you high you ask? As much as I know about forgotten foods like spices and herbs even I didn't ever consider them in this light.
Late night comic Conan O'Brien joked about this disturbing trend among teens: "According to health officials, teenagers have started smoking nutmeg to get high. Is this recession bad or what?"
Nutmeg
Smoking, snorting or ingesting large amounts of nutmeg can give you some serious side effects:
* increased heart rate
* blurred vision
* convulsions
* feels like a bad case of the flu
* delirium
* hallucinations
* vomiting
* irregular heart rhythms
* severe headache
* drowsiness
* coma
The frightening thing is that it takes as long as four to five hours before a user feels the mind-altering effects of nutmeg. Nutmeg is very slow-acting. So, what do they usually do? Yes, you guessed it; after 15 to 20 minutes they decide to ingest even more nutmeg to the point of toxic levels, chasing after that euphoria.
Curious teens keen to experiment are smoking and eating very large amounts of nutmeg in particular. They are seeking that quick high. What they get is a quick trip to the hospital emergency room because of violent convulsions. All it takes is just one tablespoon of nutmeg swirled into a drink to be toxic.
Most cooks use spices sparingly and certainly never considered them as potential drugs to get high. According to Deborah Blum, author of “The Poisoner’s Handbook,” says some spices can definitely be both naughty and nice during this holiday season.
Says Blum: “We tend to think of herbs and spices as wonderfully healthy because they’re natural plant products. But natural doesn’t mean safe and many plants contain toxic compounds, which they evolved to fend off grazing animals and predatory insects. Could you kill someone with a well-spiced holiday cookie? Not likely, you’d have to shovel in so much spice that this would be one inedible treat. But are holiday spices simply benign little flavoring agents? Not entirely.”
She says nutmeg is one of those spices that can bite back when misused.
“Nutmeg has popped into the news recently because teenagers have tried smoking it for its hallucinogenic effects,” she says. “The problem is that these are pretty marginal effects and too much of the compound can make you pretty sick and dizzy. But if you poke around in the spice cabinet, you’ll run across other risky compounds.”
Cinnamon oil
Another spice that can be toxic and is used by teens to get high? Cinnamon. At our house we use cinnamon on our morning oatmeal or in cinnamon-sugar or in baked goods.
Cinnamon oil is what teens are ingesting since the 1990's. The symptoms of cinnamon abused from inhaling or ingesting are:
* nausea
* abdominal pain
* welts on the skin or other irritation
* eye irritation (they got it into their eyes)
* rapid heart beat
* light headedness
* facial flushing
* shortness of breath
Clove oil
Another kitchen cooking spice also the favorite of teens who want to get high? Cloves. Actually, it's clove oil. Some have injected it. What symptoms that caused were acute respiratory distress and non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema which is fluid building up in the lungs so much so you can't breathe. Doctors were able to save this crazy kid who might as well have been labeled a walking Christmas clove ornament.
Vanilla
Did you know that too much vanilla can mess you up too? Twelve ounces of synthetic vanilla extract also contains the dangerous 35 percent ethanol. Ethanol does not react well with the human nervous system when taken in large amounts and can depress it as well as your breathing.
Ingesting too much vanilla bad symptoms are:
* depress the central nervous system
* depress the respiratory system
* flushed skin
* gastrointestinal distress
* hypothermia
* hypotension
Decorative Sprinkles
You have got to be kidding me?! Now it's those cute sugary sprinkles that have issues. Those beautiful Martha Stewart advocated silver dragees, silver balls that look like silver BBs, have a lawsuit against them alleging they are toxic. Bakers have used them for decades in everything from shortbread cookies to gingerbread houses.
Could you poison yourself with too much silver like in these silver dragees?
“I wouldn’t worry,” says Blum. “Too much silver could turn you a lovely silver blue but you’d have to be swallowing those little silver balls by the bucket load. With any of these, you’d have to work very hard at making yourself or anyone sick.”
It doesn't help there are video tutorials on YouTube to encourage this stupid abuse of kitchen spices. If you are a parent, keep tabs on just how much nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and vanilla are still in the pantry.
*** Cinnamon photo by Shariff Che'Lah @ featurepics.com
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Slap That Cold Silly with Food as Medicine: "Utilize spices in your food to give healing support to that cold or flu. Here’s an easy exotic and delicious soup recipe when you are feeling miserable. Soup recipe included."
By Denny Lyon @ HubPages
From Denny: This is a popular article. While it may be almost early summer and hot here in Louisiana it sure isn't in other parts of the country and world! After all it snowed in Colorado this month. On the news is the latest about a new outbreak of flu.
What is good about this article and soup recipe is that it gives real information about the properties of food and how they can benefit a situation with a cold, flu or allergy symptoms. Lentils and beans both act as astringents, pulling excess water out of the body. For that reason alone this is a good and practical read! :) We all know the miseries of a stuffy and runny nose.
Spices are another forgotten food in our modern culture and contain many healthful properties waiting to be rediscovered by us today!
Newest Health Care Plan: Food as Medicine - "OK, so what does the minor political rant have to do with food as medicine you ask? Plenty. When jobs are scarce or people are underemployed – like most of America right now with 100,000 each week entering those unhappy ranks – people make really bad food choices.
Because of job and ensuing financial stress they go to sugar, lots of carbohydrates and low quality meats. With stress on the rise during this tough economic time worldwide, wallets and bank accounts depleted, it’s time to think of food as medicine.
Enjoy sweetened food without sugar through the use of herbs and spices giving a whole lot of flavor to your favorite dishes!"
By Denny Lyon Cherry photo by TimWilson @ flickr Swiss Chard photo by Ned Raggett @ flickr Apple Orchard of golden apples photo by ruralgold @ flickr
