In the daily challenge of cooking meals for your family, home cooking recipes can be a help or a hindrance. How recipes work for you depends on what you expect them to tell you. Remember, recipes are good at telling you some things, but don’t help you with an overall kitchen culinary journey. If this is what you’re expecting, if you’re expecting guidance that will help you to become a master chef in your home, you will be disappointed.

Here is a review of some of the things that recipes don’t tell you about cooking meals at home:

•    Variations in ingredients or potential substitutions
•    Variations in measurements or how to handle mistakes in measuring
•    Variations in different oven and stoves and their varying temperatures
•    Variations in time or how to tell EXACTLY when the meal is cooked
•    Why you are taking the steps that you are being asked to take so you can make educated decisions

In fact, recipes are best used as a guide for cooking meals just as a musician uses sheet music as a guide for playing music. But if you think about the musician that reads sheet music, they already know how to play an instrument and they can bring the sheet music to life. In the same way, in order to bring a recipe to life, in many respects, you already need know how to cook or at least understand several different cooking methods.

Have you ever heard a cover version of a favorite song? This happened to me recently. I happen to be a fan of Counting Crows and their song, Mr. Jones. Someone else had reinterpreted the song and was singing it as though it were a poem. I was upset! It just didn’t sound the same, but obviously, the musician had put his own spin on it and it may sound great to him and his fans.

So, if you understand how to cook and how to use recipes as an inspiration for your interpretation, you can overcome the things that the recipes don’t tell you about cooking meals at home. You’ll have power, strength and confidence to make the recipe come to life in your personal kitchen culinary vision.

Here are some ways to use recipes to your advantage:
Ingredients – Become familiar with families of ingredients so you can make substitutions. Here are a few examples:

•    spinach for escarole
•    carrots for daikon
•    ostrich for steak

Measurements – forget measurements, cook by how the food looks to you and how it tastes. In your desire to complete the dish as the recipe defines it, you are being distracted from the art of cooking, from enjoying and developing your kitchen culinary skills. Remember, the cookbook doesn’t know your kitchen, you do. The recipes doesn’t know how you like your meals to taste, but you do. So take back control and stop measuring.

Variations in oven temps and times – forget about temperatures and times. Even if you’ve already cooked the recipe at your mom’s house or your best friends house, you can’t rely on the stated temperatures and times. Your oven may be 25 degrees warmer. Instead, use your eyes. Look for visual cues (quantify your cooking): the coagulation of proteins, the caramelization of starches, the evaporation of moisture, the reduction of sauces, etc.

Why you are taking the steps you do – how do you overcome this? Learn basic cooking methods like sauté, steaming, poaching, roasting and grilling. By understanding the nuances of these basic methods, you will be able to look at recipes as a particular method or combination of methods. In this way, just as the piano player hears the melody and attaches their own interpretation, you will begin cooking at home from recipes that will have everyone (including yourself) believing that you are a kitchen culinary master!

When planning your kids party foods, you will want to keep things simple and theme-related. In addition, since many kids can be persnickety eaters, you will want to be sure to present them with foods that are familiar and enjoyable.

FAMILIAR KIDS PARTY FOOD IDEAS WITH A TWIST

Take ordinary food and give them theme-related names and you will have instant success with your little ones. They’ll be clamoring to eat your fun foods. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Hot Dogs – Served at a Scooby Doo theme party could be called Scooby Dogs. Serve them at a beach party and they take on a new title like Octo-Dogs. If you’re throwing a dinosaur theme party those same hotdogs instantly become Dino-Dogs. At a SpongeBob party you could call them Squidward Dogs.

Hamburgers – Serve your basic hamburger at a construction themed party and you could call them Bulldozer Burgers. Serve them up at a SpongeBob party and they might be called Krabby Patties.

French Fries – At a Spongebob Party they must be Krab Fries.

Pizza – Turns into Plankton’s Pizza at a SpongeBob Party.

Macaroni and Cheese – Serve this kids favorite party food at a Curious George party and call it Monkey Mac & Cheese. At a Hello Kitty party, you could tint it pink and call it Purr-fect Pink Mac & Cheese. For a Rubber Ducky party, duck-a-roni & cheese is in order.

Chicken Nuggets – For a pirate party, call them Golden Nuggets or Fools Gold.

Ultimately, what you want to do is to think of words that are associated with your theme and see if you can incorporate them into your food titles. All you have to do is make some fun signs and place them by each entree or snack on your buffet table. This will instantly give your kids party food table Yummmm Appeal! Everything tastes better when it has a fun party name.

PREPARE YOUR KIDS PARTY FOOD AHEAD OF TIME

No need to stress yourself unnecessarily. Prepare as much of the food as possible the day before the party. Either cut-up or buy ready-made and cut-up fresh veggies and fruit. Just be sure to put your raw veggies into cold water to keep them fresh and coat your apples with lemon juice to prevent them from turning brown.

PREPARE BIRTHDAY CAKE AHEAD OF TIME

If you have decided to make your own birthday cake, consider baking it a few days or a week ahead of time and freeze it. Then, the day before the party thaw and decorate it. In the alternative, buy a cake that is already frosted and then all you will have to do is personalize it with themed decorations and a birthday greeting.

KIDS PARTY FOOD IDEAS FOR PARTY DRINKS

To free up refrigerator space, place bottles of water, juice, and milk boxes into coolers with ice. If you are planning to serve punch, then start a week ahead of time and freeze punch into your ice cube trays and place the punch cubes in ZipLoc bags in the freezer. Then the day of the party, they will be ready to add to your punch bowl, along with the other ingredients.

Bottom Line: Just remember to stay with the familiar, think fun, think theme, and you’ll be creating yummmm appeal in no time at all!

You’ll find a few differences between Thai food and the kind of food you are used to that you need to understand about before you begin with it. This is especially true if you’ll be eating with genuine Thai folks because you’ll find significant differences. Plates will be the first difference. Folks are not given a plate that already has their meal on it. All of the food is placed in bowls in the center of the kitchen table. Because rice is such a staple for Thai food, there is generally a very big pot included. Then every person prepares their very own plate from the rice and the other available choices which are in the shared bowls. Typically, you’ll find 3-5 diverse dishes on the table to choose from.

The majority of people favor the ease of utilizing a rice cooker, however, they do not add seasonings. The additional seasonings aren’t needed since the additional dishes being served are so nicely seasoned. It is normal to think of rice as a dinner food, but it is so important to Thai food that it is used for lunch and breakfast too.

Thai food is well known for the different flavors of sour, sweet and salty and the strong usage of spices and herbs. Individual recipes are normally a mix of these kinds of tastes. One dish might inlclude both sweet and sour tastes, etc. A spicy dish is therefore generally paired with a mild one.

One of the more well-known spicy dishes is tom yum, which is a hot and spicy soup that includes lemon grass. Other common Thai dishes that feature a spicy element are green curry and chicken and a hot and spicy sauce paired with deep fried fish.

Mild dishes can either be based upon meat or vegetables. Mild dishes which are quite popular include ginger with fried chicken, garlic with fried pork and chopped pork with vegetables.

Numerous sauces are staples of Thai food. Most of the common ones are either based upon coconut milk or on shrimp paste. The main reason that the shrimp paste is hot and spicy is the crushed up chilies which are included in the recipe. People generally eat shrimp paste with boiled or fresh vegetables or with fried mackerels.

Coconut milk based sauces are much different than shrimp paste. They can also vary wildly because of diverse ingredients. Salty fish, fermented soybeans, pickled crab or prawns are a few of the more standard options. This sauce is usually eaten with cucumbers, string beans, lettuce or round thai eggplants.

Dessert and/or fruit are served at the conclusion of the meal. Desserts are usually really sweet and Thai desserts are no exception. Sticky rice with mangos is one of the most well-known desserts.