On Weekends
The Guide To Traveling and Dining
Archive for the 'Taste of Life' Category
Aug
3
It’s middle of summer and most people go on a vacation, but not everyone does, because it’s expensive and vacations end up costing a few thousands of dollars, which of course not everyone can afford. But we only have one life and it’s a shame not to avail of easily given online payday loans, which can subsidize not only your vacation but also help you to get out of the depth and make a few purchases you wanted to make for a long time now. It’s a quick way to get cash with no onerous credit requirements.
You will not be required even to send faxes, with payday loan companies such as epayday.co.uk who don’t charge interest when the borrower pays the loan by the end of the month, you can enjoy lower payback rates. So, pamper yourself with a vacation, before the summer is over!
read comments (0)May
8
We all have different preference when it comes to Sugar, but luckily we need not travel if we want to enjoy the sweetness of other countries. Most people, for obvious reasons, prefer Sugar from Brazil, mainly because it has been traditional Brazilian business, just like coffee, for generations. Brazil exported 17.7 million tonnes of sugar worldwide which comes down to 20% of the whole sugar production on the planet.
The world’s sugar trade has been shacked a little in 2002, when Brazil modified their sugar prices, but you can still order Brazilian sugar from suppliers at prices that suit you even through the internet. Please visit highseasugar.com for more information on the background and supplies possibilities. After all, it’s the highest quality sugar on earth, which worth every penny!
Feb
14
Some interesting history about chocolate and strawberries: The ancient Mayans and Aztecs considered chocolate an aphrodisiac. Strawberries have been considered an aphrodisiac since ancient Rome. But the history of these two delectable treats hardly matters. All you need to know is that the combination is sure to please your lover on Valentine’s Day. (the illustration below has no connection to the context).
Chocolate Strawberry Cake Squares
The decadent chocolate fudge combined with the sweet flavor of strawberries in this recipe will have your lover wanting more. And the best part is that it’s quick and simple to make. It serves two so it is a perfect treat for Valentine’s Day.
2 slices pound cake
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons hot fudge sauce
2 tablespoons Amaretto
8 strawberries, sliced
2 tablespoons hot fudge sauce, melted
toasted slivered almonds
vanilla ice cream
In a microwave-safe bowl, combine the 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons hot fudge sauce and Amaretto. Microwave on high for 30 seconds. Put half of the sauce on one dessert plate and half on another. Put the cake slices in the fudge sauce. Put the strawberries in even layers on top of the cake. Microwave each cake square on high for 30 seconds. Top with the 2 tablespoons hot fudge sauce, slivered almonds and ice cream.
Chocolate Strawberry Ice Cream Dessert
A delightful treat for your valentine with Oreos, chocolate and strawberries. A perfect chilled dessert to help steam up your romance.
50 Oreo’s, crushed
4 tablespoons butter, softened
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1 cup chocolate syrup
1 package (8 ounces) whipped topping, thawed Read the rest of this entry »
Jan
16
Coffee, a drink cherished by many; a drink avoided by others. Tea, its main rival, seems to offer a bounty of better health benefits; a drink for the New Agers and those who want to escape the decadence of the brown, caffeinated drink. The fact stands that tea can only be as beneficial as its preparation, which in some cases may have as much sugar as a can of soda. To understand coffee, one must understand the core value of tea: that the brewed leaf itself is the only healthful component. Everything else is decadence.
To that, the coffee bean itself contains a number of benefits to health. But the culture of coffee, like the tao of tea, contains a lot of excess trimmings. Espresso machines, for example, produce a highly concentrated form of ordinary coffee. And then the all-consuming vice: sugar. Along with cream, sugar waters down the benefits of coffee, where it turns the brew into drinkable candy. But all of this remains unchanged from tea. The bean is the important part.
Caffeine can wreak havoc on the nervous system, but that does not make it synonymous with coffee. Different kinds of coffee (all prepared differently) will yield varied levels of caffeine content. Serving size also comes into play. To those sensitive to caffeine, the obvious alternative can be found in decaffeinated coffee. But such an alternative could downplay the positive affects of the drink. Coffee is rich in the B vitamin niacin; and in recent studies has been shown to have antioxidant-like effects on the body by eliminating free radicals. As a caution, these benefits only arise with a balanced drinking habit. Too much cream and sugar can prove to be detrimental, while too much coffee poses many long-term hazards. While coffee may provide the B vitamin niacin, it in turn restricts the body from other vitamins. And depending on the brew, coffee contains acids that have been linked to stomach ulcers. Symptoms like these may sound off-putting, but they exist only in the long run for an abusive drinker. A daily cup poses no threat to the average person.
Read the rest of this entry »
Dec
23
Absinthe is liquor, usually green in color and hence received the name The Green Fairy. It was discovered by doctors and used mainly as a military medicine early on. It contains a psychoactive neurotoxin called thujone, made from wormwood, an herb. In the United States and many other countries it is illegal. In the Czech Republic, it is legal.
Absinthe enjoyed a huge and important history in the 19th century. The choice of many artists, poets, Bohemian free spirits and the like, the drink quickly became synonymous with excess and was eventually outlawed probably because of political reasons as governments decided they just didn’t like the effect it was having on society. Not unlike the outlawing of cocaine and marijuana in the United States in the 1930s.
Vincent Van Gogh cut off his own ear while in the throes of an absinthe binge, and Oscar Wilde once compared a glass of absinthe to a sunset. Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemmingway, Paul Gaugin, Charles Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Voltaire, and the famed Toulouse-Lautrec all reveled in the stuff. References to it in the writings, paintings, and works of many artists have helped lend a sense of mystery to the liquor, contributing to its legendary properties.
Czech Republic is one of the very few countries still producing Absinthe. You may buy it in most of the souvenir-shops, for a price that is much cheaper than ordering it in your country over the internet. The first stadium is like normal drinking, the second stadium is like seeing cruel things, but if you don’t give up, you will see things you want to see - great, unusual things!
There are about million ways that people will suggest to you to drink your absinthe. Here are a few, but we suggest you find your own way to enjoy the drink, if you can and the most important: try to drink it in booking your accommodation in Prague.
Modern-Style: Add equal amount of water and sugar (or coke) to absinthe and drink.
French Tradition: Pour the absinthe into a shot glass, put a sugar cube on a slotted spoon and hold it over the shot glass. Pour water over the sugar to dissolve it into the drink.
Czech Tradition: Pour the absinthe into a big glass. Stir the drink, and then dip the wet spoon into sugar, covering the spoon. Light the spoon on fire, letting the sugar caramelize, then dip it into the drink and stir. Add water to the glass and drink. You will see many variations of this in Prague. If you drink it the first time, it will be better to be not in a pub or a night club, but to be in a safe place as Prague hotel, pensions or whatsoever Prague accommodation it is, in case your organism could not stand the Absinthe’s test. Read the rest of this entry »
Dec
19
Though generally referred to as a coffee tree due to the huge dimensions it can get to, the coffee plant is an evergreen specific to the warm subtropical areas all over the world. Though there are quite many species varieties, there are only two types of coffee plant that global economy exploits on a large scale: they are Arabica and Robusta, the two coffee kinds on which international commerce depends.
Though these two varieties of the coffee plant are used, Arabica leads beyond any trace of a doubt as it is responsible for 75% of the world coffee production, whereas Robusta only gives 20%. This huge difference comes from the coffee plant specificity of each of these subspecies. The beans produced by Robusta coffee plant are inferior in what the quality is concerned due to the higher level of caffeine that also influences taste.
Thus, Robusta coffee is a little bitter than Arabica and darker too; nevertheless, certain communities also depend on this coffee variety for economic survival. To make harvesting pretty easy or comfortable, the height of the coffee plant is kept under control on plantations, and it doesn’t get to grow as high as ten meters as it would normally do, if left wild.
Another major difference between Arabica and Robusta coffee plant lies in pollination specificity: Arabica for instance is self fertilizing whereas Robusta depends on cross pollination. The full development of the coffee fruit, the delicious bean we depend on for our morning coffee, takes about thirty to thirty-five weeks after which it’s time to harvest. As for the growth period of the coffee plant until it becomes fertile it ranges between four and five years. Read the rest of this entry »
Dec
5
No avid espresso drinker’s life feels complete without an espresso coffee maker that will deliver espresso the way the espresso drinker likes it each morning. Surprisingly, many people still go plop down $2 to $4 at the local coffee shop instead of buying their own espresso coffee makers . If you are one of these people that for whatever reason still has not purchased an espresso machine, stay tuned.
Of course, you don’t want to just throw money at the first espresso coffee machine that comes along. You need to decide how lazy you want to be with your espresso machine. Odds are that the reason you don’t own one has some correlation to not wanting to spend a whole lot of time making your espresso. But just in case you are interested in all of the details of making espresso, we’ll discuss manual espresso coffee makers too.
Manual espresso coffee makers basically require you to already have your coffee beans ground and to manually put the grounds and the water in the machine. Also, if you like frothing, most of these have a pump you can use to add frothing.
For a little more convenience, you can get a mostly automatic espresso maker. To use these machines, you have a pump you start and then wait about thirty seconds for extraction. These are about the most popular home espresso coffee machines because they are inexpensive and relatively small. For a little more money, you can get a slightly larger mostly automatic espresso machine that has self on-off control built in as well. Read the rest of this entry »
Nov
30
Also frequently known as coffeehouses, coffee shops are the cozy locals where you go to have a good cup of coffee either with some friends or on your own, so as to quietly read a newspaper. Coffee shops differ from restaurants and cafés, since they predominantly offer a variety of coffee and tea, without serving anything else out of this range. Coffee shops are to be found anywhere on the globe, from the Western world to the Muslim and the extreme East, as they reflect more than just a consumer mentality, they actually function as social life centers, where people talk, write, or pass their spare time in the most appealing of environments.
Coffee shops are great places where people underage can gather and have fun listening to live or recorded music, they way they wouldn’t be able to do in some bar; the atmosphere is absolutely great and most coffee shops feel like cozy places where everybody is at home. The specificity of a regular coffee shops differs from one part of the of the world to another: alcohol is served in some such establishments, not to mention that Amsterdam coffee shops are also pretty comfortable with cannabis free use.
Going to coffee shops for a birthday party or a funny evening with your friends could be a great idea. As paradoxical as it may seem, though caffeine is said to cause insomnia, most people who attend such establishments order all sorts of strong coffees particularly in the evening; 9 o’clock in the evening is the right time to gather for a flavored drink and some good live music. Whether it is jazz or blues, music and coffee go very well together; some locals even have an Arabian specific in both decorations and the type of music they play which adds up to the exoticism of the house. Read the rest of this entry »
Nov
16
Belgian Chocolate Pralines: The Successful Story of Jean Neuhaus
From the 18th century, the Belgian chocolate has risen in fame. In 1912, a chocolate genius Jean Neuhaus created a new procedure and increased its popularity ten-fold. He used a “couverteur” which is a specialized chocolate version. It is also the pralines cold shell. But it is different from the American sugary treats found in most candy shops. Chocolate pralines from Belgium are filled with varieties of flavored creams or nougats, such as hazelnut, fruit, more chocolate, or coffee. Some of the chocolatiers in the time of Neuhaus could duplicate his pralines complex flavors.
Jean Neuhaus’ successful years were after the end of the First World War And this time, Louise Agostini, his wife made another breakthrough by creating the ballotin or praline box, significant type of pralines preciously made by hand. It has a very practical green and gold packaging embossed with letter “N”. Because Jean never patented this ballotin, it became the design favored by all chocolate manufacturers in Belgium since its creation.
The creativity of Jean Neuhaus led to the development of new methods for applying a precise standard quality to all praline productions. They ensured that the finest ingredients are selected to produce chocolates of high quality. He became the unfaltering source of ideas for creating new pralines. Even the Royal Family of Belgium is one of his satisfied customers. In 1918, The Prince of Wales and Prince Leopold have visited the Neuhaus shop to try what everybody is talking about in town.
In 1923, the son-in-law of Jean Neuhaus Adelson de Grave was initiated in praline manufacturing and was taught the secret of the family’s business. His creations also brought additional distinction to the Neuhaus Company. His son Pierre also contributed his genius by helping his father create Tentation and Caprice and opened other Neuhaus shops outside Brussels.
In 1978, the Neuhaus Chocolate Company was put under the management of Claude Poncelet and Jean-Jacques. Their goal of making Neuhaus the world’s most famous brand was clear to capture the foreign markets. Thus, more Neuhaus outlets were opened in Japan, Canada, Guadeloupe, Colombia, United States, and other capital cities in Europe. Read the rest of this entry »
Nov
10
Tradition has long held that chocolate could only be savored at the price of health compromising high levels of fat and sugar. There next came the glimmer of hope that dark chocolate contained antioxidants that the body benefited from. There’s now a new healthy chocolate developed by a doctor that includes a very powerful combination of amino acids, vitamins, and minerals that are superb for brain health and an overall sustained mood elevation.
Dr Paul Anderson, the creator with a history of forming non-drug and nutritional remedies for people suffering from chronic pain and depression, stated that this new dietary supplement is a great product for “anyone looking for better moods, more energy, looking to focus, be able to enjoy their days, and really be happy.” The taste may also lead you to believe that it is the absolute best chocolate that you have ever experienced as it melts in your mouth.
The advantages that this innovation has over the standard store bought variety are astounding. The energy received from Dr Anderson’s invention lasts 4 to 6 hours instead of the frantic kind from store bought chocolate that is short lived and ends in a crash to a state of mental mediocrity. The remedy for this predicament usually meant eating more chocolate to keep the up feeling. Read the rest of this entry »