A baby shower is a traditional way of celebrating the coming (or the birth) of a new baby and welcoming him or her as a new member of the family. They can be hosted and organized by anybody, usually the close friends/group of friends or relatives of the expectant parents. It was once considered improper for family members to host baby showers (because they usually center on the gift giving), but nowadays it is fine for family members to help (and plan) them.

Baby showers are usually held a month or two before the mother’s expected due date (some cultures, however, consider it bad luck to hold baby showers before the baby is born). They are intended not only to welcome the baby but also to help the expectant parents by giving them gifts that they will need for the baby.

Planning for a baby shower can be an enormous task. Everything requires a great deal of planning – from the guest list, to handing out invitations, to the decorations, to the games, to baby shower favors – and, most especially, to the food.

Every party cannot be without food, as they are considered as one of the best parts or the highlight of a party. This applies to baby showers as well.

There are numerous types of food that you can serve during baby showers. Some of them are the following:

∑ Bread or sandwiches ∑ Dessert (cakes, cookies, ice cream, etc.) ∑ Chips or fries ∑ Pasta ∑ Pies (pizzas, etc.) ∑ Salad ∑ Drinks (punch, juice, wine, etc.)

Below is a list of several tips and guidelines on food ideas that will surely delight your guests and the parents-to-be:

1. The baby shower food that you serve will largely depend on the time of day when it will be held. A baby shower that will be held at noon or at dinnertime usually requires a full ‘sit-down’ meal, while early afternoon or early evening showers can do with appetizers, salads, and finger foods. In addition, the amount of food that you need to prepare will depend on the number of guests you will be inviting.
2. Have multiple snack trays for serving different varieties of food – you can have one with an assortment of finger sandwiches, another with sliced turkey or smoked chicken, and still another with sliced fresh vegetables served with a dip that you can place in the center of the tray.
3. Try to match your food and keep them in-line with the baby shower’s theme (if ever there is any). You may consider serving scones and finger sandwiches if your baby shower theme is a tea party. Or, if you are having a nursery rhyme-themed baby shower, cakes and pies that resemble the characters from famous nursery rhyme (such as Humpty Dumpty deviled eggs).
4. Put some ‘life’ in the baby shower foods that you will serve. Instead of serving your fruit salad in a simple salad bowl, try presenting them in a melon bowl (or better yet, in a baby carriage-shaped melon server).
5. Decorate your food table by tossing baby pacifier candies, chocolate bars, and confetti all over it.
6. Personalize your eating utensils. Match their colors with the color scheme of the entire party. Consider using disposable cups or plates for easy clean up.
7. It is important to take into account the special diet of the mom-to-be, so try to avoid serving food that the pregnant mom herself would not eat. In addition to her allergies and food aversions, avoid the types of food that are prone to contamination and food poisoning, such as soft cheeses, uncooked meat and (most especially) alcohol.

By following these food tips, you will surely be able to pull off a successful (and memorable) baby shower.

The post Baby Shower Food- What and How to Serve appeared first on Secret Menu.

How can grocery coupon cost you more than they save? When is whole wheat not really whole wheat? Why are some frozen foods better for you than fresh foods? Should you buy the small or large bananas? Read on for the answers.

Grocery Coupons

Coupons are designed to get you to buy something you weren’t planning to buy. If the things you buy with them don’t replace more expensive options, you spend even more instead of saving money. To save money with them, then, you should use them for products you regularly buy, or to try new brands that are similar in price to what you already use.

Some stores still offer to double the value of your coupons on given days or for temporary promotions. The key to saving money in these cases is to use as many coupons as you can, and buy the smallest sizes of the product that the coupons allow. This will almost always get you the lowest unit-cost.

For example, if you have a coupon for 50 cents off on dish detergent, and the store is doubling your coupons, you’ll get 1 dollar off. If you buy the 38-ounce size, priced at $2.19, it will cost you $1.19, or 3.1 cents per ounce. However, if you buy the 18-ounce size, priced at $1.19, it will cost you only 19 cents! That’s just a bit over a penny per ounce, or one third the cost. Sometimes you can even get a 99-cent item for free with a doubled 50 cent coupon.

Other Grocery Store Secrets

Read the labels and you’ll see that sugar is showing up in almost everything. Most recently, it has been added to most brands of kidney beans, which used to be packed in just water and salt. Why? For the same reason it is added to peanut butter and many other products that don’t need it for taste – it is cheap. Cheaper than the other ingredients, in fact. Due to government subsidies, there is so much cheap sugar that growers need to dump it into as many products as they can.

You will also notice that almost all packaged products have hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil in them. This is the stuff that is used to give mice heart disease when scientists want to study that disease! Fortunately, due to consumer demand, some brands, like Doritos, have stopped using it in some of their products. It is still in well over half of all packaged products, though.

Whole wheat is only whole wheat if it says exactly that. “Wheat flour,” “unbleached wheat flour,” and “wheat,” all just mean some variety of processed white flour. “Wheat” bread is nothing more than white bread with enough whole grain thrown in to color it. “Wheat blend” pasta is yet another trick to make you think you’re buying whole wheat.

Frozen fruits and vegetables, when tested against “fresh” fruits and vegetables, usually have more vitamin content. It makes sense. They are flash-frozen shortly after being picked, while the “fresh” foods are in trucks for days, exposed to heat and air. Then they sit at the grocery store for days, then in your refrigerator for days. Buying frozen fruits and veggies, then, can be healthier, and they are even cheaper at times, like when the particular fruit or vegetable isn’t in season.

Grocery coupons aren’t the only way to save money buying food. Store brands are often substantially cheaper, and guess what? Often they are really the name brands in disguise. Read the label and you may see something like, “Packed for ABC Grocery Stores by Kraft Foods, Inc.” In any case, you can try the store brands, and if you can’t tell the difference, why pay more?

Finally, what size bananas, eggplant and other fruits or vegetables should you buy? If they are sold by the piece, buy the biggest, to get the most for your money. If they are sold by the pound, buy the smallest. You’ll still eat one banana at a time for a snack, right? The small ones might be half the price of the large, saving you money with every snack. When it comes to saving money shopping, there is more to it than grocery coupons.

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Something that people often remember when they go to a wedding reception is the food, whether it’s good or bad. Something to consider when you are choosing your wedding menu is your guests.

Yes, it’s your wedding but you are spending a lot of money so you want people to like what is being served. Here are some tips so that people enjoy your reception food.

Give them a choice –

It’s always a good idea to offer your guests a choice on what they would like to eat for your wedding reception. People may have food allergies, so this way they can choose what they would like to eat. Two choices is enough.

Keep it simple –

Just because it’s not something fancy, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be good. If they are faced with something that they aren’t sure what it is, they may be reluctant to eat it so don’t go for things that people cant identify.

Keep it clean –

Everyone at your wedding reception is going to be wearing their best clothes. You want to stay away from food that is very messy or could cause stains that will be hard to remove.

Remember, you are going to be wearing a white dress.The last thing you will want is to have something spill on it that may ruin it, or will be very noticeable.

Think about what you have had in the past at wedding receptions, and what you liked or didn’t like about them. That will help you plan your own wedding reception menu.

The post Your Wedding Reception Food appeared first on Secret Menu.

Are you looking forward to pair your favorite meal with a good quality wine, then you require to have an extensive knowledge about pairing the wine and food in a correct order. In case, you fail to do so, you will spoil the whole fun. In fact you would be spoiling the taste of the best quality wine and the best food item.

The bad qualities you may introduce via pairing wine and food in an incorrect form include extra sweetness, bitterness, alcoholic properties and non-desirable metallic flavors.

You can easily adopt several foolproof methods to pair food and wine in correct form. First and foremost, you should remember that the food and wine you want to pair should have similar characteristics. You should think of a porter if you want to have red wine in your lunch or dinner. The reason is that both these items have strong flavors. You should not mix and pair food and wine that consist of characteristics different from each other. Most people try to pair sweet wine with steak and end up getting undesirable results.

Mixing wine and food of different characteristics will prove to be a very bad experience for you. Proper pairing will work towards providing a distinct and pleasant element to your overall wining and dining experience.

Experts believe that wine with citrus taste will go well with chicken laced with butter and garlic sauce. You would simply love the outcome.

You should follow certain rules before starting off to prepare new dishes for wines with high alcohol flavor. High alcohol flavored wines should be combined with barbecued dishes such as barbecued meats. If you happen to pair your favorite wine with light flavored dish, then chances are that wine will overpower the dish. You will end up feeling that you have been just having a glass of wine for so long.

In case, you like wines that consist of a lot of tannin, then you should pair them with dishes rich in salt or protein content.

You can also enjoy desert wine via mixing sweet wine with your favorite dessert that is sweet in moderate amount. Do not look for sweets that have too much sugar content. This will over seventeen your dish.

You should also trust your own instincts prior to combining foods and wines together. Try to figure out what you want to drink and eat. Thereafter, slip some wine and take a bite of the food you have prepared in order to figure out what will suit your taste buds.

You should not go for wine that you don’t like or a dish you have never tried before. Experimenting is good but don’t try to go for anything that may provide you bad taste.

Best food and wine pairings result from a lot of research and experiment. You should learn a lot about wine, different types of cuisines and the results these provide when in combination. You would definitely be able to make great pairs if you make some efforts towards research work.

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There is great debate at the moment on whether it is worthwhile purchasing organic food as it is usually much more expensive than conventional food.

The advantages of organic food are well documented, however in my eyes it really comes down to one issue, do you and your children really want to eat pesticides with your food?

Assuming your answer is no and you want to go down the organic food route, then how do you go about keeping the cost down?

Grow your own

The cheapest method has got to be to grow your own. The great thing is that it doesn’t require you to have much garden space, or even a garden at all!

We grow tomatoes, and strawberries in containers and the extra benefit is that you get total control over the growing conditions.

The best combination is to have organic soil together with organically produced seeds or plants, that way you ensure you get the full flavour and benefit.

Containers can be placed anywhere that receives a reasonable amount of daylight, which means that you can use them on balconies or other hard surfaces.

Look for your local suppliers

One of the most satisfying things to do is to buy organic food locally. That way you get the freshest ingredients for your kitchen and also get to support local businesses. With no transportation costs for the supplier too you should get very competitive prices.

Don’t forget that these same businesses will be employing local staff so you are also helping the local economy, everybody wins in this scenario.

Local markets

We visit a big monthly market held on a disused airstrip. Organic food is just one of the variety of items sold there but the prices are very, very good indeed. Of course they are all local suppliers and with several of them in one place we benefit from healthy competition and get to sample a lot of fruit!

Local box schemes

If you are unable to get out of your house or are too busy working to select your groceries by hand then why not subscribe to an organic box scheme?

You will receive, delivered to your door, a weekly selection of fruit and vegetables in season.

Farm shops

Finally, investigate whether any farms near you are operating an organic farm shop. Our local one is operated on an open farm so that you can go and see where the animals are being kept and take a look at the crops being grown.

They actually have a well-designed walking route around the farm which makes a nice day out for the kids too.

If you investigate the options above you should be able to make considerable savings whilst you and your family sample the delights and advantages of organic food.

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