Culinary Schools in California: An Overview
1. The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) – St. Helena is one of the non-profitable culinary schools in California offering traditional bachelor and associate degrees in culinary arts. The school also offers hospitality courses and consulting services for restaurant management. For professional educators, recreational classes for home food preparation are offered. CIA was founded in 1946 by Katharine Angall and Frances Roth. Originally named as “New Haven Restaurant Institute”, it was changed to “Culinary Institute of America” after World War II in 1951. The St. Helena Campus offers Bachelor of Professional Studies (BPS) and Associate in Occupational Studies (AOS) in culinary arts. Requirements for admission includes six months of experience in food management.
2. The French Culinary Institute (FCI) – San Francisco is an affiliate institution of the prominent Italian Culinary Academy. Founded by Dorothy Hamilton in 1984, the San Francisco Campus offers undergraduate programs in culinary & pastry arts, wine studies & preparation and special programs in food management. FCI – San Francisco is currently one of the top culinary schools in California. From 2006 to 2010, the International Association of Culinary Professionals awarded the FCI – San Francisco Campus for its excellence in offering vocational cooking and baking programs. The FCI is home to some prominent names from the culinary arts, including Jacques Pepin, Andre Soltner, Alan Richman, Chris Ely and Jacques Torres.
3. The Professional Culinary Institute of California (PCIC) – is a branch campus of the French Culinary Institute. Located in Campbell, California, PCIC offers the following programs: Diploma in Professional Baking & Pastry Arts, Diploma in Culinary Arts and Certified Sommelier Program. The PCIC is noted for its state-of-the-art equipment and “small-class” environment. A relatively new institute, PCIC also offers “hobby” classes and trainings for non-professionals. The “Housing Assistance” meanwhile is offered for students from nearby cities and towns in California.
4. Le’Ecole – is a public culinary institution and restaurant owned by the FCI. Le’Ecole specializes in offering courses on pastry making, cake and wine preparation. The restaurant is regularly open during lunch and dinner, as well as weekends and holidays. Students and graduates of Le’Ecole gains experience during their part-time “back-of-the-house” kitchen duties. Le’Ecole is home to these notable alumni:
Chef Dan Barber – One of Time Magazine’s Most Influential People of 2009.
David Chang – 2007’s “Rising Star Chef” winner and one of Time Magazine’s Most Influential People of 2010.
Lee Anne Wong – Top Chef Season One 4th Placer.
To learn more about culinary schools in California, please feel free to consider our main blog about culinary arts, as we have written many different blogs on various topics revolving around specific cooking classes, culinary arts schools, and colleges in CA. You can find more of our content by visiting our main blog by clicking here.
Fish Prep Requires Proper Gadgets
Filed under: Cooking, Easy Recipes, Feeling Healthy, Healthy Eating, Simplify Life
When you purchase fish from the fish monger, your initial decisions will revolve around how much you want, and how ready to cook it is. For instance, do you want fillets ready to pan fry, or are you willing to take a whole fish and take care of the flesh, fins, scales, gills, and guts yourself? Do you want tail off or tail on? Fillets J cut or V cut? Pan dressed fish or whole round? Fish steaks? Do you want the skin on so that you get the good healthy fat, or deep skinned fish? Lots of decisions!!
The advantage of buying a whole fish uncleaned is the price. If you are willing to put in a little sweat equity as it were, you can save a bundle. In order to prepare the fish for eating, you will have a little work to do in the kitchen, and you will need to have the right equipment at hand. This article will tell you some of the things that can come in handy. They will likely pay for themselves over time, based on the money you save each time you buy fish at the market!
Here are the basic tools that will come in handy when it comes to fish:
- Glove hand covering is wise if you are dealing with things like shelling shellfish. Those oyster shells can cut you!
- Fish pliers are not just for when you are out in the boat catching the little guys. They come in handy in the kitchen for taking out salmon tines. The home improvement store can supply you with needle nose pliers, and you can clean them afterwards for kitchen use.
- Fish scaling has got to be the ickiest of all fish cleaning jobs, and you know that if you have ever cleaned a whole bunch of fish. While electric fish scalers exist, manual ones will serve you just as well.
- A fish gutting knife or two is essential. It is curved and especially designed for the task.
- Kitchen shears should be clean and sharp.The ones you use for cutting poultry will work, but again, make sure they are clean before using.
- Having a fillet knife is a good thing if you want to be like the pro chefs. You can live without it, but personally, it’s a good thing.
- If you are going to clean shellfish, make sure you have knives for clam, shrimp, and oysters.
If you are embarking on a weight loss plan that includes fish, like the diet HCG weight loss plan, all of these utensils will come in handy. Just assemble them before beginning the diet days. This way you will know in advance that you have on hand all of your necessary and useful HCG diet tools.
Reasons For Weighing Your Food
Filed under: Feeling Healthy, Kitchen Appliances, Simplify Life
Up until recent history, if you wanted to measure an object, you needed to have an object similar in size and weight to compare it to. The device was called a balance scale, and you’ll find similar devices in many science class rooms to this day.
In fact, the technology is as old as 2000 B.C. Archeologists have discovered rocks with hieroglyphics denoting weights of rocks in common denominators who balanced them against objects on planks of wood. The good news is that if you want to start measuring your food portions, today’s scales do not require any rocks!
No one disagrees that the overeating problem in America is leading to poorer health and undue death. A recent university study revealed that 49 out of 50 states have an obesity rate that exceeds 30 percent. This is a direct result of huge portion sizes and high sugar/fat content.
With the average fast food meal being 5 times larger than in 1960, or a bagel having as many calories as 5 slices of bread, it’s no wonder our caskets are getting bigger and bigger.
The digital food scale selection we have in this country gives us no excuse for overeating. There are scales varying in quality, price, and size each loaded with features that will make it fool proof to measure your food.
The LCD screens are digital and easy to read. The zeroing out function gives you the ability to add food ingredients into a single bowl without having to do any math. And most models let you pick which metric is easiest for you to understand.
Using a food scale isn’t going to instantly make you loose weight. You have to make the hard choices like measuring tea for your electric tea kettle rather than drinking calorie dense colas.
It will not be a swift transformation, but after weeks and months of dedication you will have a much healthier lifestyle.
Saving Money on Food Storage Rotation
If you have a big family, buying food in bulk can be a blessing. Buying food in bulk makes food cheaper, but if you store it improperly, you may wind up wasting money on food that has gone bad. Remember this simple rule when you’re organizing the food in your pantry: the first food into the pantry should also be the first food out of the pantry.
Many commercial establishments have a process by which they rotate food stock to avoid having food go bad. However, in domestic kitchens, life often gets in the way. Commercial kitchens often use automated food storage storage systems and conveyor belts to move large quantities of food.
Domestic kitchens do not have this kind of luxury. Preparing your kitchen and storage area for your emergency food storage is important and should be thought about with your family’s needs.
Often, commercial kitchens will use a system that allows them to insert new food stocks at the back of shelves automatically, rather than depending on human labor, which is more prone to mistakes. They also use a device that looks like a long vertical tube. Cans are inserted at the top and come out the bottom.
This ensures that the cans that are inserted first are always the cans that come out first. This helps to eliminate waste. It also makes sure that the oldest cans are used first. This kind of system is also used in grocery stores to store cans. However, in grocery stores, customers often take out the can to examine the label.
If they don’t like what they see, they’ll insert the can back in the top of the tube, defeating the purpose. Make sure you check expiration dates on cans and jars of food when you’re buying them. These tubes or pouches also save space, because they can be hung on walls or other space that may currently be unused for storage. They do not use electricity, either– they’re run entirely by gravity.
Buffalo Meat and Planning Road Trip Snacks
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Everyone likes to take a road trip with their family and have some fun on the road. Even better when the kids are coming along for the ride or to a favorite destination. If you’re taking the road trip in a car, family meals, food, and snacks are usually a priority for all parents to make a checklist of what they’re bringing in the car.
buffalo meat is the new healthy “red meat” and parents and kids like it without knowing their eating it. Buffalo jerky is a family favorite that can easily be traveled with and eaten in the car without any mess.
Buffalo Meat and Meal Planning for the Family Road Trip
Aside from getting to the destination with smiles on everyone’s faces, a good healthy snack can really add to the energy level and making sure that everyone has a full belly and ready to get out and explore once you’re at the final destination.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve brought along snacks made from beef, buffalo meat, chicken or any other type of meat, it simply needs to taste good for the family to be happy.
Fruit snacks and vegi slices are another great source of nutrition and family friendly snacks. Not only are they healthy for you but the kids tend to love getting a fruit stick or fruit snack that they can munch on while going down the road. Parents are smiling because they just need to throw away the wrapper.
No matter where you’re headed, or what the weather is like, always be prepared with plenty of snacks and drinks for the road trip.
Family meal planning, while at home and on the road, is a staple in any family “checklist” and can save the day when everyone is Hungary, or if you’re traveling and can’t find a good place to stop for a quick meal or snack. Get your kids feedback on what they enjoy, you may be surprised at what they say!
Picking A Great Canner
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There is one pressure cooker/canner that outsells every other and it is the all american 921 all-american 21-1 2-quart pressure cooker canner. It is by far the most popular model currently available so let’s take a look at just why this is the most popular option and the most popular All American canner as well.
It basically comes down to the capacity that we need. The 21 quart model will hold 19 pint jars which is more than adequate for most peoples needs.
Most home canning enthusiasts simply do not need a larger capacity that that. It allows us to can plenty of produce without the actual pot being too heavy.
The much larger models are for the very serious cook only and are not really needed on a day to day basis. We will find that this is the perfect size for those that want to combine canning with using the pot as a pressure cooker as well.
21 quarts is sufficient for even very large meals to be made and get the great benefit of using a pressure cooker. Rather than losing essential vitamins via steam as is the norm when using a pan we get to seal in the nutrients and the flavor with a pressure cooker.
Plus it saves us a lot of time. We get to cook food at least 70% quicker and this is certainly not to be ignored. We will find that although All American pressure cookers are not the cheapest they are the best so it really is worth going for this brand if we want the absolute best results and a model that is basically going to last us for a lifetime.
The best in the world and designed to never break, minimal moving parts makes it the best option currently available in the world and the best investment a chef could ever make.
Fruit Smoothie Recipes for Kids
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So with life being very busy and stressful for families and single parents, it can be very difficult to get any type of health and nutrition in your child’s diet, particularly if you’re not a very good chef, or you’re not a very good bargainer with your children when it comes to getting them to eat things that don’t necessarily taste like candy.
The good news is that there is a savior for you! In the form of fruit smoothie recipes for kids! These smoothie recipes can be both tasty AND healthy because not only can you use fresh or frozen fruit, But you can also include healthy supplements or “greens” which will turn your humble fruit smoothie into what is known as a “green smoothie”.
A green smoothie is a fantastic way to sneak in some greens and other types of vegetables into your child’s diet such as kale, spinach, and chard just to name a few. And to sweeten the deal, you can often use very bright or dark colored fruits such as blueberries for example to mask the color of the green if you think your child wouldn’t be receptive to it based on what looks like (not all children object to green colored smoothies of course). One supplemental ingredient I highly recommend you can add to make the smoothie that much more healthy for your child is flax seed oil for much needed omega-3 fatty acids which is crucial for child development.
Also please remember to always buy organic produce and juice whenever possible, so you can avoid giving your children and possibly yourself unhealthy pesticides and toxins that are present with traditionally grown produce. This goes for frozen or fresh fruits and vegetables!
Here is a Basic Fruity Green Smoothie to Start You Off With:
- 1-2 Cups properly filtered water
- 1-2 Cups Fresh Strawberries
- 1-2 Cups Fresh Blueberries
- 3-4 Generous handfuls of Spinach
- 1-2 Handfuls of Ice Cubes
- 1-2 tsp of Organic Stevia
- Blend and Enjoy!
Features of a Lunch Bag You Will Want to Have
Image by pelican via Flickr
Do you want to buy a lunch bag tote that you can use to carry your lunch to school or work in? There are a lot of different features that you will want to make sure are included in the one that you purchase so that you will be able to have a bag that you enjoy carrying and one that works the best for putting your lunch into.
Make sure that you think about a few of the features that you will find in order to know that you are getting the best deal possible on the bag that you want to buy.
One thing that you will want to make sure of is that the bag you buy is large enough to put everything that you want to put inside. You want to make sure that you are able to put an ice pack plus all of the food that you want to pack.
This way you will be able to keep the food cool so that it will not spoil before you have a chance to eat it. Another thing that you want to make sure of is that the bag you choose is easy for you to carry along with all of the other things that you are already carrying in the mornings. Make sure that you take a look at the carrying options to ensure that they fit your needs.
There are a lot of great lunch bag options that you will find when you are searching for the best one to use. You will want to make sure that you choose the right size and the right carrying options if you want to be able to have the best experience with the bag that you choose.
If you take the time to think about the purchase that you are making then you will be able to have a great bag that works for you.
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Spicy Tofu and Italian Vegetable Lasagna Recipes
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Vegans and vegetarians will love these easy spicy tofu recipes and Italian vegetable lasagna dishes. The first tofu recipe is really simple – but tasty. For those who enjoy spicy Oriental sweet and sour sauces, this one is perfect:
Sweet and Sour Tofu Recipes:
Dice a block of firm tofu (or smoked tofu) into cubes or rectangular slices and brown in a little olive or fish oil. Add slender strips of sweet red and green peppers and sliced celery (long). Sautee for a few minutes and add a little soy sauce and a generous portion of Kikoman or Lee Kum Kee Sweet and Sour sauce. Lee Kum Kee sauce is recommended because it doesn’t contain artificial flavors or color. Serve this tangy veggie dish with brown or Basmati rice. It takes only a few minutes to prepare and is very satisfying. Remember: don’t overcook the veggies. They should be crunchy.
Variation 1: Tofu recipes can be made spicy by simply adding one fresh cayenne pepper, or even a little piece of a pepper while sautéing the veggies and then removing it. For those who like really spicy dishes, the best sauces are Chinese garlic and chili pastes, Sriracha sauce which is made from sun-ripened chilies and garlic, or any authentic Szechwan Chili sauce.
Variation 2: Thai tofu recipes can be adapted from the above basic recipe by simply adding peanuts, or a little peanut sauce. If you need a quick solution, one of the best products is the Thai Kitchen Peanut Satay Sauce that’s thick and ready to add to firm tofu and vegetable stir fries.
Now for something Italian.
The following vegetable lasagna recipe is simple to prepare. It consists primarily of mushrooms and spinach. Grind Portobello mushrooms into a ground beef consistency. Sautee with onions garlic, basil, oregano and a little sea salt. Finely chop the spinach and set to one side.
To make the vegetable lasagna creamy, make a white sauce using whipped almond milk seasoned with a cube of vegetable bullion and fresh ground pepper. When the strips of lasagna are cooked, lay them in a baking dish and spread the ground mushroom mixture in layers alternating the spinach and white sauce. For the outer crust (if this is a vegan vegetable lasagna) then use a cheese substitute like the daiya mozzarella product, or create a golden crusts spreading layers of yeast flakes and sesame paste called tahini.
Vegetable lasagna variants include using tomatoes instead of spinach and zucchini or eggplant instead of mushrooms.
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What You Need to Know Before You Buy the Best Juice Extractor
Filed under: Feeling Healthy, Healthy Eating, Kitchen Appliances, Simplify Life
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Did you just recently discover the beautiful things that juicing can give you? Are you interested in purchasing the best juice extractor you and your family can use for fresh fruits and vegetables?
Very good. You are on your way to better and healthier lifestyles. But, before you go to the store and buy a juice extractor, there are things which you need to know about juice extractors and things which you should look for. There are various models and brands of juice extractors today; it can be fairly confusing as to which one you should purchase.
In order to be able to be able to make juice recipes for health, read the outline below of the specific things which a good juicer should have.
Ease of use. You want a juice extractor which is very easy to use and very easy to clean up. If what you get is the exact opposite, it will be so annoying; you will not even try to use the juicer anymore. It would defeat the purpose of purchasing a juicer in the first place.
A kitchen appliance which is very complicated to operate will be thrown to the back of the cabinet and it will only gather dust. It will seldom see the light of day. A juicer which is very difficult to clean up is also useless. You will dread the thought of cleaning it that you will no longer use it.
Yield. You will want a juicer which will give you more juice and not pulp. It will be a waste of money if you have to buy dozens of fruits just for a glass or two of juice because the juicer is not doing a good job.
Look at the product specification and check the percentage of juice vs. pulp or waste it yields. One thing which you should keep in mind is that juicers which eject the pulp outside yield less juice than those which do not. You would also need to ask yourself if it is very important for you to get pulp-free juice or not.
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