Archive for the ‘News Updates’ Category
busy bee!
Hi Friends! 
I’ve received a couple of emails from my readers wondering where I was in the last couple of weeks. I’m sorry for not keeping up with you. We’ve been having parties after parties and naturally I was in charge of almost everything. Phew! What a month it has been! But’ve enjoyed every single bit of it. And just when I was ready to go back to blogging, Baby caught a bad case of the flu and so did I! This week has not been good, but thankfully, Baby has recovered well and I am on my way!
I’m so excited to share with you the recipes and reviews I’ve gathered these past weeks. I’ve experimented with new dishes, new products in the market, and old favorites. I just can’t wait!
5 Tips for Handling a Bad Waiter
1. They’re servers not servants. Smile. Be nice to them and they’ll be nice to you. That’s my number one tip for good service. You’d be amazed how terribly some customers treat servers. Anyone who has ever been a waiter or waitress (a job everyone should be forced to try at least once) knows how much a customers’ attitude can dictate their overall dining experience. And if you’ve ever snapped your fingers, whistled, or yelled to get the attention of a waiter, shame on you.
2. Not everything that goes wrong in a restaurant is the servers’ fault. Remember, they’re just one cog in the wheel. The long wait for the food is most likely the kitchen’s responsibility. Perhaps the host sat too many tables at once, which would explain why drinks are taking so long. So before you start mouthing off, remembers someone else may be to blame. Having said that, a good waiter will always apologize for delays and give you regular updates on the whereabouts of your food.
3. One way to avoid bad service is to eat at the bar, a favorite tactic of restaurant insiders. The server/bartender never leaves your sight, which makes it really hard for them to ignore you.
Read the rest of this entry »
Top Ten Worst Foods of 2009
1. Pepperidge Farm Roasted White Meat Chicken Premium Pot Pie
- There are 510 calories and 9 grams of saturated fat in this baby. Oh wait -
that’s just for half a pie. The whole thing has 1020 calories
and 18 grams of saturated fat.
2. Romano’s Macaroni Grill Spaghetti and Meatballs with Meat Sauce
- This dish will set you back a staggering 2,430 calories and nearly three
days’ worth of saturated fat (57 grams) plus 5,290 milligrams of sodium – more
calories and saturated fat than two Macaroni Grill Tuscan Rib-Eye steak
dinners.
3. Progresso Traditional, Vegetable Classics, and Rich & Hearty
soups – Half a can averages more than half of a person’s daily quota
of salt. Instead, CSPI says try Progresso’s Health Favorites reduced-sodium
soups with up to 50 percent less salt.
4. Dove Ice Cream – A half cup has about 300 calories and an
average of 11 grams of saturated fat – that’s half-a-day’s worth of the bad
stuff.
Guava: ‘Apple’ of the Tropics
“IT has more vitamin C than citrus; the edible rind alone has five times the vitamin C of an orange.” That is how Bill Daley describes guava in an article which appeared in Chicago Tribune.
Nutrition experts claim that vitamin C — mainly in the skin, secondly in the firm flesh, and little in the central pulp — varies from 56 to 600 milligrams. It may range up to 350-450 milligrams in nearly ripe fruit.
When it is fully ripe and soft, the vitamin C content may decline to 50-100 milligrams.
Aside from vitamin C, guava is also rich in potassium, calcium, and iron.
Likewise, guava contains both carotenoids and polyphenols — the major classes of antioxidant pigments — giving them relatively high dietary antioxidant value among plant foods. As these pigments produce the fruits’ color, guavas that are red or orange in color have more potential value as antioxidants sources than yellowish-green ones.
Raw guavas are eaten out-of-hand, but are preferred seeded and served sliced as dessert or in salads. There are innumerable recipes for utilizing guavas in pies, cakes, puddings, sauce, ice cream, jam, butter, marmalade, chutney, relish, catsup, and other products.
10 Downed by Pizza
CEBU CITY — Nine nursing students and a teacher were rushed to the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC) Tuesday dawn after complaining of vomiting and diarrhea.
The incident happened hours after the students and the teacher have reportedly eaten pizza with stale meat.
Alberto’s Pizza along B. Rodriguez St. in this city may face temporary closure until it can comply with all the requirements and correct the deficiencies that sanitary inspectors saw during their initial investigation Tuesday morning.
Its four other branches in this city — Colon, Pelaez St., Paseo in Mabolo and M. Velez St. — will be inspected Wednesday.
Chinese courts to accept milk-scandal cases: reports
BEIJING (AFP) – Chinese courts are now ready to accept lawsuits by families of children sickened in last year’s tainted milk scandal, state media said Tuesday, quoting a top official. The report in the newspaper China Daily follows months of delays in which lawyers for plaintiffs told AFP they were warned not to sue over the scandal, which embarrassed China by exposing chronic holes in food-safety mechanisms.
A senior judicial official said courts were now accepting cases from families who had rejected compensation offers from milk companies involved in the scandal, the newspaper said.
“A small number of the infant victims’ parents have not accepted the government-led compensation and have prepared pleas,” it quoted Shen Deyong, executive vice-president of the Supreme People’s Court, as saying.
“The people’s courts (at various levels) have prepared for the work. They will accept the compensation cases according to the law.”
Lent: a time to fast
LENT came around, but Antonio—a seminarian known to be a ‘pilosopo’—insisted on eating to his heart’s desire. While his fellow seminarians called his attention to the hunger in the world, Antonio calmly replied, “The more I eat, the less hunger there will be in this world!” In response the rector, Fr. Martin Martinez, would cite Rev. Victor Parachin’s 10 great reasons for Christians, especially Catholics, to fast.
1. In the past prominent spiritual leaders fasted. Among them were St. Jerome , St. John Chrysostom and notably St. Augustine who said, “If you want your prayer to fly to God, give it two wings: fasting and almsgiving.”
2. The discipline in fasting makes us mentally and spiritually tough. Giving in to the culture of pleasure and “me-always” makes a person soft, and his life will lack fulfillment and meaning. On the other hand, as William Penn once said, “No pain, no balm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory, no cross, no crown.”
3. Fasting benefits the soul by creating more time for other spiritual exercises. Skipping a meal or not preparing it every now and then gives more time for meditation, reading the bible or quiet prayer.
4. Fasting is a good antidote to the rising materialism around us. When we fast, as one modern-day rabbi says, we affirm that we are not totally dependent on external things no matter how important they are. If we can suspend our need for food and drink for a day, then we can also forgo our yearning for nonessentials.
Caffeine May Offer Some Skin Cancer Protection
Past studies have suggested that caffeine might offer some protection from skin cancer, and new research may explain why.
“We have found what we believe to be the mechanism by which caffeine is associated with decreased skin cancer,” said lead researcher Dr. Paul Nghiem, an associate professor of dermatology at the University of Washington in Seattle.
For the study, Nghiem’s team looked at caffeine’s effect on human skin cells in a laboratory that had been exposed to ultraviolet radiation. They found that in cells damaged by UV rays, caffeine interrupted a protein called ATR-Chk1, causing the damaged cells to self-destruct.
“Caffeine has no effect on undamaged cells,” Nghiem said.
ATR is essential to damaged cells that are growing rapidly, Nghiem said, and caffeine specifically targets damaged cells that can become cancerous. “Caffeine more than doubles the number of damaged cells that will die normally after a given dose of UV,” he said.
“This is a biological mechanism that explains what we have been seeing for many years from the oral intake of caffeine,” he added.
The findings were published online Feb. 26 in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.
But, Nghiem added, people shouldn’t increase the amount of coffee or tea they drink to prevent skin cancer. “You are talking a lot of cups for a lot of years for a relatively small effect,” he said. “But if you like it, it’s another reason to drink it.”
Bizarre Fish Poisoning Sparks Alarm
Little-known ciguatera infection switches victims’ sensations of hot and cold
The fish was delicious, no doubt about it. Perfectly seasoned and cooked just right, the broiled grouper on the Texas menu last summer tempted Donna Schroeder to eat every bite. The only problem? It was poisoned, tainted with a hard-to-detect toxin that produces symptoms so bizarre, they put peanut-linked salmonella infections to shame. “It’s horrible, I’m telling you,” said Schroeder, 65, a retired Beaumont, Texas, realtor, who is only now recovering from the worst symptoms of ciguatera fish poisoning, an exotic foodborne illness that health officials say may be dramatically under-recognized in the United States.
The malady afflicts at least 50,000 people a year worldwide — and the real number may be 100 times that many. While ciguatera fish poisoning is largely unknown in most of the U.S., several recent cases have attracted growing concern, officials say. They hope a greater awareness will help alert consumers and doctors and improve treatment of the incurable illness caused by coral algae toxins that accumulate in large tropical reef fish.
Within hours of the July dinner, Schroeder was stricken not only with typical nasty food poisoning symptoms — diarrhea, vomiting and fatigue — but also with a dangerously slow heart rate and neurological problems that caused her hands and feet to tingle painfully and, oddest of all, reversed her sense of hot and cold. Some patients also say they feel like their teeth are falling out — and the symptoms can linger for years.
“Whatever I touched, if it was hot, it would feel cold. If it was cold, it felt hot,” Schroeder recalled. “I couldn’t walk on the tile floor. It felt like it was burning me.” That should have been a clue to emergency room crews and doctors, but it wasn’t, said Schroeder, who was sent home with a general diagnosis of food poisoning, but nothing to explain the odd reactions or why they lingered so long. ”Doctors don’t even know what it is,” she said. “How sad is that?”
Kimchi Affects Our Body
Kimchi is a traditional Korean dish which is fermented and it is made
from selected vegetables and certain seasoning is added to this
fermented dish. It is the most common side dish served in Korea and it eaten along with rice and other side dishes. Kimchi is also a common ingredient in
dishes like Kimchi Stew and Kimchi Fried Rice.
The history of Kimchi dates back to more than 2,600 years
ago. Even an ancient Chinese poetry book makes reference to this dish.
The earliest form of this dish was made from cabbage, and it is only in
the 12th century that spices were introduced into the dish to create
flavors like sweet and sour.
In most forms of Kimchi, chili peppers are a common and
important ingredient. Chili peppers were introduced into Korea in the
early 17th century and since then the most common form of Kimchi
consists of a variety of Chinese Cabbage and chili peppers.
Kimchi is considered to be quite healthy. In fact, a US
magazine named this dish as one of the top five of the world’s
healthiest foods. The dish is rich in vitamins and due to the various
vegetables, it high in dietary fiber. In addition, it is low in
calories. Kimchi provides 80 percent of the daily requirement of
ascorbic acid and carotene.
