Frown not, while I was away I took the liberty to do a little research on a few of my favorite foods, I want to show you how this changed my most common meals. As said before, no more spices, I’m fed up by spicy food, time to switch things up. However I did try adding more pepper to most of my chowders and soups, turned out better than I hoped for! Anyhow, let me know what 2018 has in store for you, take care now!

Gingerbread came from over the ocean and it originates in the 19th century Germany, from the story of “Hansel and Gretel”. The recipe is a fairly lightweight one so even if you can’t handle a spoon as well as others you can give it a try and the outcome is most of the times positive, don’t quote me on that though.

What You’ll Need :

• 3 to 4 cups of flour
• 4 oz of butter
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• 2 beaten eggs
• 1/2 tbsp of baking soda
• 1/3 tsp salt
• 1/2 tbsp vanilla extract
• 100g syrup
• 1 tbsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• icing for decorations

1. In a big bowl, add your butter and beat it using a mixer, add your brown sugar to the mix. Beat both of your eggs real good, pour syrup, vanilla extract and then add them into the sugar and butter cream. You will need a second bowl for this, get your flour, baking soda and salt and once again mix them together, add the final result to the butter cream and stir together until there is no debris left.
2. It’s time to give the cream life, add the ground ginger and cinnamon, wait! Don’t add any icing yet, that’s the final step! Stir your butter mix together with the ginger and cinnamon, we are ready to move on.
3. Roll the dough into 1/2 inch thick slices and start cutting your gingerbread people’s shape using a knife, cutter or gingerbread shapes.
4. Preheat the oven at 340°F (170 °C) then place your gingerbread family in a tray with at least one inch between each person.
5. Bake for 12-15 minutes and cool down for about five minutes on a cooling rack. Remove them from the tray and start decorating with icing.

The only good thing about this huge list is that it completes itself, people always do things the hard way and buy useless tools. In reality you can get a much more reliable appliance for a better price that can do what you want it to do and then some more. The sad part is waiting in between cooking your food, you don’t have enough time to take a power nap but there is enough time to start questioning your life choices. I usually fill my free time with a game, anything like that, so does my husband, he plays the heck outta FIFA. I personally don’t find it all that interesting, just the other day I heard him talk to his friend about using a cheat and now he won’t shut up. Way to go!

1. Onion Chopper

Cutting onions, peppers, mostly vegetables is always a painful experience, I really like the part when I cry uncontrollably for 30 minutes after finishing off the last onion. This one isn’t even electric but it saves you gallons of tears and time. You can use this to cut any legumes you can think of, I’ll stick to only cutting onions with the chopper, peppers aren’t that bad after all.

2. Sandwich Making Machine

This one would probably take the top of the list if it wasn’t for me crying. A ‘raw’ sandwich works fine, tastes good and does everything a sandwich needs to do, but one that’s cooked, oh my, you are in for a world of happiness. Not only will you not need to eat a casual sandwich ever gain, but you can also cook more than one at a time, some sandwich machines can do up to four sandwiches at once!

3. Coffee Brewer/Espresso Maker

Coffee is the first thing I think about in the morning, my body is no longer able to function properly without at least one cup of that sweet heavenly beverage. I believe coffee brewers are extremely useful and can help you shave minutes from the process of making coffee. In spite of its ability to brew, from time to time I like to make coffee on my own terms, starting with boiling the beans all the way to pouring the hot juice into my cup.

4. Pressure Cooker

The pressure cooker is nothing special, it only speeds the ordinary cooking process up, which might be enough for some people and it is enough for me. It boils water at a higher temperature which cooks your food faster, while the boiling water turns into steam the food soaks all of it allowing the cooking process to take less than conventional cooking methods.

5. Pizza Oven

Don’t think about an oven inside a wall alright? It’s not the same thing, this one is way cooler! I haven’t the slightest clue what you use to cook your pizza, my guess is like most people you use a stove or an oven, so did I until coming across pizza ovens, I didn’t even know they were a thing before that. They come in handy more times than I like to admit and are easier to use than the average stove, they are also easier to clean. I love how the the pizza comes out round shaped for a change, most of the home made pizza I ate was rectangular, which ruins half of the experience for me.

6. Juice Blender

My sleeping schedule is all over the place and I have the metabolism of a college student, that doesn’t stop me from trying to be at least 1% healthy. I try to go out running/walking whenever I can and here comes my favorite part, the infamous juice blender. After I come home I blend myself a variety of fruit together, I gain a lot of energy from it and it’s rather refreshing, it is far superior to your average cup of water. Think about it, a juice blender is something you might wanna pick up when you get the chance.

Restaurant Apps

If your restaurant/bar already has a website set up and you want to take things to the next level, you can try building an app for your website, or hire freelancers to do it for you. This has a number of benefits with very few drawbacks to account for.

When looking for ideas, I suggest you take a look at the store’s most popular releases, one great example can be Clash Royale by Supercell. It’s a card game, based on the hit Clash of Clans game, of course this has nothing to do with your app but the menus are amazing and you could inspire yourself a little. Gems hack Clash Royale in a very different way, they are used as a currency to get cards, there’s an idea! You could reward people with certain points when they order using your app, in return they can get order extra sauce or napkins with said points! Anyway, this is hands down my favorite method of ordering food at the moment.

Faster Than Ever

Using online data bases and sorting algorithms, ordering is much more efficient when it is tracked online, no physical receipts, no table number, just the name and the residence of the person ordering food. Look around, most pizza delivery places have already implemented this, either online or by phone call. Ordering through calls is a little more complicated but it’s far more efficient than going to a restaurant to order. The reason online ordering is so quick is because there are mostly no people involved, just programs and forms to do all the hard work while you wait for the food at home. Clearly your food won’t be cooked or packed by robots, but the hardest part is handled by machines.

Zero Work Involved

Keeping track of orders and feedback is no easy task, you need at least a half-dozen good people to do all this, if not more. My point is that with the ever-evolving technology, we can do all those complex tasks in a matter of seconds without a marge of error. Setting up all the required things for the app or website to function takes a lot of work, but once done you will not regret doing it for one second. By the way, your worst nightmare, also known as ‘queues’ is also out-of-order when it comes down to online orders.

Say Goodbye To Queues

This reason could single-handedly force people into using the internet for ordering food instead of physically going to a restaurant. Tell me how many times you found yourself stuck in a queue because you wanted a hot dog or a cheeseburger? One too many times. Worse than waiting in a queue is having to wait for your ticket to be called. Places dispensing tickets with a number on them while they make you wait for your number to be called before you are able to order, they should be gone.

People are always in a hurry and they would rather not waste time waiting for food in the middle of nowhere when they can just order food at home and wait for it to arrive in the comfort of their condo. It only takes a moment to realize that everyone around you has their faces planted on the smart phone screen. That’s where the world is headed, a world dominated by internet and technology, we might as well make the first step and get our business ready for this next phase of the evolution!

While I still strongly believe that a significant number of people will still choose to visit a place over virtually looking at it, it is best to be safe than sorry. Let’s take a few weeks and create something both parties can use, no matter the time or place. Old school restaurants will most likely never be replaced by virtual ones, but people are always looking for an easier way of doing anything, if they can achieve that using an application or a website, why not just give it to them?

The recipe goes like this :

• 7 oz of chicken breast
• one red bell pepper
• 1 oz mushrooms
• 1 whole medium-sized lemon
• 1 spoonful olive oil
• curry (optional)
• salt, pepper and spicy spices at your choice!

Start by grabbing a huge bowl, drop the chicken breast in with pepper, salt, spices and stir a little to make all the ingredients blend together. Grab a frying pan, pour the olive oil in and add your chicken to it, stir on low fire. In the meantime, grab a second frying pan and start slowly frying your red bell pepper and the mushrooms together. Wait for around one or two minutes before adding the lemon juice in and keep cooking for another three minutes on low fire. I don’t add the whole lemon in the pan, I use a lemon juicer and only add the juice, some say this is not a wise idea, until they taste the final product, you can barely taste the lemon scented chicken breast and combined with curry it creates an amazing aroma storm for you to enjoy. If you don’t have a lemon at hand, a grapefruit will work just the fine.

At the end of the day it’s your choice, I prefer lemon on most of my food, you choose if you want to go down the same road I did. Back to your chicken, by the time you finished cooking your vegetables, the meat should start getting an orange vibrant color, it’s pretty much done, you can take it off the pan, or fry it a little more if you like ’em crunchy! Add your cooked vegetables over the chicken and there you have it! A meal that tastes better than ramen noodles!

We all have that one uncle, you know who, he insists on cutting the turkey open like he is the almighty host of the whole party. If you are having a hard time with your uncle and deciding what to cook for your dinner, I have a few suggestions up my sleeve and I’m more than happy to share a few with y’all!

The Cranberry Sauce

Cranberry Sauce is a must-have on your table. It’s a tradition first of all and you can even serve it with nothing on the side if that’s your thing. Dipping it in butter cookies is a great idea too. Now you could just buy this off the shelf at Walmart or your local market, but believe me, the satisfaction of flavors in your mouth is amazing and it is one hundred times stronger when you decide to make your own sauce. Everything is more personal and you get a sense of pride that you would not feel otherwise.

Ingredients:

• 15 Oz Cranberries
• 2 Spoonful of Sugar
• 1/2 Cup of Water

Mashed Potatoes

Thanksgiving would not be a holiday without these on the table. Potatoes are great on their own, but mashing them opens up a whole new world. A world of sauce and smooth, paste-like texture for your taste buds. You can always try sweetening your potatoes but I like mine a little salty, with enough room to take in the potato taste! Alternately you can make french fries, they work on every occasion, am I right?

Ingredients:

• Boiled and Mashed Potatoes
• 1/3 Stick of Butter
• 1/2 Spoonful of Salt
• 1/2 Spoonful of Black Pepper
• 1/4 Cup of Milk
• 5 Oz Cream Cheese

Pumpkin Pie

The smell of pumpkin purée is breath-taking. I make Pumpkin Pie every year on Thanksgiving and I can’t get enough of it. The main ingredients for the pie include : pumpkin purée (duh), spices to taste, spoonful of sugar and eggs, the rest is history. Bake a crust, fill it with your pumpkin cream and bake in the oven.

Ingredients:

• Pumpkin Paste
• Spices
• 1/2 Spoonful of Sugar
• 1/2 Teaspoon of Salt
• 2 Beaten Eggs

Turkey Stuffing

You could always have a cooked turkey on your table and call it a day. But that doesn’t seem the be the case, anywhere really. Thanksgiving recipes are important, try stuffing the turkey with aroma and bursts of flavor. I suggest sweet potatoes, sugared dried cranberries, mushrooms and as much red bell pepper as you can get your hands on.

If you haven’t tried this one, now is the time, Thanksgiving is happening right now, you better get cooking if you wanna see the end of it!

Ingredients:

• Sweet Mashed Potatoes (Mashing Optional)
• Dried Cranberries with Powdered Sugar
• Cooked Mushrooms
• Red Bell Pepper
• 1 Small Onion (Chopped, Optional, Will make you cry)