Simple ways to make dinner at home a special night

(ARA) – Dining at home has many advantages, from saving money to affording family members more time together. But it’s easy for those at-home meals to become routine and boring – unless you take some simple steps to make dinner time a special time for everyone.

Fortunately, making dinner at home more special doesn’t need to eat up a lot of time or money. Whether you’re serving a feast for the whole family or making a romantic meal for an at-home date night, these simple ideas can help make dining at home feel like a night out.

Make it restaurant style

One of the reasons people love dining out is the chance to eat something they normally wouldn’t make at home. Making some of those restaurant favorites in your own kitchen isn’t as difficult as you might think. By adding a delicious, easy-to-make dining-out treat to your at-home menu, you can give your meal restaurant quality flair.

One restaurant staple is the bread basket. You can create your own version with take-and-bake options, like New York Brand Garlic Knots. Found in your grocery store’s freezer aisle, New York Brand Garlic Knots are hand-tied and contain no trans fat and no high-fructose corn syrup, but pack all the flavor and appeal of this traditional restaurant favorite. What’s more, they’re ready – from freezer to table – in about five minutes. Make your meal extra special by serving your Garlic Knots with your favorite pasta or homemade pizza with a marinara dipping sauce.

Tune out the outside world

You wouldn’t be so rude as to take a cellphone call at the table in a quiet restaurant, so why allow such disruptions during your meal at home? Have everyone turn off their phones, switch off the TV and radio, leave all handheld digital devices in another room, and encourage a dinner conversation that truly focuses on each other.

Wear your “Sunday best”

Even if you wear a suit to work every day, there’s still something special about dressing up for an unforgettable meal. If you’d prefer, you can leave the heels, jewelry or cufflinks behind – just skip the jeans and sweatshirts in favor of a skirt or a nice button-down and a pair of slacks.

Cook together

Cooking together increases the amount of quality time you spend with loved ones. Whether it’s a date night or just a friendly get-together, involving everyone in meal preparation makes the evening memorable and special. Using easy-to-make and delicious products, such as New York Brand Garlic Knots, will ensure your meal will have that homemade taste that’s sure to please.

For simple recipe ideas, visit www.newyorkfrozen.com.

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Ease the stress of grocery shopping during the holidays

(ARA) – Hectic schedules often make meal-related decisions a chore. And planning for a bigger family meal over the holidays just adds to the stress. Affordable and simpler shopping routines could help you start savoring family meal time again.

Regardless of whether you’re planning a holiday feast, a birthday celebration, or just day-to-day meals throughout the year, it’s easier and more cost effective if you go into grocery shopping prepared.

Consider these tips from national grocery retailer Save-A-Lot before your next shopping trip:

Create a weekly meal planner
Many grocery shoppers make the mistake of only planning for a big special meal when they can cut time and cost by planning for several. Think about what you and your family members typically consume each day. If there is a particular food item or meal idea that your whole family enjoys, make sure to stock up when it is on sale. Ask each family member to pick a meal for dinner.

Decide ahead of time how your family might want to use leftover meat or veggies from the meal, and buy extra ingredients to create new meals. For example, be sure to stock up on bread, mayonnaise, mustard and lettuce in advance if you plan to cook a turkey or ham for a holiday meal or Sunday dinner.

Keep track of ingredients to replenish
You’ve got everything laid out to make chocolate chip cookies, but you forgot to buy the baking soda – nothing is more frustrating than having to make a return trip to a store.

Keep track of ingredients you frequently use in your cooking. Then, as soon as you use up an item, immediately add it to your ongoing grocery list. By the end of the week, not only will your shopping list be complete, but also you won’t be stuck in the store trying to remember what is or is not in your cupboard. You also won’t be tempted to buy something you don’t need.

When cooking, be sure to use measuring utensils so you don’t use more ingredients than necessary – which can be costly to your family’s waistline and budget.

Visit grocery store websites for tools and deals
Grocery retailers frequently offer tips and tools for meal planning, as well as exclusive online bargains. Check to see if your store is offering discounts in exchange for signing up for their shopping clubs year round. For example, Save-A-Lot offers a $5 coupon for signing up for its Smart Shopper Club.

Take advantage of store brands
Many grocery stores offer their own exclusive brands of foods and everyday items, and frequently these items are of equivalent quality as more expensive national brand names. By using store brands, you can save a little money on your grocery bill and splurge on something special, such as a celebratory dessert. Store brands are great for helping to keep your weekly grocery costs down.

Simplify shopping trip
A popular strategy for many shoppers is to shop at several retailers throughout the week for bargains. While this approach may add up to a couple of cents saved on a receipt, it is quickly gobbled up in fuel costs as well as time. Instead, save both time and money by limiting shopping trips to one day a week or add a stop to the grocery store on the commute to or from work.

With these few simple tips, you’ll not only save money at the grocery store, but you’ll have more time to enjoy cooking and celebrating with those you love.

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Pasta meets sauce: secrets to the perfect pairing

(ARA) – “What’s for dinner?” It’s the question everyone loves to ask, and when the answer is “pasta,” kids and parents alike are excited to share the table, counting down the minutes until it’s time to eat.

Pairing the right pasta shape with the right sauce can be a supermarket stumper. Of course, if your children are fans of certain shapes or sizes, you’ll know those varieties will bring fun to the table. But did you know that some pasta sauces cater to specific styles of pasta better than others?

Long cuts:
Spaghetti cuts are a traditional family favorite, and these long and thin strands pair well with just about any kind of lighter sauce. Tease your family’s taste buds by combining spaghetti, or the thinner angel hair, with new sauce recipes from Barilla that bring Italian authenticity right to your dinner table. These sauces are all-natural, with vegetables sauteed in imported olive oil instead of water, and diced tomatoes instead of tomato puree. Some favorite recipes include traditional spaghetti with marinara and carbonara. For more robust, thicker pasta sauces like primavera, consider a flatter noodle such as fettuccine or linguine.

Short cuts:
Shorter pasta shapes have plenty of twists, turns and grooves for the sauce to better hug these styles. Sauces with vegetables and fragrant spices are best captured in shorter pastas like rigatoni, penne or shells to perfectly blend all the flavors in every bite. If your family enjoys a bit of spice, try combining Barilla’s Arrabbiata Spicy Marinara sauce with penne to capture the tomato, garlic and parsley flavors with the spicy peppers. It’s a very colorful meal, both in flavors and appearance.

Oven/baking cuts:
Cuts like manicotti and wavy lasagne are best used for baking in the oven and are traditionally paired with simpler sauces, such as a marinara or sauces flavored by mild herbs. They are the perfect pastas to combine with the new Barilla Toscana (Tuscan Herb) sauce, made with sauteed tomatoes, carrots and celery with garlic infused oil blended with oregano and marjoram. The aroma of this dish will have neighbors knocking on your door in hopes of joining you for dinner.

Barilla’s new thicker, richer sauce recipes were designed to perfectly hug every forkful of pasta. Join in the hugging celebration by submitting your own perfect hug photo to the Barilla Facebook page at Facebook.com/BarillaUS. Enter your perfect group hug, everyday hug or unique hug photo by Oct. 10 to win a trip for four to Italy. Visit the Facebook page for more information.

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Get this–there’s a new “Dinner Spinner” iPhone app from Allrecipes.com, the world’s #1 food site. 

Top features include:

• Search for meal ideas from thousands of Allrecipes.com’s most popular recipes
• Access detailed ingredients, cooking instructions, nutritional information, photos, ratings and reviews
• Give your iPhone a shake to watch the Dinner Spinner in action and generate dinner ideas for you 

Allrecipes’ Dinner Spinner also lets you share recipes with home cooks just like yourself for affordable and convenient meal solutions.

For more info, click here.

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If you’ve ever contemplated going vegan, now’s the time during World Go Vegan Days, which started October 25 and run through October 31.

Created by In Defense of Animals (IDA), World Go Vegan Days is an annual event to educate people about the vegan lifestyle. During World Go Vegan Days, IDA encourages people to become conscious of what – and who – they are eating, the effect it has on the world, and that a non-violent alternative exists.

Here are a few ways you can celebrate World Go Vegan Days:

• Order Vegan Starter Kits to distribute. Download a free copy here.
• Write a Letter to the Editor of your newspaper about vegan issues.
• Share a vegan meal with family and friends by hosting a vegan potluck dinner or restaurant outing. Be sure to invite people who aren’t vegan (get easy vegan recipes here).
• Since Thanksgiving is coming up in a few weeks, talk to your community food banks about providing vegan options such as Tofurkys. Consider buying a few Tofurkys, preparing them, and bringing them to your food bank or other similar gatherings.
• Ask your local newspaper to feature a story about the benefits of a vegan diet or the cruelties of factory farming.
• Adopt a World Go Vegan Days activist.
• Add a link to IDA’s World Go Vegan Days website from your website.

For more information, click here.

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Photo by Chambo25

Fall is my favorite time of year for many reasons (my wedding anniversary is in October, I love Halloween–scary movies in particular, we adopted our dog in October, the trees are pretty, the air is crisp and clean, etc.).

Plus, I start seeing one of my favorite types of produce in the stores this time of year–the spaghetti squash.

The bright yellow squash, about the size of a football but more oblong in shape, is one of my favorite things to cook with, as it’s vegan, vegetarian and gluten free, all in one fell swoop!

How to cook spaghetti squash:

I’ve tried cooking them whole, but I find they cook more evenly if you cut them in half lengthwise. Just cut it through and separate the halves. Bake halves in a shallow pan (I coat the pan with cooking spray for easier clean up), rind side up for about 40 minutes at 375 F (check periodically by piercing the skin with a fork–when the fork slides in without resistance, they’re done).

Remove from the oven and let cool for about 10 minutes.

Carefully scoop out seed and then take a fork and separate the spaghetti strands by running the fork through the squash “from stem to stern”.

To eat:

Take about 2 tablespoons of soy butter and a teaspoon of dried oregano and mix with the strands.

Enjoy!

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Whenever my husband and I go on vacation (or really, any time we know we’ll be away from home for a few hours), we pack some Odwalla bars just in case we get hungry.

Odwalla (pronounced Oh-dwa-la) is a juice company founded in Santa Cruz, Calif., in 1980 and is now headquartered in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

The Odwalla brand includes juices, smoothies and similar health beverages, as well as protein bars.

The protein bars are available in a variety of flavors, including Banana Nut, Berries GoMega, Choco-Walla, Chocolate Chip Peanut, Odwalla Superfood, Peanut Crunch, Strawberry Pomegranate, Super Protein, Sweet & Salty Almond, Sweet & Salty Peanut, and Trail Mix.

We’ve taste tested them all over the years, and the two we keep coming back to the most are the Superfood and Super Protein. They’ve stood in for breakfast, lunch and even dinner in a pinch, and we buy them at our local Co-Op, although they are carried in a lot of grocery stores, too.

Not only are Odwalla bars wonderful, but I use their Carrot Juice in my daily smoothies for ad added vegetable serving that tastes great. 

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The newly-launched channel Planet Green is taking “Bam!” to a whole new level with Emeril Lagasse in the new show “Emeril Green”. The show, which airs Monday through Thursday on Planet Green, will focus on seasonable, sustainable food and will be shot on location at Whole Foods.

Six episodes will debut on Monday, July 14 from 8-11PM (ET).

To find out how to watch Planet Green channel where you live, click here.

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Green beans are in abundance right now, and whether you choose traditional green, yellow (called wax beans) or even purple, they are bound to be the sweetest and freshest of the season.

When choosing green beans, go for long and skinny over short and plump, as the longer beans tend to be sweeter and crisper than their stumpier counterparts. If the beans “snap” when broken in half, and look bright and moist, snap them up!

To cook green beans to perfection, trim the stem ends and leave the wispy string end intact. Add salt to the cooking water when boiling or steaming to help them stay bright in color.

Then rinse and enjoy!

Or try one of these recipes:

Skillet Green Beans and Peppers
Green Beans with Lemon
Green Beans with Sage and Pancetta

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Melon is a refreshing treat for breakfast, lunch, a snack or even dessert in the summertime. Most have a low calorie count (30 calories per 1/2 cup).

Choosing melons is a snap–be sure the melon you select feels heavy for its size, smells ripe, and yields slightly to gentle pressure at the stem end.

Ripe melons will keep for up to three days in the refrigerator.

Here are the most common melons you’re bound to encounter this summer:

Watermelon (pictured above)
Watermelons range in size from 8 pounds (Sugar Baby) to 20 pounds (Charleston Gray). Most have green skin marbled with yellow, and bright red flesh. They are at their peak from June through August.

Cantaloupe
These melons have raised, netted skin (the skin should be tan–if it’s green, the melon isn’t ripe) and orange flesh, and are available June through November.
 
Honeydew
Unripe honeydews will never ripen, so be sure to select melons that are fragrant and have skin that’s slightly tacky. These are available July through October.
 
Crenshaw
These melons are bigger (5 to 9 pounds) and globe shaped, with pointed stem ends, yellow skin, and golden-pink flesh. They are in stores July through October.

In my house, even my dog enjoys melons (particularly watermelon and honeydew–the sweeter the better!).
 

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