Monday, December 26, 2011

Cooking Games and New Years


There are some excellent traditions for New Years that we should definitely take advantage of for this New Year’s celebration. Among the best of the food traditions, you’ll find black-eyed peas and corn bread. If you’re into cooking games, you can whip up your own version of black-eyed peas and corn bread this year and bring them along to a party or just have a few friends over to enjoy your culinary delicacies before the group heads out for a big night on the town.

To make black eyed peas, you can do better than opening a jar – although opening a jar isn’t the end of the world either. Start with the dried beans and plan ahead – you have to soak the beans over night before you can start cooking them. Make some bacon and set it aside. Then, using the bacon grease, sauté some onion. Add the peas to the pan along with some salt, pepper and water. Cover the pan and cook for about an hour. Once the beans are tender, top them with the crumbled bacon and serve. Happy cooking games for the New Year!

Monday, December 12, 2011

Cooking Games and Candy


Candy is definitely delicious, and it’s a bit of a challenge to make at home, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use candy in all of your various creations! Candy is an excellent way to decorate a cake and to try out new cookie ideas. If you’re ready to get serious about holiday baking, bring along some candy as well to include everyone in the holiday cooking games.

Your holiday cooking games will likely start with a few friends coming over to join in the fun of the holiday baking. The ingredients will be laid out all over the counters and there is plenty of room for everyone to join and be part of the party – especially the younger kids.

The youngest members of the party are the perfect decorators! Just pass on the candy for the cooking games to the kids and they can spend hours making new designs on the top of the cupcakes and finding fun ways to embellish cookies and just about everything else you create on your day of cooking games. Just realize, of course, that more than a bit of that candy may disappear into the mouths of some of those hard working children.