Cooking Games

Cooking Games and Variety

2012-01-23T19:56:00.001-08:00

It’s hard to find variety with cooking games. If you’re not a blessed cook, you may find that cooking games tend to be the same things over and over again. The first meal you cook that turns out well might be the start of your food choices for the next few years with only a few meals rotated out and through the menu for your cooking games in order to be sure that you’re always serving something everyone likes and something that you’re good at.

But perhaps the most fun of cooking games is branching out and trying something new. To do this, however, you need to find cooking games and recipes that you’re willing to try and have a willing test audience as well. A family with picky eaters may not be the best ones to try some new experiments, but if you have some friends with iron stomachs, invite them over to share in your cooking games. You can create food together and then enjoy it together, too.

Cooking Games and Queso

2012-01-09T19:33:00.000-08:00

If you’re in love with the gooey yellow cheese queso you’re in luck! You can make a batch right in your microwave if you’d like – all you need are a few simple ingredients to give it a try.

Assemble your ingredients for the cooking games. In this case you’ll need a block of Velveeta cheese and a can of Rotel tomatoes with chilies. Get the can of Rotel to suit the level of spiciness you’d like in your queso.

Cut up the chunk of Velveeta or similar processed cheese into small cubes. Place the cubes into a small crock pot if you have one or a small microwavable dish if you don’t. Then, open the can of Rotel. Drain off the extra water in the can of tomatoes before you add it to the cheese.

If you’re using the crock pot, simply plug it in and wait. If you’re using a microwavable bowl, place the bowl in the microwave and cook for two minutes. Remove the bowl and stir the concoction before replacing it and stirring again. When the cheese is smoothly melted, enjoy it with your favorite tortilla chips.

Cooking Games and New Years

2011-12-26T19:35:00.000-08:00

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!

Cooking Games and Candy

2011-12-12T17:35:00.000-08:00

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.

Cooking Games and Fudge

2011-11-28T15:45:00.000-08:00

One of the best cooking games I’ve come across lately was the box of fudge. Once upon a time you had to assemble the ingredients for fudge all by yourself. There were boxes and bags of ingredients and then you had to dig out the old family recipe so that you could figure out how to make the actual dessert. Now, however, there are boxes of fudge ingredients that you can easily make at home in a single sitting. These cooking games are simple, but they taste identical to the fudge recipes that were so tedious to make before.

Using the box of fudge, you’ll start by pulling out the various ingredients and checking to be sure that everything is there. Then, simply follow the instructions to melt the chocolate and blend the ingredients together to make the smooth fudge batter. Finally, you’ll press the fudge in the paper tray provided in the box and your cooking game will be complete – all you need to do is chill the fudge and then eat it to your heart’s content.

Cooking Games and Thanksgiving

2011-11-14T19:25:00.001-08:00

The fun of Thanksgiving isn’t just the food, it’s the many conversations we have over the food as you enjoy it. If you’re going to sit down to Thanksgiving cooking games, don’t over think the experience. You should be able to make the food in a way that is stress free and fun to be sure that you can enjoy the whole day – not just the meal itself.

Start with the preparations a few days ahead of time. You’ll want to ask family members to help if possible with some of the dishes so that it doesn’t all fall into your lap the day of the big meal. Side dishes, breads and salad are easy to cook up at other homes and can arrive the day of the meal leaving you with the main course. Of course, having friends and family members over with you to help prepare the meal had some fun side benefits as well. Think of the fun you’ll have in the kitchen as you whip up some great meals and some even greater conversation at the same time.

Cooking Games and Comfort Foods

2011-11-01T18:45:00.000-07:00

As winter approaches, it is absolutely time to start thinking about comfort foods. You should be firing up your crock pot right not to make a batch of chili. Or maybe you’re more into baking and you have plans for hot bread and brownies later. Cooking games are a great way to relieve some of the stress that builds during the countless hours you spend indoors in the winter, while giving you something important to work on as well.

This is your time to start perfecting some of your favorite cooking games. Work on finding the perfect balance of color and frosting in your cupcakes. Try adding some new nuts or candies to your brownies and cookies to see if you get a great new flavor. All of those recipes you’ve cut out of magazines? Let’s give them a try! The holidays are a great time for old favorite and an opportunity to try out some new ones as well. Bake up a storm this holiday season and you’ll be bringing comfort not only to yourself, but to all of your coworkers, friends and family members as well. Enjoy!

Cooking Games and the Crock Pot

2011-10-17T14:24:00.000-07:00

The crock pot is a great way for busy people to play cooking games. Start with a collection of ingredients and then combine them all together to make up a delicious dish ahead of time. You can cook large cuts of meat easily in the crock pot by just dumping it in the pot with your seasonings and spices and then you walk away. Head off to work and when you get home you’ll find your main dish for the day finished. All you need to do then is create the side dishes in just a few minutes and your meal is complete.

Crock pots don’t just cook meat. You can make any number of soups, dips, side dishes and even casseroles in the pot. Some crock pots even have multiple compartments you can use to cook different items at once. Those allow you to walk into your home at the end of the busy day and have a full meal ready to go. What could be better at the end of a long, hard work day than to see the fruits of your cooking games bubbling up and ready to be served.

Cooking Games and Bread

2011-10-03T03:32:00.001-07:00

If you’ve never made bread from scratch, it’s one cooking game you definitely to try. When you make bread, you’ll feel closer to your ancestors who had to make bread themselves every single day, day in and day out. Bread was the primary sustenance of the early settlers and even the more recent ones. Today we walk into the store to buy a loaf or two, but just a few decades ago you were more likely to find a loaf of homemade bread than a store bought one.

Bread takes a few hours to make, but it’s the sort of thing you can do in bits around other parts of your day. You’ll start by mixing up the bread dough with a spoon and then by hand. You’ll have to knead the bread dough to get the last of the flour into the dough and to work out any air bubbles. Once you’ve mixed it, the bread will rise for about an hour. Then, you’ll punch it down and it will rise again in the loaf pans. Finally bake your bread, and you’ll be able to enjoy the results of the cooking games immediately.

Cooking Games and Recipes

2011-09-19T03:41:00.000-07:00

It’s hard sometimes to buckle down in the kitchen and get any cooking done. If you’re not a natural cook, playing cooking games can seem a bit foreign initially, but this is certainly not a reason to stay out of the kitchen. You need to jump in there and learn how to cook and pretty soon, if you have some solid recipes and you’re pretty good at following directions, you’ll see a dramatic difference in how well you can play cooking games, regardless of how much cooking you’ve done it the past.

Cooking games offer countless hours of fun, and in addition to just having fun cooking up desserts, breads and entrees, you’ll also be creating something you can enjoy eating. How much fun is it to settle down with a slab of cake that you created that morning? It’s even more rewarding to make a sandwich out of bread that you baked than the store bought variety. Learning to cook will also teach you just how many things you can make that don’t cost much to create – an excellent way to stay on a budget.

Cooking Games and Watermelons

2011-09-05T19:47:00.000-07:00

It would seem like a silly thing to play with, but watermelons are great for cooking games. The watermelons are an easy way to make a bowl for your fruit salad, and they are a natural ingredient in the salad as well. Start with a round watermelon that isn’t too big – you want it to be manageable. Cut off a tiny slice on the bottom of the melon. This is just to give the melon something to sit on – not to drip from, so be sure you don’t cut off more than just a sliver of rind.

Then, cut open the watermelon and using a melon ball scoop, start scooping out little balls of watermelon. Cut open a cantaloupe and do the same thing with that as well. Store the balls in a large bowl until the watermelon bowl is empty. Cut out the rest of the watermelon inside and then pour the balls back in. Mix them up with some blueberries and perhaps strawberries to finish off the fruit concoction. Easy dessert and beautiful to boot!

Cooking Games and School Fun

2011-08-21T18:39:00.001-07:00

One of the best things you can do for school is to make yourself a lunch group. Rather than go through the trouble of packing up your lunches every morning, you can enjoy something new and different every day through your lunch group. You bring one dish and your friends bring a dish and then you have a full collection of food to eat for lunch.

If you have four friends who all sit together for lunch, you just need to assign each person a course and you’ll have a full lunch every week. For example, you might bring sandwiches on Monday and your friends bring a big bag of chips to share, a few cookies to share and a pack of cokes. If you buy big enough packs and store the extra in your locker or in a fridge overnight, you can enjoy all sorts of things without having to remember to do more than grab four cans of soda first thing in the morning.

Cooking Games and Coffee

2011-08-08T04:13:00.000-07:00

Who doesn’t love to head to the local coffee shop for a drink with friends? Just watching the baristas make great coffee makes me wonder how much fun I could have playing cooking games with coffee. While I might not have an espresso machine or a way to create my own steamed milk for cappuccino, I can play around a bit with the many forms of coffee creamers and flavors to see what sort of tasty concoction I can make at home.

For example, in my cooking games, I might start with a pot of black coffee. In a blender, I could pour in some coffee and put in a scoop of ice cream. A handful of ice and a generous squirt of chocolate syrup might just make a frozen coffee drink that is worthy of praise. Perhaps you can develop your own signature coffee drink you can whip up and serve to all of your friends every time they come over to visit.

Cooking Games on the Grill

2011-07-25T20:16:00.001-07:00

Over the summer, I’ve decided that I’m not going to use the oven unless I’m making a sweet treat. Rather than cooking up large items that require the oven, I’m using the grill. It’s been a long time since I actually used the grill to cook, and the first time I fired it up this summer was probably the first time I’ve fired it up in a couple of years. But this was my summer to learn some more cooking games, and learn them I did!

I now know how to play cooking games with steak, chicken, pork, sausage and hamburgers. I am almost experienced enough to cook a meal every day of the week on the grill and not have to repeat myself. Sadly this is much more accomplished than I am using the oven or the stove, and I’m rather proud of my accomplishments. Thanks to a gas grill, I’m able to fire up the grill for some cooking games, take a few minutes to get the meat ready, and then simply throw it on the grill. It cooks while I work on side dishes and just like that – we have delicious summer cooking games!

Cooking Games – Breakfast for Dinner

2011-07-12T18:30:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite cooking games to play is to make breakfast for dinner. It’s actually rather simple, but you almost wouldn’t know it from the elaborate supper plans I often make. Sometimes I start thinking about steaks and salads and frou-frou desserts, but in reality the easiest and often healthiest thing you can have for dinner is a bit of what you might normally have for breakfast.

For example, French toast can be made with egg whites, skim milk and some whole wheat bread. Cook up your French toast while you prepare a bit of turkey bacon. When it’s all finished, have your French toast with bacon, fresh fruit and a cup of milk. You’ve hit every food group, made a minimum of mess and you’re able to enjoy your food knowing it’s healthy, it’s easy and it’s the sort of cooking game you can enjoy both morning and night.

Cooking Games: Shut Down the Oven

2011-06-28T21:17:00.000-07:00

If your kitchen is already hot this summer it’s going to just get hotter when you turn on the oven. A hot oven may be great for making a giant batch of cookies, but when it makes your whole house that much hotter, it’s barely worth it. This summer, all of our cooking games should be done without using the oven at all. Need some ideas of cooking games that shun the oven? Try these!

Microwave – if you can, just microwave whatever you’re eating. Sure you can’t make cookies in the microwave, but you can cook a whole chicken in the microwave so why even use the oven?

Toaster Oven – The best $20 you’ll ever spend is on a great toaster oven. Get one that is large enough for a frozen pizza or a small tray of cookies and you’ll be able to do everything you’d normally do in the big overheated oven with minimal heat waste.

Grill – Fire up the grill outside and you won’t have to cook in the house at all. Learn to make all of your meals on the grill and you can go weeks without turning on any kitchen appliance.

Cooking Games: Layer Cakes

2011-06-13T20:19:00.001-07:00

Today I played some cooking games with my sons. We made a layer cake, and frankly after those cooking games, I’m feeling a bit sick right now. Our layer cake is delicious. My oldest son was convinced that rather than just a stacked layer cake, we needed to have a layer cake that more closely resembled a wedding or tiered layer cake. He wanted at least four layers to be present in decreasing size.

I took this request as a challenge to overcome with my cooking games, and after whipping up a box of cake mix, I used a collection of casserole dishes and baking pans to get my four rounds of varying size. The best part of the cooking game came when it was time to stack the cake. The four little layers I’d made for the cake weren’t very big – I only had one bag of cake mix, after all. The end product of our cooking games was a tiny layer cake that looked like a doll’s wedding cake. It might look tiny, but it was delicious!

Cooking Games and Healthy Food Choices

2011-05-31T15:49:00.001-07:00

It’s hard thought to think of cooking games that focus on the healthier food items that don’t use a bunch of sugar or processed food items. With our cooking games today, we spend a lot of time reheating processed foods and thanks to huge time limitations, we often skip making real foods. The goal of our cooking games should be to eat foods as close to their natural state as possible. This means you should shop the edges of the grocery store to get meat, fruit, vegetables and flour. All of the basic ingredients combine to make the kinds of foods our ancestors ate.

By avoiding all of the chemicals and junk that is found in processed foods today, our cooking games will be healthier and better for us. Our bodies can digest fats and oils from things like real butter much better than it can digest all of the chemicals that we tend to pour into our body on a daily basis. It’s a huge change, but perhaps if we all move away from prepared foods and get into healthier alternatives, we’ll be better overall.

Cooking Games and Pizza Chefs

2011-05-16T02:49:00.000-07:00

If you’ve ever wanted to try something new, like perhaps being a pizza chef, the cooking games online are a great place to give this new occupation a try. When you play cooking games, you’re going to have a chance to master your skills decorating pizzas and then getting them out of the oven fast enough for all of your customers. With the pizza cooking games, you will have a chance to actually design the pizzas you cook. Add all of the toppings you want to make a delicious looking pizza, but be careful – you have to match the pizza you’re making with what your customers want or you’ll be in trouble!

The cooking games move fast and you have to create the pizzas in order to keep up with demand. You’ll get one request after another to make a pizza. Get the pizzas right and you’ll be able to stay ahead of the line as the orders come in. Make a pizza wrong or get it out of order and you’ll almost immediately be in trouble as you try to manage the orders and make it all work again. Don’t be surprised if you have to try your hand at the cooking games multiple times before you find the perfect balance.

How to Play Cooking Games

2011-05-02T16:20:00.001-07:00

Cooking games are a grand adventure online. Not only do the cooking games give you a chance to test your skills n the kitchen or over the grill, but they improve your fine motor skills and help you improve your hand-eye coordination as well. Playing cooking games generally happens the same way, although there are various kinds of cooking games, and they certainly aren’t all cut from the same cloth.

In cooking games, your job is to make the food as the orders come along. You might find yourself the chef of a fine restaurant, a pizza man or outside on the beach manning a grill. As the orders come back to you, you need to get the right items on the stove, in the oven or on the grill and cook them as quickly as possible in order to get the food back out the door again.

Of course, the game gets a bit tricky as it continues. The food starts to burn if you don’t move fast enough and the orders keep coming making things feel intense and pressured. Fortunately you’re touch enough to handle that in your cooking games.

Cooking Games and Cupcake Sprinkles

2011-04-19T02:45:00.000-07:00

It seems like such an easy thing to put sprinkles on cupcakes, but it’s really not. One of the simplest cooking games is to make cupcakes and then decorate them, but how do you decorate cupcakes to look well done as opposed to simply slapped together. That’s not to say slapped together, hodge-podge cupcakes aren’t delicious, because we know they are, but when you’re playing cooking games, you like to get your decorations just right.

To apply sprinkles to your cupcake in a more attractive way, simple roll the edges of the cupcake through the icing. Start with a paper plate full of sprinkles. Put icing on the top of the cupcakes. Holding the bottom of the cupcake, roll the iced top through the sprinkles turning the cupcake along its edge. This coats the edges in sprinkles and makes a very neat, professional looking circle of sprinkles around the edges. Simply drop a candy piece in the center of your sprinkle circle and your cupcakes are ready to go!

Cooking Games: Online Cake Shops

2011-04-12T02:56:00.000-07:00

I love baking and I love the idea of being able to decorate a cake. Unfortunately, I’m not really very good at either, but I at least get to play around with the idea of fanciful cupcakes and fun when I’m playing cooking games. Of the many cooking games available, the best are the cooking games that bring you inside an online cake shop. In these games, you’re given any number of desserts to improve with icing and designs.

If I were to ever try and frost a cake by hand, it would be an interesting mess. Doing the cake decoration as part of a cooking game, I’m able to see just how much I can really do with my creativity, even if my hands aren’t trained to hold an icing tube. Playing cooking games like the cake shop let me flex my creative muscle which is very nice in a day and age often without creativity. I like trying things that are new and fun for me, and decorating cakes as I can n online cooking games is definitely something new and exciting.

Cooking Games and Easy Toddler Foods

2011-04-05T02:55:00.001-07:00

I was blessed with a picky toddler, and as other mothers who have picky toddlers know, you have to get a bit creative with your cooking games if you’re going to make it through the day. When you’re playing cooking games with your toddler, the first thing you need to remember is that toddlers have a stomach roughly the size of their fist. They are going to eat a lot, but not all at once. The toddlers usually graze during the day and this behavior can continue for years as they grow. Your job is to provide them plenty of healthy foods that make up a meal over the course of a day, not all at once.

Make your toddler foods enticing to your toddler by picking out some favorites an making them available. Put blue berries in a special bowl. Use a cookie cutter to make a sandwich a special shape. Have healthy oatmeal cookies in the middle of a tea party. However you arrange your food, be sure that it’s in a way that seems fun to you. If it’s fun for you to make it, it will likely be fun for your toddler to eat it.

Cooking Games and Fruit Dip

2011-03-30T03:18:00.000-07:00

Making fruit dip is an easy and fun cooking game. When you’re playing cooking games, you want o find a collection of food items that are tasty together and also ones that are fun to work with. Fruit and dip satisfy this requirement of cooking games perfectly.

To make fruit dip, you’ll first need some fruit. Cut up the fruit into bite sized chunks. You can skewer the fruit if you’d like to make it easier to hold and dip, or you can just leave the fruit on the plate in chunks. In the center of your fruit collection, you’ll make a fluffy dip for the items. This is especially good with berries, but it works well for all cooking games.

To make the dip, simply combine a container of strawberry yogurt with half a container of Cool Whip. The result is a fluffy, tasty fruit dip. A very nice cooking game to say the least.

Cooking Games and Fresh Fruit

2011-03-24T03:16:00.000-07:00

It’s a great deal of fun acquiring your own food. There are plenty of opportunities to grow your own fruit and vegetables today. The first is the large number of farms that offer you a chance to get out into the fields and actually pick the fruit yourself. This is big with younger people especially, but it can be a fun cooking game for anyone since it’s a treat for those of us that live in the bigger cities where we don’t ahev strawberries at every street corner.

If you can’t pick your own fruit, you can grow your own fruit just as easily. A container garden makes it easy to grow a few plants of your own. Plant some tomato plants in a pot and you’ll be on your way. The tomato plants grow well in containers so long as you keep them watered. You can do the same with peppers, onions and even items like grapes or strawberries. The biggest trouble with growing your own product in the backyard is keeping the birds away – the love vegetables in the middle of the city as well.

Cooking Games and Dips

2011-03-15T03:12:00.000-07:00

Collectively we have a love affair with dips. What better way to spend an afternoon that sitting on the couch watching your favorite show than when sharing bean dip, or spinach dip, or onion dip with your best friend? The dips allow us a wide choice of flavors and new food items without being overbearing, but making all of those dips can also be great cooking games!

Cooking games are a great way to experiment with different food items, and dips are a lot like soups. You can throw all sorts of things together to make one meal and the more you figure out about how to make a particular kind of dip, the better prepared you’re going to be for the evening at home on the couch. The cooking games for making dips can be very easy. In fact, many of them don’t even require using the oven. The microwave is enough for many of them, and others just require mixing some packets of ingredients together. What could be easier than that for cooking games?

Cooking Games and Appliances

2011-03-09T03:11:00.000-08:00

It’s a shame, but cooking games can be ruined by bad appliances. There’s a reason that so many people spend huge amounts of money to update their kitchens. They want the top of the line appliances, and this makes sense if you’re struggling to come up with the right conditions to cook your favorite meals and play some serious cooking games.

For example, last night I was playing some cooking games of my own. I went to make brownies. I started the cooking games as you always should by following instructions about preheating the oven. Unfortunately, my oven is about thirty years old and doesn’t heat very well, or at least not evenly. So the cooking games I was playing didn’t really work out. The brownies I was trying to make for a friend almost burned around the sides, but the center was still absolutely dough. You could actually reach in and scoop it out the same way you could in the bowl I mixed it. It was a very frustrating, although delicious in a gooey way, cooking game.

Cooking Games and Easter

2011-03-02T18:59:00.000-08:00

There are only a few traditional items that pop up around Easter, and most of them are chocolate or coated in sugar. When you’re working with cooking games, you’ll want to find something new and exciting to create. There’s no sense in making something that’s been done countless times before if it’s not something you really want to make. Why not get creative with your Easter cooking games?

Start with the favorite candies of the holidays – jelly beans, bunnies and chocolate. Then why not build a house, much like a ginger bread house, but out of those items? Icing can seal everything together for the finished project. Or if you’d rather do something simpler, play with the jelly beans – spell out messages, make skewers with patterns or package up some for your best friend. The Easter cooking games are an opportunity to really create something special.

Cooking Games and Knife Safety

2011-02-23T18:57:00.000-08:00

If you’re going to play cooking games in your kitchen, one of the most important things you can do is learn how to handle a knife correctly. When possible, you should always handle a knife in the company of someone else who can help you remember to use the knife safely. Having someone else there is also great insurance against a mistake simply because that friend or family member might be the one to drive you to the emergency room if you do goof somehow.

When you’re using a knife you should follow a few simple rules:
Always use a sharp knife. A sharp knife will cut more cleanly and more quickly. A dull knife, however, will be harder to use and it is more likely to slip when you’re trying to cut and cut you instead.

Always cut away from yourself. Don’t leave your fingers in the way of the knife and push the knife away from you rather than pulling it toward you where it can slip and jump into your hand, arm or chest.

Point knives down in the dishwasher. If you’re washing knives by hand, don’t drop them into soapy water where you can’t feel what you’re grabbing. If you’re loading the knives into the dishwasher, put them into the racks with the blades facing downward for safe handling for the next cooking games.

Healthy Cooking Games

2011-02-16T16:21:00.000-08:00

There are so many fun cooking games out there to play, but a huge number of them all seem to have health issues. The cooking games we enjoy most are the ones that include things like making cookies, adding sprinkles and frosting and baking cakes. It’s time for us to find more cooking games that can be considered healthy!
Fruit Salad – Fruit salads are one of the easiest cooking games for those looking to find a healthy alternative to the non-healthy cooking games. Cut up all sorts of pieces of fruit and combine them together. Make a berry salad or use skewers for the fruit to make it more exciting.

Muffins and Bread – If you make your muffins and bread from scratch, you can limit the amount of sugar you use by making healthy substitutions. Using applesauce instead of sugar, for example, or bananas and nuts to flavor a rich bread is absolutely delicious and healthy.

Cooking Games and Avoiding Sugar

2011-02-09T16:20:00.000-08:00

There are too many sugary delicious items out there for me and my cooking games. I loved making cookies, brownies and cakes with my kids and I still do at times, but it’s starting to bother me how little there is that’s fun to make that is sugar free. Not only is sugar bad for all of us, but it’s been affecting my health and my energy levels lately. I’m bound and determined to find cooking games that require less sugar and healthier overall.

The one area where I’ve decided to start my new cooking games are the breads. Making bread is actually pretty fun, especially if you start mixing in different ingredients. Granted, there is still sugar in bread, but there is considerably less in the dark breads than the white breads, so I’ll be starting there. I’m going to play cooking games with my kids and we’ll all have fun with steaming, hot bread for snacks this winter.

Cooking Games and Cookies

2011-02-01T18:09:00.000-08:00

Cookies are one of the first things kids learn to make that involves more than pushing a button on the microwave. If you’re working with your children to playing cooking games for cookies, always remember that the safety should be your first less. Your kids will likely be using scissors and almost certainly the oven as they cook.

Start with the place and bake style cookies. Simply grease a tray and then cut open a pack of dough. Your children can place the cookies on the tray on their own and once they have them arranged, it’s a simple matter to fire up the oven and bake them. The hardest part is teaching your children how to use the oven correctly – a full hand oven mitt will help protect their arms and hands from burns, but supervision for the first few cookie making experiences will certainly serve you well, too.

Cooking Games and Campfires

2011-01-27T18:08:00.001-08:00

One of the most enjoyable ways to cook is with fire. While obviously dangerous and never something you should try at home, cooking games over the campfire have the kind of appeal that is hard to ignore. Many of my best memories involve food cooked over a campfire. If you’ve never cooked over a campfire, you’ll need to start with some straight forward cooking games rather than trying to do anything that might be especially challenging.

The best cooking game over a campfire are s’mores. S’mores are simply a toasted marshmallow with a bar of chocolate squished between two graham crackers. The result is a oozy, gooey marshmallow and chocolate mess. Once you’ve mastered cooking on a stick over the fire, you can try cooking hot dogs or sausage. Simply stick the meat on a sharp stick and settle in. Roasting it over the fire gives the meat a delicious smoky taste – an excellent result to a cooking game.

Cooking Games and Spinach Dip

2011-01-18T21:28:00.000-08:00

What is it about spinach and cheese that goes so well together? If you like spinach dip, you’ll love this easy cooking game. For spinach cooking games, you’ll start with a frozen package of spinach. Unceremoniously dump the frozen spinach into a microwave safe bowl. Then start cutting. You’re going to need to cut up a rectangle of cream cheese and a block of Velveeta cheese. Dump those cheese cubes into the bowl with the frozen spinach. Finally, open a can of Rotel tomatoes and drain it. Dump the tomatoes on top of the rest and put it in the microwave.

The dip will need to cook for at least five or ten minutes. As it cooks, stop the microwave periodically to stir the mixture together. Keep cooking until the spinach is cooked and the cheeses are all melted and smooth. A few final stirs will have the concoction ready for some crackers or chips. Heavy pita chips are great with this dip as are many sorts of crackers. Enjoy the cooking games!

Cooking Games and Soup

2011-01-11T21:27:00.000-08:00

There is nothing more delicious than a cup of soup on a cold winter’s night. And the last time I checked outside it was certainly winter. The winter months bring on the nasty, biting weather that seeps in under windows and doors. Fight back against that cold with some cooking games of your own.

Start by looking for soup recipes online or in your favorite cook book. The perfect recipes take little in the way of preparation and they can be left to stew for hours at a time. Then, play these cooking games in the crock pot. Dump all of the ingredients together in the crock-pot and start it cooking. If you’re feeling adventuresome, you can start a loaf of bread in the bread machine as well.

If you time it all just right, you’ll wind up with a hot bowl of soup and fresh, crusty bread at dinner time. You’ll have the added effect of being surrounded by the smell of it cooking all day long.

Cooking Games and Fun

2011-01-04T21:24:00.000-08:00

Cooking games are fun for the whole family. When you play cooking games at home, you’re often pulling out new recipes and giving yourself a great opportunity to try some new things. Including your family members in that fun means they get to see how the food is made and you’ll be spending plenty of time together, too.

Families today are more distant than that the families in the past. We are all so busy that we almost pass each other in the night. It’s easy to make more time in the day, however, if everyone is coming together to play cooking games as a form of dinner preparation. You can even make it be part of your chores. The end result is an organized dinner, some new recipes and fun foods to try and a great opportunity to share the experiences of the day without stress. Hurray for family fun!

Loving Cooking Games

2010-12-28T21:23:00.000-08:00

Cooking games are a great things, both online and off. When you play cooking games, you’re getting a nice set of benefits whether you realize it or not.

Cooking games online can help you with fine motor skills. If you find your attention drifting, pull out some cooking games and you’ll be engaged with the game and you’ll be forced to move rapidly as well. The end result is rapid hand and eye motion, and how can that be a bad thing?

Cooking games give you time together with family. When you play cooking games at home, you might invite your sisters or parents to play with you. Try new experiments and pull out new recipes to use for dinner that night for a bit of family adventure

Cooking games introduce you to new foods. Why not try some new foods? Cooking games give you plenty of options of things to try that are both delicious and fun to make as well.

Cooking Games and the Holidays

2010-12-22T18:26:00.000-08:00

Cooking games are a natural part of the holiday season. Many families come together to make cookies or treats for teachers and other family members. When you share the experience of the cooking games, it’s easy to really get to know everyone without the pressure and the drama of the shopping malls or the even the grocery stores.

This holiday season treat your family to a real event in your household. While everyone is away at school or at a friend’s house, make a huge batch of cut-out sugar cookies. Then mix up icing in a variety of colors and arrange it into bowls. Sit your kids down after dinner and have them start decorating the cookies. Make it a rule that nobody can get up until every cookie is decorated. Even if your teenage children don’t get into as much as you’d like, they might still enjoy the experience and you’ll have given them a chance to enjoy a fun holiday treat during the most important time of the year.

Cooking Games and Family

2010-12-15T18:21:00.001-08:00

Cooking games are a great way for families to spend time together. When your family is playing cooking games together, you get endless amounts of time in a real activity. Not only will you have plenty of stories to tell about how the activity actually went, you’ll have a chance to get through to your children in a non-awkward kind of way.

Cooking games tend to not be as staged feeling as some of the chats or talks that parents have with their kids. Instead of the kids all sitting still while mom and dad lecture them, the family is all involved in making dinner or cutting out cookies for the family dinner or dessert. When you’re working side by side, it’s much easier to have a natural conversation with a kid – especially your own kid. Keep everyone’s hands busy and you’ll soon have some serious family cooking games to cherish.

The 12 Cooking Games of Christmas Part 2

2010-12-09T20:13:00.000-08:00

To continue the ideas I have for the 12 Cooking Games of Christmas:

Day 4 Cooking Games – I’m going to make some Rice Krispie treats with some holidays marshmallows blended into for some extra colors.

Day 5 Cooking Games – The plan for this day is to back off the sweets again and go for a salty treat. I might make Chex Mix or I might bring up a simple dip and chips for everyone to share.

Day 6 Cooking Games – Back to the yummy sweets! This day is for fudge – the original chocolate kind complete with walnuts.

Day 7 Cooking Games – We’re going to scale it back this day and get a bit simpler again with some peanut butter cookies.

Day 8 Cooking Games – It’s time for a bit of meat, so I plan on making a sausage tray with cheese and crackers – snacks that are easy to share, but that have a bit of heft to them as well.

Day 9 Cooking Games – After all that meat, it’s time for more sweetness, and it might be a plate of gingersnaps rolled in cinnamon.

The 12 Cooking Games of Christmas Part 1

2010-12-02T20:12:00.001-08:00

I’ve decided to give my special someone a unique gift this year. I’m going to use my cooking games and skills in the kitchen to bring him the twelve cooking games of Christmas. He works in an environment where there are plenty of other guys around and he’s there for long stretches of time during the day. What this means to me is that I can make him a different yummy treat every day and take them up to his work for him to share with friends. Here are the ones I have in mind so far.

Day 1 Cooking Games – I plan to make some chocolate chip cookies. You can’t go wrong with the original, right?

Day 2 Cooking Games – I’m going to be making some trail mix with festive colors of M&M candies mixed in for good measure. I might even individually package it up for some friends or put it in a big festive bowl for everyone to dip into and share.

Day 3 Cooking Games – It’s time for more sweets, and this time it’s going to be cupcakes. I’ll make him a dozen of his favorite type – vanilla with vanilla frosting and deliver them in Christmas wrapping.

Cooking Games and Pot Luck

2010-11-23T21:06:00.000-08:00

There is no reason pot lucks have to be on formal occasions at work. If you have a group of friends who like to eat together, why not have a standing pot luck event every week or every couple of weeks? You can give each potluck a name or just make them a standing ritual. To have a pot luck cooking game, you only need to have a few friends to join together to make something yummy. You might want to divvy up the styles of foods to bring for each friend as well.

For example, the first week of the cooking games, you could bring the main course in a crock pot. Another friend can bring a salad, the next a side dish and the fourth a dessert. The end result is a nice meal that everyone can share. It’s much better than a frozen meal and it’s not much more expensive than your meal would have been otherwise. This is especially true if you bring the main dish only once per month when you do this weekly. A side benefit is that the food can be used again the next day as delicious leftovers.

Cooking Games and Personalized Cookies

2010-11-16T21:05:00.000-08:00

To help celebrate the holidays with good friends, why not have a cookie decorating event? While this might sound more like something kids do, there are more than a few adults who would love to have a chance to smear around some icing and play with sprinkles. Invite your friends over for this cooking game, and you can make it into a casual tea party. Make a pot of tea and set out a platter of plain cookies on the table. Then, use a bit of icing to decorate each one.

If you’re like you can have a contest before everyone starts devouring the yummy treats. Another option is to make large cookies decorated especially for each of your friends. Take a message from the cookie companies that decorate cookies like real cakes. Use icing to create a picture on a large cookie. Or just write some initials and use some sprinkles to jazz things up a bit. When you arrive at work or school with all of your cookies in tow, you’ll be the hit of the crowd.

Cooking Games Online

2010-11-10T21:24:00.000-08:00

One of the most interesting games to play online are the cooking games. With the cooking games, you’re doing much more than just trying to get from one point on the screen to another. You’re not shooting anything or driving a car. The point of the cooking games is to get orders correct as if you’re a short order cook. With the cooking games, you are a cook or chef in a busy establishment. Orders start coming in and it’s up to you to determine the best way to cook everything to get the orders finished up and out the door.

To get the cooking done correctly, you’re in a constant battle against burning certain food items and getting others on the griddle in time. As things are ready, you move them along and the game continues. Naturally the cooking games increase in difficulty as you play, making them more challenging while also making them plenty of fun, too. You might even become inspired to put down the mouse and pick up a spatula of your own to create a yummy feast all your own.

Cooking Games and Popcorn Balls

2010-11-03T21:23:00.000-07:00

What could be better for fall than popcorn balls? You can make these simply cooking games at home on a cold fall afternoon, although you should plan to eat them right away. Popcorn balls don’t last long and can get harder over time if they are not wrapped or eaten immediately.

To make the popcorn ball cooking games, you’ll start with salted popcorn. You can use unsalted, plain popcorn, but it makes everything a bit bland. Pop your popcorn and put it aside. Melt half a stick of butter in a very large pot and then add ¼ cup of brown sugar. Stir the sugar and butter together before adding 4 cups of marshmallows. Melt the marshmallows and stir very well. Turn off the heat and then add the popcorn. Stir it gently until all of the popcorn is covered in the marshmallow mixture.

Press the balls into shape by hand and wrap or eat immediately. Letting the balls sit will make them dry out almost immediately.

Cooking Games and Fires

2010-10-27T20:20:00.000-07:00

The colder season is the perfect time to fire up the outside fire pit for some fun cooking games. And with the fire pit you can have a bit of fun with your children and even by yourself. Grab some long sticks and a few hot dogs and marshmallows and roast yourself up something nice. The fire pit is a great way to keep warm on a cool night, but you can easily spend some time on the weekend enjoying the fire pit during the day even if the weather isn’t that cold.

Build a fire and let it burn down enough that you have some nice embers. When it’s lunch time or just time for a bit of fun, haul out the hot dogs and sticks and teach your children or just enjoy roasting your own hot dogs. Get creative with the fire and cook other things as well on various sticks. Marshmallows are an easy choice, you can also cook cans of things like chili in the fire or even potatoes if you really want to get serious about open flame cooking. Always practice fire safety, of course, in these sorts of cooking games.

Cooking Games and Ooey Gooey Brownie Sundaes

2010-10-20T20:19:00.000-07:00

If there is anything better than ice cream, it’s ice cream over a brownie. Brownie ala mode or really just a brownie sundae is easily one of the most delicious ways to consume countless calories while practically passing out in ecstasy. It’s for this reason that I truly love cooking game – you can make such delicious desserts.

When you make an ooey gooey brownie sundae, you can’t start with just any brownie. You need fresh brownies, preferably thick ones that are heavy. Don’t use the “cake-like brownies” in your recipe – you want the richest ones you can make. Once you have the brownies baking, take them out of the oven just a minute or two before they are well and truly done. You want them to be on the verge of being under baked so that they are extra moist and gooey.

Cut a hefty square of brownie and then dump a large scoop of ice cream on top. Cover with caramel and fudge sauce and top with plenty of whipped cream and cherries. The result is delicious, messy and rich. Yum!

Cooking Games and Dinnertime

2010-10-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

Even if you enjoy cooking games, dinner time can be a challenge depending on the time that you normally eat. If, for example, you like to eat dinner early because you have young ones to put to bed, even the best cooking games can’t be done in the fifteen minutes you have to whip something up. You’ll need more time to dice and cut and prepare than you can find on a typical Monday afternoon. The solution to this is to not cook on a Monday night.

Cook on a Sunday instead. Make Sunday your family day to cook and then freeze or put away food items that you can pull out on a moment’s notice to prepare. Grab the casserole dish and reheat it on Monday. Use the crock pot on Tuesday and just dump in the basics before you leave the house. Wednesday is ideal for leftover and Thursday might leave you with the seasoned meat and potato dish you created. It’s hard to make cooking games fit in before dinnertime, but if you’re savvy, you can make it all work beautifully .

Cooking Games and Football

2010-10-06T20:20:00.000-07:00

Football season is a great excuse to cook. You can create all sorts of yummy treats during football season that you can’t always get away with during the warmer months. If you like fall cooking games, invite a crowd over for a football game and you’ll be in business. Start with the main dish for the meal – it should be something relatively easy to eat while seated on the couch. Bowls of chili are nice and warm or sandwiches are easy as well. Perhaps create giant sandwiches to cut and share.

Your snacks are the central part of the game, of course. You can start with pretzels and chips, but then expand into things that are more fun for everyone. Pigs in a blanket and different kinds of pastries. Dips are always a huge hit and you can enjoy plenty of cooking games if you start to incorporate all of the fun dessert options as well. Cakes, pies and decorated cookies – there’s something for everyone during football cooking games.

Cooking Games and the Grill

2010-09-29T20:25:00.000-07:00

In some areas, you can use your grill all year long. But in other areas, the grill is really only useful in the warmer months of the year. It’s unlikely that the grill will be pulled out in the middle of a snowstorm, so you’ll need to prepare your grill for the long winter.

As the weather cools down, cook one last delicious meal on your grill and then start taking steps to clean and protect the grill over the month. Turn the grill on as high as it will go and let it heat up fully to burn off all of the old food. Let it cool completely before using a scraping brush to remove any of the remaining items. Empty all of the ashes and food from the bottom of the grill if possible.

Before pulling on the cover, screw the top of the gas canister completely closed and store the canister in an area where there won’t be a risk of frost or freezing – the garage or basement, for example. Completely cover the grill and move it into storage if you’re able before settling into the winter.

Cooking Games and Fall Foods

2010-09-22T20:24:00.001-07:00

While there is certainly not a rule about the best foods for fall, it’s commonly accepted that the fall cooking games are ones that provide hot, hearty foods for the colder days. As the days cool off, the meals heat up in a big way. Some of the best cooking games for fall include:

Chili – Hearty, meat-filled and nutritious, chili is a great staple in the fall. It is a meal in itself, but can be used as a supplement to other meals as well. Top a baked potato with a ladleful of chili. Take your chili and crumble some cornbread on top. Add some beans and cheese to give you extra flavor.

Soups – Hot soups are a hearty meal option in the fall that will help you warm up from the inside out. The soups are filling, but they aren’t as heavy as some other options in the fall.

Pie – Hot pie is good all year long, but some of the richer pies are best in the fall. Pumpkin pie, pecan pie and various meat and berry pies are delicious in the fall. The warm pies topped with cream are easily the favorite fall cooking games.

Cooking Games and the Family Barbecue

2010-09-15T20:10:00.000-07:00

A family barbecue is a fun way to relax with your family while playing cooking games. You can have a family barbecue with just the people closest to you or by inviting some friends over to enjoy the meal with you. The more people that come over, the more festive your family barbecue will become. In the cooking games, you’ll always want to make sure that there is enough food for everyone and that you have something to use as you prepare the food.

For example, don’t fire up the grill before you check to be sure that the steaks aren’t frozen at that the hot dogs have buns to serve them with. Your grill should be clean and ready for preparing food, while the kitchen is an easy place to get the side dishes ready. You can even cook sides like corn or beans over the grill as well to cut down on the mess inside. Pull the meal together, and then enjoy the company as everyone sits around a picnic table to enjoy it together.

Cooking Games and Progressive Dinners

2010-09-08T20:07:00.001-07:00

One easy way to have fun with friends, especially a large group of friends, is to arrange a progressive dinner. In the progressive dinner, you’ll take your friends from one house to the other to offer them different course. These cooking games let many different people be involved in the production of the food and it gives all of your guests different scenery and surroundings as they move around the neighborhood.

If you have enough people that can drive, you can spread out across town, but even a group of walkers can have fun if you keep things centralized in a single location – like a neighborhood where a few of you live. As you serve up the food and fun with these cooking games, introduce some fun games as well to keep everyone interested. Try to make sure everyone is in the same room while you play to be sure everyone is included in the fun.

Cooking Games – The Perfect Fireside Snack

2010-09-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

Now that the summer is wrapping up, it’s time to start thinking of autumn nights and perhaps the first true cold front of the season. As the weather cools down, the kitchen can start to heat up – make yourself a delicious fireside snack to enjoy on your first cold night this autumn.

A hot drink – The perfect snack has to start with a hot drink. Whether you like hot chocolate, hot cider, tea or coffee, plan to brew up something how and steamy. Top it with a cinnamon stick or some marshmallows, use a big over-sized mug and then plan the rest of the snack.

Savory foods – The fire means it’s time to savor your foods. To do this, you’ll need something hot. Nachos are a great savory item that is easy to pull together. Chips, beans, cheese and tomatoes are all cooked together to be a hot, yummy snack. Warm bread, hot sandwiches and small quiches are also easy things to pull together or heat up to snack on.

Something sweet – Finally, you’ll need something sweet to snack on. A warm piece of pie is delicious by the fireside or opt for some cake to settle the sweet tooth. Hot brownies are delicious as well – get creative and enjoy the delicious nature of food on a cold night.

Cooking Games – Tips for a Perfect School Lunch

2010-08-26T21:13:00.000-07:00

These days I’m relegated to making school lunches instead of playing real cooking games. Of course, school lunches need love, too, and I’ve come up with a few plans of attack on how to pull together a nice lunch in a pretty speedy way.

To make a school lunch, I always start with a frozen juice packet. The frozen juice acts like ice to keep the rest of the lunch cool, but it also melt over the course of the morning so that you have nice, cold juice to drink at lunch time. This works with a small water bottle as well.

I then include something easy to eat with your fingers. I’ve discovered that packing something that resembles a real meal often means I forget to include silverware, so I’m stuck. Better to throw in some cheese and crackers or a sandwich than risk having pasta without a means to eat it.

Finally, I always include a sweet snack. Even if it’s just a single cookie or a small candy bar, it’s important to have a little treat throughout the day. It’s just as important, of course, to find a treat that is small – you don’t want to ruin your supper, after all.

Cooking Games in 10 Minutes or Less

2010-08-17T22:10:00.000-07:00

I need to start some new cooking games in my household. By the time I get two boys home from gymnastics, I’ll be looking for something to fix very quickly before it’s time for some homework and bed. Our days fly by during the school year, but I don’t want to always eat out for simplicity’s sake. I want to be able to feed my children something that is at least mostly nutritious at home, although I’m sure I’ll forsake cooking games at least once in favor of take out.

But I can at least try to make some 10 minute meals for the kids. The best bet are things that are simple foods. Pasta is a simple food and goes over well in my household, especially since the boys don’t like sauce. Basic meat dishes are easy, too, since they don’t need to roast. A baked chicken breast feeds us easily and a steak can actually be pretty quick, too. The trick will be to do the prep beforehand as much as possible so that I can just throw everything together as I walk in the door. Tricky, but it can be done.

Cooking Games and School Lunches

2010-08-11T22:09:00.000-07:00

I recently realized that I’m overdoing my cooking games to make school lunches by actually making them. To make school lunches, you’re apparently supposed to buy everything preassembled and chunk it into the lunch box. I’ll admit I like this idea a lot. I also think it will work well for my two kids – or at least one of them. One of my boys would love a packaged lunch every day. The other one is a bit of a picky eater. He wouldn’t eat anything in those packaged lunches.

So that means that at least my morning cooking games for school lunches is simplified by one. I can grab something and chunk it into the youngest’s lunch box. And then I can take the few minutes necessary to assemble the food items my oldest requires to eat at his lunch time. Once everything is there, it will be delicious and hopefully at least marginally nutritious. But then, you just never know how these things will turn out. You can use your cooking games to make a very special lunch and the kids wind up drinking the juice and eating chips. It’s always a gamble.

Cooking Games and Chocolate Bars

2010-08-04T20:19:00.000-07:00

There are so many ways you can use a chocolate bar. For such an innocent piece of dessert, that lovely chocolate bar has brilliant existence in some of my favorite dishes. When you’re playing cooking games and making desserts, consider if a crushed chocolate bar or other candy bar could make the dessert even tastier. Here’s an example:

You’re making a mousse. The mousse is lush and rich and you’ve topped it with a layer of whipped cream for effect. While beautiful in a triffle dish, it would be even lovelier if you were to take a Heath Bar or even a regular chocolate bar and beat the dickens out of it. Then take all of those delicious chocolate crumbs and sprinkle them over the top of the dish. The final effect is one of a complete dessert that also has the added bonus of a bit of extra delicious flavor.

Cooking Games: Hot Dog Grill

2010-07-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

Last night we pulled the grill off the patio and make hot dogs. While not a glamorous meal, it was yummy and it reminded me of all the fun cooking games you can do with the grill. There are many, or perhaps even more, ways to cook over fire than there are ways to use your stove or microwave. When you make hot dogs on the grill, you’ll want to follow all basic fire safety rules.

- Your grill should be away from the buildings and away from major traffic patterns.
- The grill should be cleaned before starting the fire. If you leave grease or bits of old food on the grill, you risk the chance of a fire.
- The grill should always be watched. Never leave the grill alone while you’re cooking, you’d be risking a very serious situation with an out-of-control fire.
- Always cook food thoroughly. Use a meat thermometer to be sure that anything you cook on the grill is hot enough to kill off bacteria and is safe to eat.
- Let the grill cool off before touching it. There’s no need to get a silly burn by trying to pull the grill over too soon.

Cooking Games Online and Sheer Boredom

2010-07-21T19:40:00.000-07:00

I’ll admit that there have been times in the past that I was bored. I was bored trying to find things to for entertainment, but those days are past. The cooking games I’ve been playing have livened things up for me considerably. I like anything to do with food, of course, but playing cooking games online lets me put a bit of my brain to use trying to keep the games organized and it lets me use some memory and balancing skills to get orders right without actually having to get up and soil my own kitchen (that would require clean up.)

To play cooking games, you simply try to keep up with orders as they come in. The “customers” in the cooking games will ask you to make things like barbeque or pizzas and you have to work the grill or the ovens to get the orders right each time without fail. The cooking games let you practice your hand-eye coordination and require you to be organized or you’ll start burning the food that you’re supposed to be preparing. All in all, the cooking games online are addicting yet still more than amusing to play.

Cooking Games and a Clean Kitchen

2010-07-14T19:39:00.000-07:00

If a kitchen is clean, it’s not being used properly. Should a kitchen be clean at the end of the day? Sure. But if you have a kitchen that stays clean all of the time, you’re not putting it to good use. Try some cooking games to liven things up in your own kitchen and you’ll see just how much fun you can have with a few mixing bowls and spoons.

Start small if you’d like by choosing some cooking games that are low key – perhaps some fruit salad that just involves cutting things up rather than actually cooking anything. But then move on to something better – perhaps some cookies or a pan of brownies that will let you mix, bake and then eat. Cooking games don’t have to be complicated to enjoy them, and once you start experimenting with the different cooking games, you’ll realize just how much fun it is to create delicious things and you might just branch out into using all of your appliances.

Cooking Games – The Lemonade Stand

2010-07-09T20:56:00.000-07:00

Having a lemonade stand is as classic as it gets. You can approach the lemonade stand in a few different ways. The basics of the cooking games are simple – sell disposable cups of lemonade to people walking by your house or corner. This means you need to have lemonade on hand to sell, and if you want repeat, happy customers, your lemonade needs to be pretty tasty, too.

There is always the option to make the lemonade from scratch by pressing lemons and adding sugar and water. If this is more labor intensive than you’d care to tackle, you can also use a frozen concentrate to make lemonade. Much like frozen orange juice concentrate, the frozen lemonade tastes authentic with pulp and a rich flavor. Powered lemonade is the easiest and least expensive to make, but it will also be the most basic lemonade offering available – perfect for a hot day, but perhaps not as awe-inspiring as a glass of icy cold hand-pressed lemonade might be.

Cooking Games – The Cookie Cake

2010-07-02T20:54:00.000-07:00

An easy, but very delicious, cake to make for a friend is a cookie cake. The cookie cakes they sell in the mall and specialty shops can get pretty pricey, but a cookie cake is much less expensive and even better since it comes from the heart. The cake starts with a basic recipe for chocolate chip cookies. The Nestle Tollhouse recipe is a classic and classics are great for this particular situation. Make the cookie dough as directed and then, instead of putting it in small balls on a cookie sheet, press the dough into a jelly pan.

The jelly pan has raised sides that will hold the cake’s shape as it cooks letting it fill in correctly for a uniform appearance. Once the cake is cooked and totally cooled, bust out some icing and sprinkles and decorate it to your liking. You have total freedom with your cookie cake in how you decorate it and if you want to personalize it. The final results of the cooking games is a fun cake that is easy to transport and delicious to eat – yum!

Cooking Games and Pot Luck Specialties

2010-06-19T21:02:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure how other people live, but we live for pot lucks around here it seems. Every time we have a gathering of family, we wind up bringing along dishes to try and feed the crowds of people that show up. Unfortunately for everyone else, I’m not a whiz at cooking games when it comes to making something authentic and homemade. I’m a whiz with boxes and instructions, however, so I usually do pretty well at least pulling that sort of thing together. But when it comes to cooking games for pot lucks, I usually rely on a favorite specialty – the fruit salad.

Fruit salad is accepted around the calendar and around the clock. If you have a brunch, bring a fruit salad. Having a picnic? Need fruit salad. A bit holiday dinner? Why not bring fruit salad. You can do so much with fruit and a few choice serving dishes. For summer fruit salads, I make a watermelon basket and fill it up with melon balls and berries. For a brunch, I bring a dip bowl filled with bright berries and a creamy whipped dip. For a special dinner, bust out the crystal serving bowl for a collection of exotic fruits. Simple cooking games? Absolutely – but it’s also absolutely delicious.

Cooking Game and Muffins

2010-06-16T21:01:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure what it is, but the summer months make me want to make muffins. It’s become almost a tradition around my house. When the long days of summer roll around, we roll out of bed and pad around the house for a bit in our pajamas. A few short weeks ago we were rushing around to head out the door, but not anymore. Now we eventually plod into the kitchen to make muffins.

We aren’t fancy. Our cooking games for muffins are simple enough – we grab a box we like and use the ingredients that are required. Sometimes though we get a bit creative about the size of the muffins we make. With the same box of muffin mix, the cooking games can make six large muffins like you might get in a deli or you can make twelve small muffins that have a bit better effect on your waistline than the larger variety. With the muffin cooking games, however, you can also decide to ditch the muffins altogether and make a loaf instead. Think of the moist loaves of banana nut or cinnamon bread you can make for breakfast and I’m sure you’ll understand our fascination.

Cooking Games – Iced Brownies

2010-06-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

One of the most delicious desserts out there are iced brownies. Cake is yummy, but when you combine the gooey deliciousness of brownies with a coating of cream cheese or chocolate icing, things are perfect – how can you get better than gooey chocolate coated with more gooey chocolate. To make these delicious iced brownies, you need only two things – brownie mix from the store and a container of icing. They sell brownie mixes that have them both, but I find it’s more fun to create your own mix and blend by picking out a richer brownie mix and your own icing.

Once you have your icing and mix, make the brownies as instructed. You’ll need to wait for them to cool completely before you try to put any icing on top, so plan to wait about an hour or so. Then, simply pull out that icing and a spatula and get to lathering. Brownies can take a lot of icing and still be good, but you don’t want to overdo it – these aren’t cupcakes after all. When you’re finished putting the icing on the brownies, cut them up and serve – be sure to provide napkins, of course. These gooey treats can be a bit messy!

Cooking Games – Ice Cream Party

2010-06-05T14:16:00.000-07:00

Now that the months are warmer, you should absolutely focus on having fun with friends, and what better way to have fun with friends than with an ice cream party. Playing with ice cream is a great way to stay cool and a nice way to treat yourself to a delicious summer party idea. To have an ice cream party, you don’t need much outside of a few friends, some decorations, and of course, plenty of ice cream.

To plan the ice cream party, take yourself to the store to see what you can find in the way of fun summer party decorations. Then, you’ll want to head to the grocery store to gather up plenty of ice cream flavors and toppings. Look for lots of different sprinkles and candy choices as well as some fresh fruit. When you get home, arrange it all in a pretty way around the serving table – use your new party bowls to display the choices and let everyone make their own ice cream sundaes. Then, eat to your heart’s content and enjoy their company as well.

Cooking Games and Picnics

2010-05-26T22:32:00.000-07:00

Picnics are a staple of the summer months, and planning for a picnic can be a lot of fun. To really plan well for a picnic, you’ll need to account for the main courses and have plenty to choose from when it comes to side dishes, drinks and desserts. If you’re looking for a no-cook picnic, you can’t go wrong with a few staples.

Sandwiches – You can opt for the basics if you have some peanut butter and jelly, or you can get much more elaborate with special breads, meats and cheese. If you have a sandwich with meat, cheese or mayo, be sure it’s refrigerated to keep from spoiling.

Bottled water – It’s not glamorous, but it’s the best drink you could choose on a hot summer day. While it’s best cold, of course, you can just throw a few bottles into the basket without chilling them if you need to to be sure everyone stays hydrated.

Fruit – Whole fruit won’t need to be kept cold making apples, bananas and grapes easy to transport and healthy to eat, but you’ll need to keep fruit salad chilled if that’s what you opt to create. Either way, fruit is cold, delicious and perfect for cooking games at picnics.

Cooking Games and Little Kids

2010-05-19T22:31:00.000-07:00

Teaching young children to use the kitchen properly can be a serious chore. It’s not only dangerous at times, but there is always a considerable clean-up job left after your little brothers and sisters leave the kitchen area. If you’re ready to play cooking games with kids, be sure you think ahead of time to simplify things as much as you can – including the clean-up.

The best cooking games for young children are those that don’t include baking or any heat. Making instant pudding might seem simple to you, but it can be a grand adventure to a three-year-old. Hand over the wire whisk and let him beat that pudding to a pulp until it sets. You can expect a mess from anything, and this is no exception. If pudding isn’t your thing, you can precut fruit and have the little people in your life make a fruit salad by dumping it all together. A fruit smoothie works the same way, but with the added step of blending it all up. Regardless of what you wind up cooking, just be sure to have fun!

Cooking Games: Summer Smoothies

2010-05-12T20:42:00.000-07:00

As the weather heats up, it’s time to find the best smoothie recipes out there. I like to experiment over the summer with various forms of recipes and creations to find a recipe that I can enjoy depending on my mood of the day.

Some of the smoothies I make include ice cream or frozen yogurt which make them taste and feel much more like a milk shake than anything else. Others are more health conscious with only frozen fruit blended together with a bit of fresh juice.

To make it easier to play these smoothie cooking games, I keep a collection of frozen fruit in my freezer. When my bananas start to turn, I slice them up and freeze them. Strawberries are frozen easily and so are all kinds of berries. To make the smoothie, I only need a handful of this and that along with some milk and juice and a cold, healthy snack is ready and waiting.

Cooking Games: Fruit Salad

2010-05-07T20:41:00.001-07:00

I love fruit salad and it’s such an easy item to bring to a picnic or to another formal gathering. Fruit salad is generally well liked and there are so many different varieties of salad you can create, it’s easy to find something suitable for every occasion. This is why making fruit salad is one of my favorite cooking games.

Berry Salad – A berry fruit salad is simply a tossed collection of berries. Strawberries, blackberries, blue berries and raspberries are all gently washed and tossed together. I prefer to serve mine with a sweet dipping cream, but it’s not necessary.

Fruit Bowl – The watermelon fruit bowl is a personal favorite as well. For this one, I use a collection of melon balls and perhaps a few mandarin orange slices to keep things fresh and fun. The melon balls are easy to make and this is a pretty easy one to make as well that doesn’t cost much but looks wonderful.

Cooking Games and Breakfast

2010-04-28T22:42:00.000-07:00

Of all the online cooking games, my favorite is easily the breakfast one. I am a terrible cook in reality and can barely make toast, but online I am a cooking whiz. I can whip up a delicious breakfast without blinking. And I can do it again and again. I start with the hot griddle. Then I start tossing on the important things – pancakes, eggs and hashbrowns. Then comes the bacon and ham. All of it cooks at once while I start filling plates.

It’s tricky to stay on top of the orders, but I have it down to a science. I cook and serve in the online cooking games until I just can’t keep up anymore. The first time I played, I didn’t even get two order out the door – I cooked the wrong things that burned up accidentally. But today I could probably play for close to an hour just moving up the levels and storing up points who who-knows-what. Fortunately, it’s not the points that matter in this game – it’s the amount of fun you have playing it!

Cooking Games and Cleaning Up

2010-04-24T22:40:00.000-07:00

The worst part of playing cooking games for me is the clean-up. Nobody wants to clean up at the end of the day, but unfortunately, it’s just one of those things that has to happen – especially with my version of cooking games. When I cook, I’m a bit hard on the countertops and pans. I make a huge mess. But then, if you ask me anyway, what fun is cooking if you don’t make some sort of mess? It’s just part of the process of cooking games.

But with the messes I make, I know full well that I have to be responsible for what happens next. I have to clean it up. While not the most fun I could have in a day, I realize that cleaning up is a fact of life. To clean properly I load up the sink with the dirty dishes and then attack the countertops. Once the counters are clean, I load up the dishwasher and start it. Then, as the last step, I sweep up anything that might have fallen to the floor. It seems like it takes forever, but the full cleaning process really only takes about fifteen minutes tops.

Cooking Games and Simple Foods

2010-04-14T22:09:00.000-07:00

A lot of the meals we see being made on cooking shows and in cook books are complicated recipes that include a large number of ingredients. While these cooking games are a great deal of fun, there is also much to be said for cooking that that just use simple foods. As much as possible we should be eating foods in their natural forms. This means instead of steaming carrots and dipping them in rich sauces, we should just grate the carrot up and put it over lettuce.

When you eat simple foods, you are getting the closest thing you can to put nutrients. The foods aren’t rich and they are filling. Imagine a meal as simple as a banana, a hardboiled egg and some whole wheat toast with crushed fruit topping. That’s a full meal, really, it’s simple to prepare and the ingredients are simple. Not only are these sorts of cooking games easy to prepare, they are easy for your body to digest as well.

Cooking Games and Picking Strawberries

2010-04-09T22:07:00.000-07:00

I think one of the most important parts of cooking games is preparing for them adequately. If you’re doing something fun like a strawberry dessert or making strawberry jam, preparing for the cooking games can be as simple as going out to pick some strawberries yourself. If you don’t live in a hugely urban area, or even if you do, search your local listing for farms where you might be able to go out and pick your own strawberries.

This is the season for strawberries and they freeze very well making them easy to use later, too. When you pick the strawberries, find ones that are very ripe but not soft. You want firm strawberries that are bright red and ready to be used. When you have a nice collection, take them home and use some immediately with some cream or in a dessert. But then take the rest and freeze them up for use later. It will be nice to have fresh strawberries for your cooking games in the winter, too.

Cooking Games and Cookies

2010-03-24T21:45:00.000-07:00

There are so many lovely types of cookies out there it’s hard to pick a favorite. But with the many varieties of cookies, one of the most delicious varieties has to be the frosted sugar cookie. Loaded with sugar and often covered with sprinkles of designs, the frosted sugar cookies are very special treats and are incredibly easy to make.

Start with a pack of sugar cookie dough – I prefer the preformed balls as they cook so uniformly, but other dough forms will do. Make the sugar cookies and then, while they are cooling, start mixing your icing. You’ll want at least two different colors of icing to complement each other – one can be vanilla and a bit of food coloring will make another shade for you.

Spread a thick layer of icing over the top of the first cookie and put it aside. Then frost another and so on, being sure to get a thick layer of frosting evenly over each. When you finish the last cookie, go back to the first and start decorating with your colored frosting. Make designs, circle each, draw pictures or anything that makes you smile – after all cookies should absolutely make you happy.

Cooking Games and Fresh Herbs

2010-03-20T21:44:00.000-07:00

What better way to enhance your cooking games than by using fresh herbs right out of your own garden. If you’re not certain about growing your own plants or think you don’t have the space or the ability to do so, you’re wrong – growing your own plants is fun and easy. Once they get large enough, it’s even easier to include them in your food.

Start with some easy herbs that are fun to use like basil and parsley. These grow easily in containers or in a raised garden bed. Look for a starter kit in a nursery or home improvement store. Using the starter kit will give you the edge on growing if you’re not already familiar with how to plant the plants and care for them. Simply read the instructions, follow them and you’ll be in business.

Once the herbs are growing and thriving, you might branch out into other areas. Tomatoes and other small vegetables are common in backyard gardens and having your own produce is absolutely a fun way to teach kids or yourself about how to raise plants and care for them properly.

Cooking Games and Saint Patrick’s Day

2010-03-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

There are so many different things you can do to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with cooking games. After all, Saint Patrick’s Day is all about the green, so if you focus on color in your food selections, you just can’t go wrong.

My personal favorite to make on this very green holiday is the green cake. You can make green cupcakes as well, of course, following the same recipe. Start with a box of cake mix in either vanilla or angel food. I prefer golden vanilla as it’s a richer taste, but it’s entirely up to you. Make the cake per the instructions on the box and then drop in a liberal dose of green food dye.

Mix well and bake the cake as you normally would. The end result is a bright green cake. Top off that green cake with vanilla icing dyed to a lovely shade of green as well and put some green sprinkles on top of the whole thing. It’s a green confection of pure deliciousness.

Cooking Games and Easter Eggs

2010-03-12T21:04:00.001-08:00

It’s almost that time of year again for Easter eggs, and I am thrilled. I already have my dye cups ready to go and it’s just a matter of dropping in the colored tablets and filling the cups with water to create beautifully dyed Easter eggs.

The first step of dying Easter eggs is to boil raw eggs until they are hardboiled. Hardboiled eggs are less fragile than raw eggs and can take the handling that often accompanies the dye process. Once you have your eggs hardboiled, drop in the tablets of colors and get ready to start dying.

Use the special metal scoop to dip the eggs into the dye cups. The longer you leave the egg in the cup, the more dye will seep into the shell and the richer the final color will be. Pull out the egg and place it in a special hole in the box similar to an egg cup to dry. When dry, arrange your brightly colored Easter eggs in a special display basket and enjoy them!

Cooking Games and Pretzels

2010-03-03T19:44:00.000-08:00

Pretzles are one of the most delicious ways to spread the holiday cheer. They start off so delicious with their salty goodness, but you can make them even more delicious by adding chocolate and toppings. Start with a bag of long pretzel sticks, chocolate melting drops in both dark and white chocolate and some gourmet toppings – crushed almonds, coconuts, tiny candies, sprinkles and mini chocolate chips are easy ones.

Put the toppings into quart sized bags and put them off to the side, careful to not let them spill. Then melt the first batch of melting dots in the microwave. When the dots are smooth and melted, dip the pretzel into the batch and then quickly dunk it into the bag of desired toppings. Shake the bag around a bit to coat the pretzel evenly and pull it out. Hold it for a minute to let it cool off enough to not be dripping or gooey and then place it carefully onto a wax paper sheet to dry completely. Package the pretzel sticks carefully and share them as the perfect gift for teachers and friends.

Cooking Games and Sundae Parties

2010-02-27T19:43:00.001-08:00

One of the easiest yet most enjoyable ways to treat yourself is to invite your friends over for a sundae party. Setting up the party isn’t even that expensive. Start with some tubs of ice cream. Get a bit crazy with the flavors, but be sure to keep at least one basic flavor to avoid traumatizing picky eaters. Then get a huge number of toppings to include on the ice cream. Buy everything from fresh fruit to candy bars to nuts to gummy bears. Then display it all beautifully on a picnic table in the backyard. (Sundae parties get messy, and you’ll want to keep that mess outside.)

Once you’re prepared for the party, invite your friends over and get started dishing up some delicious treats. Have brightly colored bowls and fun, funky spoons to use and let them serve themselves. You’ll see the conservatives with their vanilla and chocolate syrup and then the outlandish who’ve made huge sundaes with all of the best toppings. Enjoy the company of your friends and the deliciousness of the treats on the special day. Best of all, you’ll have all of those leftovers to enjoy, too.

Cooking Games and Grilling

2010-02-24T20:13:00.000-08:00

The grilling cooking games were supposed to be easy, and they seemed that way until I tried to play them. Playing cooking games is often straightforward. You have to cook certain items in order so that you can fill customer orders at a staggering rate. If you don’t move fast enough, food starts burning on the grill and you lose points. You can’t move food off the grill until it’s time to put it on a plate and you can only arrange the food in order of plate – no skipping ahead.

The first few times I played the grilling cooking games, I failed miserably. However, as I played a bit more I got a better handle on it and started to do tolerably well at least. I’m certainly not a pro, but I can hold my own when friends and I decide to have a contest to see who can do the best with the cooking games. So far I haven’t won a single contest, but I have dreams of some day doing well enough to be considered a grill master.

Cooking Games and Making Pizza

2010-02-20T20:12:00.001-08:00

One of my favorite cooking games is one where you make pizzas and rush them out to waiting customers. The first few times I played I was pretty terrible. In fact, it took my two tries to realize that you can’t just make any pizzas you want, you have to make the pizzas that the customers are requesting if you want to progress and win the game – oops!

But once I had the basics figured out I got pretty good at playing cooking games and making pizza. You’re given an order and you have to start slinging ingredients and popping those pizzas in the oven if you’re going to make it in time. You have to time the removable of the pizzas with the orders being placed which requires essentially being in two places at once. Or at least doing two things at once. Once you get going though you fall into a pattern which helps you finish the game and move from level to level easily enough. Fortunately the challenge is a fun one.

Cooking Games and Making Breakfast

2010-02-09T21:07:00.000-08:00

I’ve determined that making breakfast is the best part about the day. Of course, in full disclosure, I almost never get to make breakfast in the beginning of the day. I’ve started cooking it at the end of the of the day so that I can enjoy it properly. Breakfast in my house is eaten as supper most often, and when trying to throw something together in the few minutes you have between walking in the door and being confronted with hungry children, eggs and bacon sound great.

Breakfast has some of the yummiest items on our daily menu and prepared correctly, there is a huge amount of nutritional value in a well prepared breakfast as well. Bacon and pancakes aside, having eggs, steak and fruit is a nice start to the day, especially if you stir in vegetables to the eggs or make an omelet with other healthy items. Even bacon can have merit at times and pancakes can hold fruit such as bananas or blueberries and nuts for an added dose of healthy protein. Get creative and make breakfast the yummiest part of your day – at the very end of the day.

Cooking Games and the Toaster Oven

2010-02-06T21:06:00.000-08:00

I’m not a huge chef in the kitchen, and in fact, I’m pretty pitiful at time when it comes to slicing and dicing. But I do have a certain edge when it comes to one instrument in my kitchen. I am a whiz on the toaster oven. I have a very nice model of the toaster oven. Mine is a stainless steel convection oven large enough to cook a dozen cookies or a full frozen pizza. It’s really an oven that sits on the counter, which is good since my “real” oven is about thirty years old and not the ideal.

Using the toaster oven, I’m able to make toast, bake cookies and broil French fries. The convection feature on the oven helps it to cook evenly and is now a standard for everything that goes into the machine. Want to bake cookies? Use convection settings. Want to heat up pizza? Confection. It actually browns things more naturally than just baking alone, especially in such a small setting. If I could have nothing else in my kitchen, I’d bring along a mini fridge, a small microwave and a confection oven. I’d be set, at least until I needed to wash dishes in a sink I didn’t bring along.

Cooking Games: Super Easy Queso

2010-01-27T20:58:00.000-08:00

That yummy melted cheese you get at your favorite Mexican restaurants isn’t hard to make at home. In fact, it’s simple. To make queso, start with a small crock pot or a microwaveable bowl. Take a small package of processed cheese such as Velveeta and cut it into small squares. Then put those squares into the small crock pot or bowl.

Next, you have a few options. One super easy option is to take a can of tomatoes and peppers and empty it into the cheese. Heat until the cheese is smooth and melted. Another option is to use salsa or picante sauce instead of the canned tomatoes. And still a third option is to cut in your own tomatoes and them to add any other items you might like such as chorizo or browned beef to give your queso a meaty edge.

Serve your queso with chips for a yummy appetizer or make yourself nachos using large tortilla chips, beans, meat and tomatoes and then top with the queso to make a hugely delicious mess of cheese, chips and meat – yum!

Cooking Games: Frozen Pizzas

2010-01-23T20:56:00.000-08:00

If there were a magic food for the teenager, it would be a frozen pizza. You can do a lot with a frozen pizza and it seems suitable for almost all occasions. To make yourself a frozen pizza, you’ll want to follow the instructions on the box, but know that you don’t always have to do exactly what the box is telling you to do – you can do your own thing.

Start with a regular cheese pizza, preferably one with a thin crust, but a thick or rising crust pizza will do just as well. Dig through your refrigerator to find all sorts of things you can use with that frozen pizza. For example, dress up the pizza with fresh mushrooms and olives. Add a few cut onions and perhaps some tiny pieces of ham. Even adding spices from the spice rack can dress up a frozen pizza.

Follow the baking instructions for the pizza, but realize that the more toppings you include on the pizza, the longer it’ going to take to cook. But when the timer goes off, you can enjoy a hot delicious pizza full of your favorite toppings – even if it would never come in a box that way.

Cooking Games and Chocolate Chip Cookies

2010-01-16T21:22:00.000-08:00

One of the most delicious treats out there is the cookies that we all know and love. Chocolate chip cookies are yummy and pretty simple to make thanks to the new options that are available for us.

Frozen Cookie Dough – If you browse the frozen food section in the grocery store, you’ll find boxes or even tubs of frozen cookie dough. These tubs last forever or at least a pretty long time, and you can use the dough to make large batches of cookies or just a few at a time.

Refrigerated Cookie Dough – Next to the eggs, you’ll find the cold cookie dough. These are great. Just pick them up off the cardboard tray or cut them off the tube and drop the cookies on a pan to bake.

Boxed Cookies Dough – Boxed cookie dough is delicious, too, but it takes a bit more work. To make these, you have to add a few ingredients to a bag of mixture, stir and spoon out to bake.

Cookies From Scratch – Possibly the best cookies, but the most time consuming are cookies you make from scratch. Starting with flour and sugar, you can make cookies your grandmother would be proud of – and they taste delicious, too.

Cooking Games and Breadmakers

2010-01-12T21:20:00.000-08:00

There is nothing lovelier than the smell of cooking bread. Fresh bread is delicious and can be a wonderful treat with jam, honey or butter sitting by the fire on a cold winter night. But the trouble with fresh bread is that it is such a challenge to prepare. Making bread takes hours and it’s hard to find hours in our schedules today. But there is a pretty simple solution. Breadmakers let you make fresh, hot bread in about three hours without doing much at all.

To use a breadmaker for your cooking games, you’ll be using a recipe provided for the breadmaker or you’ll be making the bread from a box you can buy in the grocery store. I personally prefer the boxes because they are so simple and take so little time. To make bread this way, you’ll dump in water, the flour from the box and cover it with yeast from the box. Then turn on the machine and work on other things. In three hours, your bread will be hot, delicious and ready as a yummy snack or a treat with dinner that night.

Cooking Games and Injuries

2010-01-06T21:44:00.000-08:00

It’s easy to get injured playing cooking games. When you’re in the kitchen, it is absolutely important to be as careful as possible to prevent injuries and to treat them properly when the injuries do occur. To help prevent injuries from cooking games, observe some of the common kitchen safety practices.

Never use a dull knife. If your knife is dull, it will be harder to use and might slip while trying to cut through something such as apple skin. And should that knife slip, it might just slip right onto your hand.

Never grab anything glass or metal without testing for heat. If you pick up a glass lid without realizing it’s been in the oven, you’ll have a sizeable burn to show for it. Always feel above the cooking ware for heat before touching.

Never put metal in the microwave. If you put metal in a microwave, you’ll start a fire. Literally. Metal sparks in the microwave and leaving something wrapped in foil or even foil on paper plates can have a pretty substantial effect in the microwave.

Cooking Games and Quesadillas

2010-01-02T21:42:00.000-08:00

Easily one of the most delicious foods you can make on a cold day is a Mexican treat – quesadillas. The quesadillas are best if you make your own tortillas and some stores have tortilla dough ready in the cold food aisle. Look by the cheese and biscuits to see if your store has some. Otherwise, use a premade tortilla to make the quesadillas.

Butter the quesadillas on one side while you heat up a skillet. When the skillet is warm enough, toss in the tortilla butter side down. Sprinkle a hearty dose of cheese over the tortilla along with chicken, beef, spinach, mushrooms, shrimp or anything else you might like on your quesadilla. Then lay the other buttered tortilla on top with the buttered side up. After the first side has cooked to a slight crisp, carefully flip the whole quesadilla over so that the other side can cook as well. The end result is a delicious treat and a great way to get a bit more calcium in a day.

Cooking Games Online

2009-12-30T21:15:00.000-08:00

While trying to think of new recipes to cook for a healthier you, look through the huge number of cooking games you can find online. The cooking games online are varied and have plenty of options for how to amuse yourself. A few of my personal favorites follow.

Pizza cooking games. Everyone loves pizza, and I’m not an exception. To play the pizza cooking games, start with a blank canvas of a crust and add whatever you need to make it delicious. You can add toppings in an elegant pictorial fashion or just chunk them on there to get the pizzas in the oven and out the door more quickly.

Cake cooking games. In the cake cooking games, you get to not only make the cake, but to decorate it as well. I think decorating large wedding cakes is easily one of the most amusing things I’ve done in a while.

BBQ cooking games. In the BBQ cooking games, you start with a grill and then the orders come pouring in. Grill up the food and serve it quickly if you plan to advance to the next level.

Cooking Games and 2010

2009-12-26T21:14:00.001-08:00

In 2010, most of us are going to resolve to be healthier, and that starts no place other than the kitchen. Playing cooking games in 2010 can make a huge difference in how healthy we are and how great we feel. When you look forward to 2010, start your cooking games in a different way – plan around the sorts of food you should be eating.

It can be as simple as working in a fruit or vegetable at every meal. We should be having five or six servings of fruits and veggies every day, but if you’re counting French Fries as a vegetable, you might start with a single serving at every meal and then add more to the list. Once you get in the groove, you’ll be better off.

If you take foods away in your cooking games, be sure to replace them with others. When you leave a hole in your diet, you’ll likely fill it with the same foods you used to eat. So it’s better to add those fruits in to replace the sweets you used to eat to keep your cooking games more balanced.

Cooking Games Sugar Cookies

2009-12-15T18:39:00.000-08:00

One of the most basic forms of cookie is perfect for the holiday season. Playing cooking games with sugar cookies can entertain you for hours and give you something yummy to munch on, too.

To play sugar cookie cooking games, start with a roll of sugar cookie dough. You can make it from scratch, but it is far easier to just make the cut cookies from the dough you already have. Roll out the dough and sprinkle it with flour. Dip a cookie cutter in flour and press into the dough.

Carefully remove the cutter and the sugar cookie shape will be left behind. Do this for all of your dough and once all the shapes are made, use a spatula to transfer them to the cooking sheet. Making cut sugar cookies can take quite a bit of time as there is so much rolling, cutting and moving, but despite how long it takes, this form of Christmas cookie is a holiday favorite.

When the cookies are cut and baked, it’s time to decorate them with tubes of icing and perhaps small candies stuck to the cookies with a dot of icing on the back.

Christmas Cooking Games

2009-12-11T18:37:00.000-08:00

Cooking games bring the family together all year long, but there is something especially special about Christmas and the way it encourages families to come together over little gingerbread men or sugar cookie shapes. Among the favorite Christmas cooking games you’ll find:

Gingerbread Houses – a simple kit can be purchased at the store or you can make your won by baking the gingerbread pieces ahead of time. Use heavy icing as paste to squish everything together and hold it in place. Small candies decorate the gingerbread house along the roofline, windows, doors and elsewhere.

Sugar Cookies – Cutting out sugar cookies and then baking them to be frosted and decorated with bright icing is a Christmas tradition in many families. Make the cutting and decorating a family adventure and then give the cookies as gifts to unsuspecting friends of the family and grandparents.

Fudge – Making fudge can require some heat, so always be with your children while the fudge is cooking. But once it’s off and running, add some walnuts, smooth into a pan and enjoy the delicious rich chocolate treat.

Cooking Games and Successes

2009-11-25T21:11:00.000-08:00

Finding success in the kitchen isn’t too complex, but that doesn’t take anything away from how rewarding it can be. When you’re creating thing in the kitchen you focus is on the steps of food preparation, and getting everything right is certainly something worth celebrating. But the true successes of cooking games are a bit less visible.

The best parts of cooking games is sharing your creations with others. When you prepare something for the first time and it turns out well, you’re likely thrilled. But when you’re able to show others how well you did and boast proudly of how you added the spices and things on your own accord you’re giving the others a chance to praise not only your efforts, but your creations as well.

The more you cook and work to prepare food for others, the greater your reputation for culinary skill will grow. Who knows, you might someday be celebrating your success in a fancy restaurant thinking back to the cooking games you enjoyed when you were just a kid. And those around you can brag that they knew you before you were ever famous.

Cooking Games and Spices

2009-11-20T21:10:00.001-08:00

Learning to use spices in cooking games is one of the more advanced elements of the experience. Cooking games begin as basic exercises in food preparation. You might make some fruit salad by cutting up fruit with a plastic knife. As you age and gain more experience you get to move into other cooking games such as using the microwave or learning to use the oven properly.

Eventually you’re able to cut things and handle sharp knives and hot pans. When you’re able to use the appliances and avoid any cuts or burns while preparing dishes you can serve your family, you’ve probably moved into the realm where spices are a real possibility.

Cooking games are fun on many levels, but when you’re able to truly personalize the things you’re making, you’ll be able to show the sorts of foods you really like and make it simple for everyone else to enjoy those sorts of things too. Be bold and try new combinations of spices following the advice of chefs and recipes at first before bolding moving into your own preferences.

The Best Ways to Try Cooking Games

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Cooking games are a lot of fun no matter when you have a chance to try them. Of course finding the right time to try the games can be a bit of a challenge at times. The best times to try cooking games are reasonably straight forward, but that doesn’t mean we can remember that easily.

Try cooking games when it’s not mealtime. If you’re just experimenting with cooking games, you don’t want to be tying up the kitchen and other resources while the real cook is whipping up a meal for everyone.

Try cooking games when someone else is home. Don’t cook alone. You don’t want to risk a fire or accident with a knife when you’re alone and there is nobody to help you out in your time of need.

Try cooking games when you’re not in a hurry. Rushing to finish something is a time that you’re likely to get hurt or mess up. Take things slow and easy, especially while you’re learning something new.

Cooking Games and Your Favorite Foods

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Like everyone, you probably have favorite foods and there is no reason you can’t incorporate those food choices into your cooking games. Start your cooking games thinking of new ways you can experiment with favorite foods. For example, if you love French fries, consider making them from scratch by cutting up potatoes and actually seasoning and then baking or frying (with an adult’s help) the slices to make the fries.

You can also cook regular fries and then find new ways to serve those fries. Perhaps use them in a sort of casserole or top them with chili and cheese for a warm, hearty snack. You can do the same sort of variations with any food source. If you have a favorite food at a local restaurant, see if you can weasel the recipe out away from the cooks and then try it yourself at home. There are actually lots of recipes online that are from major restaurants.

What’s most important is that you find plenty of ways to cook and enjoy your favorite foods. The more ways you have to eat them, the happier you’ll be with the cooking games.

3 Dangerous Cooking Games

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When playing cooking games, some are certainly more dangerous than others. Among the most dangerous you’ll find these:

Grilling cooking games. When you’re working on the grill, you’re using an open flame and often using meat that contains a great deal of grease. This is a very bad combination for flare ups and even large fires. Never leave a grill unattended and clear away anything near the grill that might be at risk. Clean the grill thoroughly before use to prevent any fires from old material as well.

Cooking games with knives. Knives are just inherently dangerous. Large or small sharp blades like to connect with soft flesh and they can do some serious damage. If you’re not comfortable with a knife, don’t use it. If in doubt, always ask for help cutting something. Using a sharp knife is also better than a dull one that might slip around a bit on the surface of the fruit or item you’re cutting.

Meat cooking games. Cooking games with meat have the inherent risk of not being well enough done. If meat is undercooked it has a huge health risk. There are any number of diseases that can come from undercooked meat, and a handy meat thermometer will help you determine how things are looking as you prepare items.