Made Moon Blog

Taking cues from a favored English past time, tea-party themes range from Victorian elegance to purely whimsical, appealing to a broad age range as well. Tea Rooms have appeared throughout the U.S. giving us a guide to the ways of cozy ambience, dress-up, quiet conversation, and etiquette. You don’t need to spend hours in the kitchen to host a memorable tea party. Prepare small sandwiches with simple flavors like cream cheese and prosciutto, mozzarella and tomato, tuna salad, or ham and apple. Simply spread a thin coat of mayonnaise, butter, or cream cheese on the bread to keep it from getting soggy. Add your favorite filling and cut off the edges with a serrated knife. Then cut with cookie cutter, or cut into simple square shapes. Add a few pastries from your local bakery such as scones, muffins, and danishes in assorted flavors. Keep the party to around 2 hours. Any longer will require a light lunch.

Tea Party Ideas

Mother/Daughter Club

Start a Mother/Daughter Tea Club - Gather together once a month and use special teacups, teapots, and linens along with several types of tea and finger foods. Introduce a different theme each month that interests women of all ages: fashion, health, gardening, etc. It’s a beautiful time to enjoy each other.

Tea Break at Work

Surprise your co-workers with a tea break. Bring sandwiches, cookies, scones and a special teapot for a special break from the ordinary

Tea and Cookies

Have everyone bring their favorite batch of cookies and display them on fine china platters.

Preparation:

Start with innovative invitations. For a girls’ birthday tea party, cut out invitations shaped as teapots or send each guest a small teacup with an invitation attached or painted on the cup. Or use floral note cards or postcards.

Purchase or borrow the necessary items for your tea gatherings. You’ll need 1 or more china teapots for intimate gatherings. Cups and saucers may be matching, but create interest with a variety of patterns. For sugar, always use cubes in a sugar bowl with sugar tongs for serving. Serve milk, not cream. Have teaspoons, lemon slices in a dish with a small fork, serving utensils for cake, forks, and knives for jam.

Don’t forget the music: classical or vintage

Use candles to create ambience.

Serve a colorful variety of petit fours, scones, sugar cookies, and of course, chocolate.

Set out bouquets of pink and white flowers.

Take Polaroid snapshots of guests to add to the fun and chatter.

Ask guests to dress up complete with heels, hats, and gloves

Favors

Surprise your guests with tea party favors such as lace handkerchiefs, flavored tea, teapot cozies, , teacups, porcelain teabag holders, demitasse spoons with teapot handles, or your favorite recipes printed on floral stationary.

Tea Party Etiquette:

This is a great time to teach young ladies about etiquette. To stir your tea, swish the tea back and forth, never hitting the sides of the cup. Never leave the spoon in the cup, but gently rest the spoon on the saucer, behind the cup on the right side under the cup handle. Drink your tea by lifting the saucer and cup together, with the saucer in one hand, and cup in the other.

Tea Preparation

Fill a tea kettle with purified water and set on stove to boil. Warm up your china teapot by running hot water thru it from the faucet. This will keep your tea warmer for a bit longer. Add your teabags or tea-filled infuser to the teapot using 2-3 tea bags for 4 guests. Pour the boiling water carefully into your teapot and wait 5 minutes, then remove teabags. China Teapots are best at keeping tea warm. Surround teapot with a stylish tea cozy for extra insulation.

Elaine Kordares
Founder of The Teapot Shoppe

For a wide variety of teapots, tea party accessories by Royal Patrician, Kaldun & Bogle, Kensington, Roy Kirkham and more, visit The Teapot Shoppe on line at www.theteapotshoppe.com.

When you cook frozen lobster tails, it is best to thaw them first. You can either thaw them in a microwave or in the refrigerator. If you thaw them in the refrigerator, it will take anywhere from eight to twelve hours for them to fully thaw and same as with beef, if you decide to thaw them in the microwave, you will need to cook them immediately after thawing. Thawing the lobster tails before cooking will make them much more tender than if you were to cook them frozen.

Baking

Many people like to broil lobster tails but it is rather difficult to keep the sections from overcooking, so it is a little safer to bake them.
-Once the lobster tails are thawed, you can brush them lightly with olive oil or butter and them put them in the oven at 400 degrees for approximately 8 to 10 minutes (you will need to cook them a little longer than this if they are still frozen).
-Once they are done, there are many different additions you can serve with the lobster tails, such as lemon slices or one of many different sauces.

Boiling

Another method of cooking lobster tails is to boil them. You will need to put a large pot of water on the stove to boil.
-Add in one teaspoon of salt for every quart of water
-Once the water is boiling, you drop the lobster tails into it, which will cease the boiling for a short time. Once the boiling begins again, you will lower the heat to medium, or medium high, and this is when the timer should begin.
-For 1 to 3 ounces of meat, you will want to boil them for approximately 3 to 5 minutes. For every ounce after that, you will need to add one to two minutes to the boiling time.

Steaming

Steaming lobster tails is another cooking option that doesn’t take very long-only about five to seven minutes. You can use water as the liquid for steaming, or you can use white wine (using white wine can also double as a sauce after the lobster tails are finished cooking). It is often a good idea to stick a wooden skewer through the lobster tails, since steaming them causes them to shrivel slightly.

Broiling Large Lobster Tails

When cooking a large lobster tail, the trick will be to cook it all the way through without scorching or drying out the top. If you do cook it too long, the meat will be tough and chewy. The best way to approach broiling a large lobster tail is to first thaw it, then cut open the top of the shell lengthwise. You will need a heavy pair of kitchen shears to do this, and you will want to cut just deep enough that you do not cut the bottom of the shell. You may need to use a large knife to cut through the meat and you will then need to split the shell open. Then, you will put it in a roasting pan just underneath the broiler. Cutting the lobster tail open like this will help expose the meat to the broiler so that it will cook evenly and prevent the shell from burning or drying out.

Cooking Lobsters “Piggy Back”

Another way of broiling lobster is what is referred to as “piggy back.” This method can also be used when grilling lobsters as well. Basically, what you will need to do is remove the meat from the inside of the lobster shell for cooking. This will help the lobster tail cook more thoroughly and evenly.

-Cut the outer shell down the center, leaving the fan tail and the underside membrane both intact

-Next carefully lift the meat through the slit in the shell

-Place the lobster meat on a roasting pan (in a small amount of water to prevent drying) membrane side up.

-Then place the roasting pan and lobster tails just under the broiler. You will cook these at the same amount of time required for boiling, the only difference being that you will need to turn them over and baste them again halfway through

-You will need to do the same to remove the lobster meat from the shell if you are going to use the “piggy back” method for grilling. You will want to cook the membrane side first in grilling, as well. Then, just as with broiling, you will need to turn the lobster tail halfway through, and baste it again, as well.

Daniel Urmann is a contributor and author for the website Atantic Lobster Tails.

First of all: What is a gourd? The simple answer is that a gourd is a vegetable related to pumpkins and squash and when dried has a shell that is dense and hard.

You are probably wondering why you would want to do anything with a gourd anyway. Another simple answer: Because it is so much fun!

The extensive varieties and different shapes available allow for endless possibilities for the crafter to unleash their creativity.

Gourds can be useful, decorative, or both. They can be compared to a wood product, and the same type of tools, hardware and stains or finishes used for wood can be applied to gourds. Crafters also experiment with about everything under the sun to see what all they can use successfully on gourds, and then they love to share the results with all their fellow gourd crafting friends.

Here are just a few ideas: Cut, carve, burn, paint, dye, or stain them. Join pieces together, add embellishments, weave, coil, wrap and so much more that I can’t list them all. Mix and match to create an endless list of possibilities. In fact, many gourd crafters have such long lists of ideas they feel they can never get them all finished. Before they get very far down the list they have added a multitude of new ideas to it.

But gourds aren’t just for crafting. Many artists take a beautifully shaped gourd and use it as their canvas to create amazing works of art. There are some that sell for top dollar.

For ideas and information on how to get into the fun of gourds you can start by going to the website of the American Gourd Society. http://americangourdsociety.org

Martha Bloom: grower and crafter of gourds.
Find gourds, ready to craft when they arrive at your door.
http://marthasgourds.com

The French press style of coffee making produces very rich, aromatic and tasty coffee. It uses very coarsely ground coffee that basically steeps in the brewing water for several minutes allowing all the flavours to fully extract from the coffee grinds. Because of the filtering system there is always some sediment which some people don’t like.

A French press coffee maker has two parts: a straight-sided container usually made of glass, and a filter-plunger that pushes through the water to filter out the coffee after it has steeped. This plunger also serves as the lid. There are some models of French Press that are insulated which is good for keeping things hot while it steeps.

To brew coffee with a French Press, you should pre-heat the carafe while you boil your water. When ready, empty the carafe, add your coffee, and then add your brewing water. You may wish to stir the coffee grinds around to be sure all of them are in contact with water. You should now put the plunger/lid on the pot to help retain heat. DO NOT press it down yet, it needs to steep for about four minutes (a little more or less depending the coarseness of the grind).

Once you feel the coffee has brewed enough, slowly depress the plunger trapping the grounds on the bottom. Do not force the plunger. If it doesn’t want to go down, simply lift the plunger up slightly and try again. The filter can jam on grinds that are too fine. Just take your time and it will work.

Despite what some may say, it is usually best to decant the coffee into an insulated serving pot. If you leave the coffee in the French Press it will remain in contact with the grinds and keep brewing. This will quickly ruin your coffee. The other main reason to pour your coffee off is to keep it warm. French Press pots are not well insulated and coffee cools off very quickly.

Play with the brewing time and grind coarseness until you get the taste that you like best. Once you’ve done that you will have some of the most tasty coffee anywhere.

Lynne Birch writes on home improvement http://www.my-kitchen-appliance.com selection of articles and reviews of kitchen appliances is growing daily. Updated coffee maker reviews.

You don’t have to give up eating chocolate just because you want to eat healthily. But you do need to choose the right chocolate this Easter, the type that brings positive health benefits and isn’t laden with disastrously unhealthy added fats and sugars.

When you’re choosing chocolate Easter eggs this year, remember these facts:

• Healthy chocolate What does chocolate contain, that’s good for you? The cocoa bean, from which chocolate is made, contains antioxidants, as well as the minerals copper, magnesium and iron, and vitamins A, B1, B2, D and E. Research into chocolate shows that it can improve boost immunity, lower blood pressure and may even help to protect against cancer properties. Dark chocolate can lower cholesterol levels. And the chemical serotonin found in chocolate is a great natural anti-depressant.

• Choosing good chocolate Sad to say, a lot of mass-produced chocolate bars do not give you all these health benefits. Why? Because they contain very little cocoa solids, and way too much sugar, fats and other additives. Also, manufacturing processes have probably robbed them of what little nutritional value they had. To get the health benefits of chocolate, choose dark varieties, containing 65 per cent or more cocoa solids. These types of chocolate taste rich, with a complex flavour - and provide you with all the health benefits of the cocoa bean.

• Recognising good chocolate Look for a glossy surface, and dark colour with reddish-black undertones. The chocolate should break crisply when you snap it. Look for brands with no or low added sugar and a cocoa-solid content of 60% or more. Try to find trade brands, and also look out for organic chocolate such as Green & Blacks.

• How much chocolate to eat Top quality chocolate should be savoured, so don’t wolf those eggs down at a sitting. Make them last over 3-4 days. At other times of year, one or two squares of good chocolate, eaten twice or three times a week, can be part of a healthy diet, as long as you’re also getting plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.

This year, at Easter, remember these chocolate facts, and buy an egg that tastes great and does your health a good turn.

Elizabeth Martyn is webmaster at http://healthy-eating-made-easy.com, where she provides information, tips and recipes on using seasonal, fresh ingredients to feed the family healthily and without hassle.

Now you know how to choose chocolate, find out how to use it, in delicious chocolate recipes. There are also over 120 easy healthy recipes for family meals on the site.

This article may be published electronically or in print in its entirety as long as the author by-lines in the resource box are included and urls kept live.

Coffee addicts, take heed! That precious appliance on your countertop - gasp! - needs to be cleaned out once in a while. Have you been noticing a stale, funny taste in your coffee lately? It’s very likely that your poor coffeemaker is just screaming for a good cleaning. The good news is: it’s dead simple to clean. All you’ll need is some good old-fashioned white vinegar and tap water.

Vinegar is a powerful acid, and works to replace many of the harmful chemicals you might be cleaning with right now. And when you use it to clean out your coffeemaker, it really scrubs it out from the inside, getting rid of buildup that makes your coffee taste less than gourmet.

To clean the coffeemaker:

1. Pour vinegar into the holding tank where you’d normally pour in the water. Fill at least half full with vinegar.

2. Don’t add any coffee. Ick…can you imagine the brew that would create?

3. Run your coffee machine as usual, letting the vinegar do the work of scrubbing it out and descaling the works from the inside out. Empty out the used vinegar.

4. Run at least two or three cycles with just plain water, to truly get rid of all lingering vinegar taste.

5. There is no step five - see, I told you it was simple!

Cleaning your coffeemaker like this at least once a month, or more often if you’re a caffeine junky, will keep your coffee tasting fresh and utterly delicious. Give it a try and you’ll be shocked by how easy it is!

Christina Spence is the author of the Happy Slob’s Guide to Housecleaning, the funniest, most laid back cleaning guide EVER written. Get your copy today, and join her free weekly newsletter at http://www.happyslob.com Her love for good coffee also shows at her Coffee Creations blog: http://coffeecreations.blogspot.com

Crazy for chocolates but scared of eating it? No more compromises with your taste buds needed. Chocolate lovers can now enjoy their favourite treat subtracting the guilt of being unfair to their health. Surprised? But that’s true!

Recent studies have revealed that chocolates are not only your taste bud’s favourite but a supporter of good health too. In fact this brown wonder has far more advantages than you can smell and taste.

In good measures, chocolate can be considered as a healthy food. So let me introduce you to the better half of your chocolate.

Chocolates are an instant energy boosters. They are a good combo of nutrients, proteins as well as vitamins. No wonder this makes chocolate a must for ration packs in the army, for trampers/hikers, mountain climbers. Besides the nutritional constituents chocolates also contain Flavonals. Flavonals are antioxidants, also present in apples, onions, peanuts, cranberries and red wine. In fact a 50mg bar of dark chocolate is equivalent to six apples, two glasses of wine and seven onions in its flavonoid content.

It’s also been believed that chocolates also posses anti clotting effect in same measures as an aspirin. Thus chocolates assists in reducing the risk of deep vein thrombosis when flying.

Another research brought forward the fact that eating chocolate laced with calcium reduces the absorption of chocolate derived fats by 13% and calories by 9% as compared to a naked bar. So if you are overweight, do lace your chocolate with calcium and then munch it.

If you like the pleasant smell of this wonder here is a better reason for you to sniff it. It has been proved that even sniffing a chocolate bars can boost up your immune system by raising the level of antibodies in the body. The addition of as little as 15 to 20 grams of dark chocolate in the daily diet has been shown to provide the necessary benefits.

Have you ever wondered, why love strucked people keep exchanging chocolates? Chocolates contain some natural substances that help in fighting against heart diseases and other related circulatory disorders. Hmmmmm…. So probably the reason is to keep their exchanged hearts safe!

Another healthy component of this delicacy is theobromine. It helps you to cure cough without any side effect of drowsiness as in the case of ceodeine. The best part of your favourite chocolate bar is its tryptophan content. Tryptophan, an essential amino acid, its consumption triggers the release of serotonin, a feel good neurotransmitter, in the brain that stimulate the central nervous system and makes you feel happy. The fat boosts other ‘feel good’ brain chemicals called endorphins and may have the same effect as marijuana.

Chocolates also generates the feeling of attraction and raises your excitment level by the activity of another neurotransmitter, phenylethylamine which acts on the brain’s pleasure centre. No wonder chocolates are love birds favourite!

Your chocolate cravings must have reached height by now, so go ahead and grab your today’s health dose. But do remember, some wise men have said that excess of anything is bad.

Michael Douglas, being an health expert offers valuable tips and articles on health and fitness. Visit his website at http://www.time4tips.com/ to know more about him and his amazing work in healthcare industry. Here you can also find a bulk of beauty, makeup tips, information and homemade remedies to make you even more beautiful and stylish.

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Well we all know that Valentines Day is the day of lovers and a day for giving gifts to those you care about but why is chocolate still the most popular gift given on Valentines Day? Why is chocolate is so closely associated with romance?

Since chocolate was brought to Europe it has been considered the food of love. Stories of its properties as an aphrodisiac for the aristocrats were well known. The Spanish who brought it to Europe learnt about chocolate from the Aztecs. It was however a European tradition that each year on the 14th of February young men would court young ladies with flowers and gifts and because back then chocolate was rare and expensive it wasn’t long before this was the favourite gift given by the rich and aristocratic who were able to provide this for the object of their affections. It wasn’t long however before the secret of chocolate got out and soon chocolate houses were opening up across Europe, the best of which were and still are in Belgium. Belgium’s best Chocolatier Neuhaus Chocolates was founded in 1857 and although the are the official provider of chocolate to the Belgian Royal Family these days even chocolate as good as theirs is affordable so that everyone can enjoy them. More importantly they are affordable enough that you can give them to those you care about on Valentines Day and any other day of the year.

Well why is chocolate still so popular as a Valentines gift, is it just the marketing? Well, since Valentines Day was exported to the USA it has been used to market everything from wrapping paper and cuddly toys to expensive items such as jewellery. However why is it that the historical connection between chocolate and Valentines day has lasted the years? Well it seems there is more to it than just the, sweet, mouth watering feeling you get as it melts in your mouth leaving you wanting more and more… Scientists now know that like coffee and tea, chocolate affects the chemical reactions already taking place in our brains. Unlike coffee and tea however is not only a stimulant, it contains phenyl-ethylamine which is known to stimulate the release of dopamine in the brain released chocolate excites our pleasure centres and creates a feeling of Euphoria and increases the heart rate similar to that of a person in love or at the peak of an orgasm both of which should go down well with the recipient of your gift.

Now, despite all its psychotropic properties and ancient reputation, chocolate will probably not make a woman fall in love with you but giving her something so delightful will definitely put you in her good books… Chocolate will also stimulate men’s pleasure centres so ladies don’t be shy to by a box for your man, who knows what reaction you might get…

Shalin Popat
http://www.neuhaus-chocolates.com

I can be contacted at http://www.neuhaus-chocolates.com/index.asp?PageKind=ContactUs

Chocolate gift boxes can be purchased at http://www.neuhaus-chocolates.com/index.asp-Q-ItemList-E-gift-boxes–31294978

It’s great news that research found a food that lowers blood pressure and is healthy for the heart and maybe more. The problem is that the chocolate most Americans consume is not the same kind. The more popular kinds of chocolate have little or no positive effect on your health. Only certain chocolate may be healthy.

Dark chocolate is the chocolate that was found to have positive effects on blood pressure. Participants given dark, milk, or white chocolate every day were evaluated in different studies. It turns out that dark chocolate contains important antioxidants called phenols. These natural compounds from the cocoa bean are known to increase nitric oxide, reduce platelet aggregation, and inhibit oxidation of LDL cholesterol. Cocoa can decrease blood pressure, reduce cholesterol, and increase your insulin sensitivity. Milk and white chocolate are low in these antioxidants and do not have the same effect.

The problem is how chocolate is processed in this country. White chocolate, regardless of where you get it, actually contains no cocoa at all and is made only from cocoa butter; just the fat from the cocoa beans. It also contains no phenols. Most of the other chocolate we eat is made with “dutched” cocoa. The cocoa beans are treated with an alkaline solution to make them dark in color and to reduce the natural bitterness from the plant. But, it also reduces almost 90% of the phenols and most of its healthy benefits. The other problem is that when made into milk chocolate, the milk seems to prevent the phenols from being absorbed and, thus, negating any possible benefit from the chocolate.

The best chocolate for your health appears to be dark chocolate. In the European studies done, they ate 100gm of chocolate a day (100 grams equals approx. 3.5 ounces). That’s the equivalent to 2 1/2 regular size Hershey’s bars. It also adds about 550 calories to the diet. They were instructed to substitute this amount of calories from other foods they normally ate each day. You would have to do the same or forego its healthy benefits by increasing your waistline. European chocolate in general is healthier than that found in America due to the fact that it is less processed than ours and contains more of the heart healthy antioxidants. Dark chocolate is an acquired taste for most Americans since it is much more bitter than its milky counterpart.

So why is this research being touted as the ‘best medical news in ages’? It appears to be one more way we look to justify the unhealthy diets we follow. When people hear that chocolate is now healthy, they don’t hear any of the other restrictions involved, and don’t want to. In fact, most people wouldn’t want to change to a more bitter tasting chocolate and also cut out over 500 calories from their diets. Our diets already have enough sweets and this type of news only fuels the diabetic and obesity epidemics. This kind of medical news will only make most people add extra calories to their diets and increase their health problems.

Gerald Meyer RPh, provides advice on weight loss. Information on the benefits of green tea and its antioxidant powers can be found at http://www.natural-weight-loss-programs.com Free trials of green tea patches are available. Find out the benefit of green tea for yourself today. Learn about the new superfood - the amazon super berry - acai. Acai may be the most nutritious food in the world. MonaVie is the next generation of health food.

For a food that seems so familiar, most of us know surprisingly little about the real origins and history of chocolate. I counted myself in this group until very recently when I picked up a copy of a book titled ‘The True History of Chocolate”, by Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe. Published in 1996, it’s 268 pages of meticulously researched, fascinating facts and “speculation” about the origin and development of the food we call chocolate.

I wonder how many of us would even recognize a cacao pod if one happened to fall on our head? Of course, such an event is highly unlikely unless one happens to be in a very small number of places in certain regions of the world. The cacao tree simply refuses to grow outside of a very narrow range of latitudes and weather conditions. Another crucial factor in the successful cultivation of the tree is making sure that the right insects are around to pollinate the flowers, a fact that wasn’t known when some early attempts were made to transplant the trees.

As the authors mention, if you hold a cacao pod in one hand and a piece of chocolate in any form in the other, you would never suspect that the one was made from the other. In fact, for nine-tenths of its long history, chocolate was drunk, not eaten. Consumption of solid chocolate by the masses is a relatively recent development. So how did chocolate get from the forests of Central America, where it began as drink for the royal courts of the Maya in the Yucatan Peninsula, to your pantry in the form of a Hershey Bar? Seems like a long trip, doesn’t it? Furthermore, why is chocolate thought of a product of Switzerland? How did the Swiss manage to dominate the chocolate world? Can you think of two more different environments than the jungles of the Yucatan and the Swiss Alps?

The story is more fascinating than you can imagine and involves Columbus, the Conquistadors, the fall of the Aztec Empire, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, and last but not least, Milton Snavely Hershey.

When first introduced to Europe, chocolate was only for the nobles, who endlessly debated it nutritional and medicinal properties. In fact, because of the dominance of the Catholic Church, long debates were held as to whether or not chocolate was actually a food and whether, as such, eating it broke the fasting rules in place at the time.

The generally accepted first meeting between Europeans and the cacao bean took place in 1502 when Columbus anchored off the island of Guanaja, north of mainland Honduras. It was his fourth voyage, and he unfortunately died without ever tasting chocolate.

What followed was the Spanish conquest of Central America and the eventual return of cacao to Europe where it did not actually receive rave reviews. But the story is long one, and to get all the details, pick up a copy of the book. It’s a wonderful story, a great history lesson, and may leave you with the desire to sample not just Hershey Bars, but some of the other more “exotic” chocolate products that are available these days.

Note: You may freely publish the above article in any way you wish, as long as the author’s name and links are left intact.

Pete Cullen runs the website http://www.for-chocolate-lovers-only.com

Visit http://www.for-chocolate-lovers-only.com for more info.