Snacks

Snacks are meant to be eaten between meals, not in place of them. Some are deserts and some are appetite killers to tide a person over until a real meal.

Cookies 'n' Cream: 8 Oreo cookies, not double stuffed otherwise the result will be too creamy. Crush them down into the bottom of a stout glass with a spoon. The crushing part only needs to break the cookies up and fill up most nooks and crannies. Then cover the cookies with just enough milk to moisten them.

Appetite Killer: Half a teaspoon of Lea&Perrins Worchestschire Sauce. This is enough to hold off my appetite for about two hours. The high salt content should lead to a bit of thirst as well. Cracker Salad: Simply crushed crackers, salad dressing, and some extras, like some cut up sandwich meat and shredded cheese. I prefer Ritz over Saltine crackers because they have a better flavor and less salt. For salad dressing I use mostly Ranch with some Balsamic Vinagrette for flavor. Some cut up ham or turkey and a bit of Jalepeno cheese finish it off. This is an appettite killing snack, and a few table spoons worth should be enough. The rest will keep sealed in the refrigerator for a week. Main Course

Chicken and Dumplings, easy homestyle:

Three Chicken Breast cut to bite size. Place in pot and cover with enough water to cover chicken and season with salt. Cook until done. Add 32oz chicken broth, plus three cans of homestyle biscuit that are cut to bite size and dipped in flour. Season to taste, cook until biscuit dumplings are tender and floating. Stir as little as possible, though these dumplings are more forgiving.

Ingeridents: 3 Chicken breast, 32oz chicken broth, 3 cans biscuits, salt, pepper, water.

Sushi and Rice Rolls

I don't plan on giving any real sushi recipes, because they require fresh fish and more depth than this page will contain. I will give some information though.

Wasabi powder, made from real Wasabi, is served with sushi because it's an anti-bacterial agent that has a workable flavor. Along with picking healthy fresh fish, this is the other component that makes sushi safe to eat. There are fake wasabi however, typically made from horseradish with green coloring.

Secondly, don't dip the rice into a sauce, dip the meat and other stuff in the sauce. To make a wasabi sauce on the spot, mix a little wasabi with soy sauce using a chopstick. Sauces never go over sushi rice because it will cause the rise to lose cohesion and fall apart.

Now, for rice rolls. The first part would be the rice. Sushi rice uses a short rounded grain, which can be difficult to find in the US. After finding rice, either use a rice cooker, which is very simple, or cook the rice with the amount of water listed on the bag. Properly cooked sushi rice should be fluffy and have no excess water in the cooking vessel.

After obtaining cooked fluffy rice, let the rice rest for a few minutes and prepare the seasoning if need be. Some might use a green tea salt or something similar, the traditional seasoning is sugar and rice vinegar reduced over heat. Toss this with the rice to sweeten the rice and make it even stickier. Shredded seaweed may also be added.

Next is the rolling part, which requires sheets of Nori seaweed. A bamboo rolling mat makes the rolling part itself easy. Place a sheet on the mat, spread out a thin layer of rice on it, then a line of the filling. Niether must be too thick, as the result must be rolled up tight and compact. After the layers are done, roll the bottom then the top towards the middle and compress tightly. After letting it rest a moment, slice into bite sized pieces with a sharp knife.

The other methods are easier. A handpressed roll isa palm full of rice with the toppings laid on top and pressed into the mass with the other palm. Somewhat messy and it relies on the stickiness of the rice to hold it together. A strip of seaweed may be added around the outside.