Nibble while you cook.\u00a0 Dieting gurus might not approve of this recommendation, but it’s the only way to root out potential meal time spoilers.<\/p>\n
Here’s a case in point:\u00a0 I was making a simple green salad tonight with green leaf lettuce and shredded red cabbage.\u00a0 Casting about for a quick accent, I came upon several Asian pears ripening in brown paper sack on the counter.\u00a0 The idea was perfect; the pear wasn’t.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, however, I had diced and sprinkled it over the salad before taking a nibble.\u00a0 Oddly enough, it was sour.\u00a0 I’d never tasted an Asian pear so sour and two earlier pears from the same batch had been delicious.\u00a0 Didn’t matter.\u00a0 This one was a bad “apple” that was going to ruin the whole salad.\u00a0 So I plucked the pieces from the salad and diced up a second pear–but not without trying it first!<\/p>\n
Any good cook will tell you that tasting is often the difference between an OK dish and a stellar dish, just because recipes have a tough time working every time, exactly as written.\u00a0 There are too many variations in produce, meats, spices and other foods.\u00a0 Tasting allows you to make the necessary adjustments to work around the variations.<\/p>\n
I’m going to expand the tasting rule to include the raw ingredients, too (to the extent they can be eaten raw.)\u00a0 Zucchini is another case in point.\u00a0 About every sixth zucchini I run into is a bitter one.\u00a0 Fail to eliminate it and the entire dish will be punctuated by bits of bitter zucchini.\u00a0 So before cutting one, I slice a little taste from the end.\u00a0 Both bitter and flavorless ones go to the composter for reincarnation, hopefully as happier zucchini.<\/p>\n
I do this for practically all the vegetables and fruits I put in dishes, as well as pastas, beans, grains and meats once they are cooked.\u00a0 Only about 5-10% of foods are ones I want to keep out of a dish, but I’d rather pitch just one zucchini than suffer an entire saute with bitter accents!<\/p>\n
Sounds like I nibble a lot?\u00a0 I probably do, but to appease the dieting folks, I only take small nibbles.\u00a0 I don’t want to ruin my appetite.<\/p>\n
Also, know that a lot of your nibbles are upping your fruit and vegetable counts for the day, which is certainly not a bad thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nibble while you cook.\u00a0 Dieting gurus might not approve of this recommendation, but it’s the only way to root out potential meal time spoilers. Here’s a case in point:\u00a0 I was making a simple green salad tonight with green leaf lettuce and shredded red cabbage.\u00a0 Casting about for a quick accent, I came upon several … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}