Healthy African Dishes

Salad Recipe Ideas

2011-11-20T20:25:00.000-08:00

By Kevin Wynn
The best salad recipes are available for everyday and in almost every occasion. There are salad recipes if you want a light dinner, to bring to potluck parties, if you are on a diet, to use as side dish for school lunch meal or for a holiday party such as Christmas, Thanksgiving or Halloween.

Various salad recipes are available in different types which make it easy for you to narrow your choices. Some of these types are vegetable, greens, bound, fruit, entrée and dessert. When it comes to choosing the best salad recipes, it helps if you know what kind you want to eat or serve.

Green Salads:
If you are searching for a healthy and satisfying side dish or appetizer, nothing beats green salads. They are simple, easy and quick to prepare. For people who are on a weight loss program, green salads can become their main dish.

Vegetable Salads:
They contain all vegetables other than green and leafy such as lettuce and cabbage. Vegetable salads are low fat and healthy options. They are popular as side dishes but you can also opt to make them as appetizers or even as main dish.

Entrée Salads:
This type of salad is served as the main meal. Usually, they include meat, chicken, beef, seafood or fish. You can mix them with greens or vegetables. These salads are packed with nutrients such as protein, carbohydrates and vitamins. Some examples are chef salad, Caesar salad and cob salad.

Dessert Salads:
This type of salad is popular at large gatherings or potlucks. A perfect ending to a perfect meal. You can have recipes for cookie salad, fruit salads, salads with whipped or gelatin topping or any sweet versions.

Bound Salads:
Bound salads are usually made with thick sauce such as pasta salad, potato salad, macaroni salad, chicken salad. The most popular bound salad is pasta which takes many forms. Some have Italian flavor while others are Asian inspired. Pasta salads are very versatile that they can be served as your main dish, appetizer, side dish or even dessert.

Choosing the best salad recipes for a meal can be quiet difficult for the simple reason that there are so many available choices out there. That is why it helps to know the type of salad that is appropriate for the occasion or that will fit your budget and requirements. You can find some ideas online from Food Network, Paula Deen, Emeril or Rachael Ray.

For example, you can make a homemade angel hair pasta salad using whole cooked and peeled shrimp and chicken breast. Or you can substitute them with seafood or meats. For this type of salad, ranch dressing seems to be a good choice. However, you can use any bottled, homemade vinegar or creamy will do.

Other ingredients are 4 sliced green onions, chopped bell pepper, thinly sliced medium carrot, a can of sliced mushrooms, ¼ cup Parmesan cheese, a teaspoon or oregano, cloves of garlic, salt and pepper.

Cook the pasta as directed in the package. Make sure that you follow instructions accordingly so as not to overcook the pasta. In a large bowl, combine and mix vegetables, cheese, chicken and spices. Add the pasta, mix, then pour in the dressing sparingly while mixing it into the salad. Add pepper and salt to taste. This salad is best served cold.

For more information concerning the Best Salad Recipes for your lunch, dinner or potluck, pay a visit to http://www.bestsaladrecipesonline.com.

Weight Loss With the Nigerian Diet

2011-11-20T20:21:00.000-08:00

You might have noticed that here in Nigeria it is quite difficult to get the right type of food to incorporate in our diets since our foods are not really found on the web. Which foods to eat to help us lose weight and burn fat, and which foods to avoid. Generally we would try to avoid food that are rich in simple carbohydrates, and embrace those rich in protein.

However, below is a list of various kinds of foods to decrease your intake of when trying to lose weight using the Nigerian diet. Note that I did not say you should completely stop taking them, but try to reduce them to the smallest amount possible! The nigerian Diet consists of various kinds of food, but majority of our foods, especially for the yorubas, are oily, and starchy!

Foods to decrease intake of in the Nigerian diet include:

1. Pounded yam: popularly called iyan, contains a lot of starch. Try to reduce intake of this.

2. Amala: made from the back of the yams so is pretty much starch too.

3. Garri: simply just cassava flour! Its known to be one of the promoters of big flabby tummy

4. Tuwo shinkafa: pounded rice so more or less contains as much carbs as white rice.

5. Soups: I suggest you avoid Nigerian soups when you are trying to lose weight because most of them contain so much oils. However some soups like okro soup, if cooked without oils can be very very good to incorporate into your weight loss program using the Nigerian diet.

6. Ofada rice, white rice

7. Akpu, also another cassava product, which is high in simple carbs and intake of it should be reduced. Akpu is also known to promote bulging tummies!

Please note that you should not totally eliminate the above carbohydrate foods from your diet, but try to limit intake of them to as little as possible.

Foods to increase intake of in our diet include:

1. As always, Beans. This contains high amount of protein, and are good building blocks for muscle. They are also one of the fat burning foods

2. Fish: Fish is very high in protein content

3. Fruits: Water melons, apples, oranges, bananas, etc

4. vegetables: with very little oil in it. vegetables are high in fiber content.

5. chicken and turkey: try peeling off the skin before taking these!

6. ukpa (of ibo origin) also high in protein content.

7: bean cake: moi-moi.

So now we can see that despite the fact that our foods are not really listed and classified popularly, there are various foods we can eat to loose weight!

When I started my weight loss program it was a hard task. Avoiding rice and eba was a very big deal for me, but I knew I had to do something about the tummy. so I stuck to eggs for breakfast, beans for lunch, vegetables for dinner, and fruits in between. those weeks seemed like the hardest in my life, but within a short period, I began to see results!

Click here to know more about weight loss and Nigerian diets.

Weight loss is never as difficult as it seems. Its just about knowing what and what to do!

Healthy Living Tips

2011-11-20T20:11:00.000-08:00

By Matt Twaddell

I wanted to put together some healthy living tips, all on one page, they range from exercise to eating habit tips. I realize there are a lot of fitness and healthy living advice out there, so I have listed all my favourite tips here.

Drink plenty of water The experts normally recommend about 6 - 8 medium size glasses a day, and more if you have been exercising or when the weather is very hot. Water helps to remove waste from the body, your body uses water to regulate your body temperature and allows nutrients to travel to vital organs. Also drinking lots of water and keeping your body and skin hydrated helps to fight the signs of aging.
Exercise Do some form of exercise everyday, you could do a controlled workout 3 times a week for 30 minutes, and on the other days you could just go for a walk, or do some light exercises at home.
Stop eating 2 hours before bed time This can be very important, if you're eating just before you go bed, those calories are not going to get burnt off, but if you must eat something make sure it's a high protein low carbohydrate snack, especially good if you are looking to build muscle.
Don't go crazy What I mean by this is, don't get crazy with your workouts, training 2 or 3 hours a day everyday, it doesn't take this much effort unless you're a professional athlete. Be patient it will take time to get results, that's just the way it is.
High protein - Low carbs High protein foods help to build muscle, they fill you up better, and the calories from high protein foods are burnt off quicker.
Food alternatives Look for healthier options in your current diet, for example, switch from white bread to brown, white rice to brown rice, replace ice cream with yogurt, skimmed milk, low fat spreads instead of butter.
Eat smaller meals Eating smaller meals will help prevent bloating, and make you feel more active, plus it will help to keep your stomach size down. Eating regular smaller meals also tells your body that you're getting enough nutrients and that it doesn't need to store fat.
Don't stave yourself You will be depriving your body of nutrients, and slow your metabolism and therefore reducing your bodies ability to burn calories. Starving yourself could also cause harm to your organs.

I have given you a list of good healthy living tips, these will take time to have an effect, try to focus on being healthy more than being slim.

http://www.simple-workout-routines.com

http://www.simple-workout-routines.com/healthy-weight-chart.html

The Nigerian Staple Food - Good Or Bad?

2011-11-20T19:58:00.000-08:00

By Oghenetejiri Orugbo

I love our staple food, and I am lucky enough to eat it on a daily basis. How healthy are they though? In Nigeria, our staple food consists of a variety of yam, cassava and brown rice. These can be prepared in any number of ways. They however, all have one thing in common.

Since it makes sense to classify foods based on their highest nutritional content, the one thing they have in common is that Cassava, Yam and Brown rice are all carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates are the main culprit where weight gain is concerned. This is because; the final break down of carbohydrate in the body is simple sugar. I want to point out that when the supply of ingested glucose (glucose is the only usable form of simple sugar) is too high, our blood sugar level gets elevated.

This increased level of blood sugar triggers the release of insulin (the hormone responsible for regulating blood sugar levels) to transport or make the excess glucose available to the body tissues. When our energy stores are low (post exercise for example), the muscle tissue is the first point of call of the insulin-carried glucose. Glucose however can only be taken up by the muscle tissues at a gradual rate.

If too much insulin-carried glucose is present at one time, the liver is the next stop. The liver like the muscle tissue, also takes up glucose at a gradual rate and when the liver stores are full and there is still an excess supply of insulin-carried glucose in the bloodstream, the next stop is the adipose tissue where it is stored as fat.

Unlike the muscle and liver, the adipose tissues take up glucose quite rapidly. The rate at which glucose is released into the blood is an important issue as, if the ingested carbohydrates are already simple sugars or low in fibre, the digestion process will be shorter and they will be absorbed too quickly. This causes the pancreatic tissue to release an excess amount of insulin into the blood.

Since the liver and muscle tissues only take up glucose gradually, the excess insulin-carried-glucose will by-pass the muscle and liver and be deposited in the adipose tissue where it is rapidly stored as fat. This is where the quality and quantity of carbohydrates we eat comes in.

I believe that by now you can see the danger in eating too much simple sugars or food low in fibre. The flip side to the coin is to eat complex carbohydrates as this will result in an intermittent release of glucose into the bloodstream which means that the pancreas will not release excess insulin into the bloodstream; which also means that most of the glucose will be stored in the liver and muscle tissues as opposed to being deposited as fat in the adipose tissue.

Our staple foods tend to be complex carbohydrates and that is great news but we definitely do not eat them in isolation. Irrespective of how healthy they are, we cannot survive just on carbohydrates.

There are a number of ways in which we eat our staple food. For example, Yam can be boiled and eaten with palm oil and pepper soup or yam when cooked, will be beaten to a paste to make pounded yam and eaten with Ogbono soup (my favourite) or Egusi soup, etc. Cassava can be used to make Garri and eaten in a similar way. Brown rice can be eaten with stew, or made into Jollof rice, or Fried rice.

I mentioned above that the glucose we get from complex carbohydrates is slowly released into our blood stream. This is because it takes longer for our body to fully digest them (up to an hour). Well, it takes even longer when these complex carbohydrates are mixed with proteins and fat. In fact, when you eat carbohydrates with proteins, it takes about 3 to 4 hours for digestion to be completed.

The Nigerian staple food is clearly healthy to eat as they are complex carbohydrates. However, what we eat them with and how much we eat at any given time, also plays an important role in our weight management and overall well-being.

Look out for my future article on THE RIGHT WAY TO EAT TO BURN FAT! Until then, here are a few tips to follow:

Eat moderately, not like there is no tomorrow. It does not matter how healthy the food is, if you eat too much, you will gain weight.
When using Palm oil, choose that with little or no cholesterol and use it sparingly. Avoid palm oil or any other oil that is solid at room temperature.
Eat at regular intervals - 3 to 4 hours and do not skip meals.
Engage in a regular sporting routine so that you can balance out your input versus your output (depending on what your goal is).

Oghenetejiri Orugbo,
Certified Personal Trainer,
Certified Fitness Nutritionist,
http://www.gymhawk.com.

I believe that exercise is and always should be a way of life. It does not start and end in the gym. You are never too old to start.

Nigerian Recipe for Traditional Egusi Soup

2011-11-20T16:18:00.000-08:00

By Jen E Carter

Staple foods in the Nigerian diet include: peanuts or ground-nuts, yams, cassava, fish, rice, okra, bananas, guinea corn and millet, and palm nuts.

They are usually starchy and Nigerians love to cook with a lot of pepper and spices especially those from the southwest and southeast. This recipe uses all local ingredients to create a tasty and nourishing meal.

Ground Egusi seeds give this soup a unique color and flavor. If you can't find Egusi seeds in your store, you can substitute pumpkin seeds or Pepitas which you can find in Latin American grocery stores.

This soup is thickened with flour ground from seeds of gourds, melons, pumpkins, and squashes, many of which are native to Africa.

Egusi Soup

200 g Water Leaves

50 g Egusi seeds

1 teaspoon Dry Ground Red Pepper

1 medium Onion

100ml Palm Oil

10g Dry Ground Crayfish

120g Fresh Tomatoes

100ml Water

Salt & Pepper to taste

Wash the water leaves well in clean, fresh water.
Liquidise or pulverise the onions, tomatoes and egusi seeds until smooth.
Add the dry ground pepper and fry in palm oil for five minutes.
Add the water, put the lid on and cook for five minutes.
Now add the water leaves, replace lid and cook for a further five minutes.
Finally, add the crayfish and seasoning, warming through well.

Serve with pounded yam or cooked rice and a meat stew, to provide protein.
Alternatively, serve with eba, fufu or any suitable carbohydrate.

With thanks to the people of Nigeria who made us welcome and instilled in us a love of traditional Nigerian food.

For further tips and ideas for cooking great and traditional food from around the world, visit Nigerian Recipes & Food [http://www.worldwide-recipes.com/nigerian-recipes.html]. This article was submitted by Jen Carter, owner of the World Food & Recipes [http://www.worldwide-recipes.com] website.

Find more recipes & cookbooks at the One Dollar bookstore.

Nigerian pepper soup

2011-11-20T16:02:00.000-08:00

In this cooking episode, Doris presents to her audience the importance of pepper soup in Nigeria. Pepper soup, a heartwarming dish for all occasion, can be made with fish, goat meat, or lamb. However, the favorite meat in Nigeria is goat.

The easiest way to cook Moi-Moi( Nigerian bean pudding) (Part 2 of 2)

2011-11-20T15:55:00.000-08:00

Why not delight yourself with some of Africa's finest dishes.

The easiest way to cook Moi-Moi( Nigerian bean pudding) (Part 1 of 2)

2011-11-20T15:40:00.000-08:00

Why not delight yourself with some of Africa's finest dishes.

Healthy African Cooking with Ngozika

2011-11-20T15:33:00.000-08:00

You've seen Chinese, Italian, American and Spanish. Now, for the first time, there exists an African cooking show online. And, BlackTVOnline.com's humbled to present to you these healthy food alternatives, straight from our Mother/Fatherland.

If you are what you eat, then why not incorporate traditional African dishes into your diet? It's easy, and many ingredients can be purchased right from your local supermarket. Today's recipe is Okasi Soup with FuFu. Visit BlackTVOnline.com to discuss our programs, watch more video, programs and behind the scenes footage, and additional information!