Food and Drinks Guides
The Top 10 Drinks For Christmas
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Christmas time is all about gathering with the ones you love and celebration. During the festivities, plenty of drink will flow, but which ones should you be serving this Christmas? The top ten drinks for Christmas list should include:
Mulled Wine
A long held tradition, especially on cold evenings, a glass of mulled wine is a wonderful way to greet guests after a trudge through the winter weather. Mulled wine can be bought ready-mixed such as the ever-popular Gl
More infomation at WikipediaBinge Drinking — What Can Happen?
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That’s Life: Advice by Susan DeAngelis at www.thatslifeadvice.com
Jay from Maryland asks, “Is it okay to binge drink at parties?”
What can happen when you binge drink?
Binge drinking, also known as heavy episodic drinking, is the massive consumption of alcohol in a short amount of time. An average person is said to have binged, when their blood alcohol concentration reads 0.08% or more. For the blood to reach this level males consume 5 or more drinks quickly, a female 4 drinks. This is known as the 5/4 rule. Height, weight, and other factors can alter this rule. Extreme drinking has been defined as the rapid consumption of 10 or more drinks for males and 8 for females.
In the United States, although the legal drinking age is 21, most individuals are likely to binge drink in college. Studies show over half of male college students and 40% of females have participated in binge drinking in the past few weeks. Nearly one-third of freshman in college have experiences with binge drinking before returning home for the holidays. Unfortunately, excessive drinking is not limited to the over 18 crowd. It was been reported that a quarter of high school students have binged in the last month.
Some methods of binge drinking are shots, shooters, chugging, shotguns, funnels, and drinking games. In the United States, two popular games are quarters and pong, where failure to get one of these objects in a glass after bouncing it off a table leads to chugging beer or the consumption of a shot.
A common Canadian drinking game is Wizard Stick. After finishing a beer, the empty is stacked and taped underneath the current one. In New Zealand, Edward Wineyhands and Scrumpy Hands is a drinking game in which a 40 or 80 ounce can is duct taped to the hands and cannot be removed until completely consumed. The Pub Crawl first became popular in the United Kingdom where drinking establishments close by Midnight. Drinking from pub to pub, by the end of the evening, the binge drinker is crawling home. Botellon, passing a big bottle amongst a circle of friends in a public place, is common in Spain.
Regardless of the method, on the average, those who binge drink miss more classes, get lower grades, are sexually irresponsible, have been accidentally injured or date raped, and have or developed health ailments. In addiction, most alcoholics or addicts at one time were binge drinkers.
After binge drinking, a person is likely to
1) Have an argument or altercation
2) Fall or Pass out
3) Vomit, perhaps choke to death
4) Get into an automobile accident or fatality
5) Overdose (Alcohol poisoning)
During a blacked out state, urination on oneself is common. In extreme cases, however, a binge drinker’s bladder can rupture and cause septic blood poisoning.
When asked about his binge drinking experiences The Unknown Drunk replied, “I used to drink hard and fast… If I got drunk fast, I thought everyone would think I was cool. Thinking back, I just looked like a drunken idiot.”
Today, there is a movement in the United States to return the legal drinking age back 18.
“I was legally allowed to drink at 18,” the Unknown Drunk continued. “Maybe that’s why I started drinking heavy by the time I was 12.”
More infomation at WikipediaHealthy Meals Without the Fuss
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Most of us cannot afford to have personal chefs who do nothing else but plan and prepare our meals. Most of the time, we have to think of meals in addition to the million and one other things we have to do each day. And if you are a mom, you probably need to take all that and multiply it by three.
No Need To Do It Alone
Sometimes it can be tempting to just call the nearest pizza place and order in. While this is good for a movie night once a month, it is unhealthy to let this become a habit. If you are a working mom, turn meal planning into something interactive and fun. This way, you are actually hitting two birds with one stone. You get help with the menu and you do away with the frustration of scrunched up faces when you serve something your family doesn’t like.
Set a day of the week for meal planning and grocery shopping. Younger kids would probably find being allowed to say what they want to eat on certain days as a treat. Planning ahead will not only allow you to save by buying only what you need, it will also allow you to organize your meal preparations, and you get things done in half the time.
Prepare, Prepare, Prepare
Getting things done ahead will save you a lot of time. Check your work schedule and identify which days you have more free time. Use these days to prepare for multiple meals. You can cook some meals through and just store while others can be half-done then finished on the day the meal is to be had.
Still, you can use this time to do all the chopping and the slicing you need for the other dishes you have planned for the week. Do you need chopped carrots for a stew and grated ones for carrot soup? Prepare them all at one time, storing the chopped ones in the refrigerator for later. If you take this route, make sure that you have plastic containers in a variety of sizes on hand to use for storing your food or prepared ingredients.
Make Technology Work for You
On days when you simply do not have the time or the energy to get it all done, make your kitchen equipment work for you. Your best bet would be to have a Crock Pot on hand. When used correctly, a Crock Pot can be a safe and convenient way to prepare healthy, wholesome, home-cooked meals that will stay warm and be ready for you and your family when it is time to eat.
Since Crock Pots use slow cooking technology at lower temperatures, it will allow you to simply prepare the food in the morning and leave it in the Crock Pot, ready for you by dinner time. Once the cooking is done, it will automatically reset itself to just keep your food warm until you are ready to eat.
There are recipes for chicken, beef and vegetable dishes and even desserts that can be cooked in a Crock Pot. You can incorporate ‘Crock Pot’ days in your meal planning and let your family choose their ‘Crock Pot’ meal for the day. Eating healthy never sounded so easy!
Bill is an avid home cook who loves to share his favorite crock pot recipes with the rest of us. He finds the recipes for crock pots at www.A-Crock-Cook.com to be the easiest to follow. And suggests you try on of the slow cooker vegetable recipes there.
More infomation at Wikipedia