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The Blue Jean chef: Comfortable in the Kitchen By Meredith Laurence

Blue Jean Chef: Comfortable in the Kitchen is designed to teach basic techniques and then strengthen skills, each chapter contains basic recipes that will give you a solid understanding of how the dish works, and four other recipes that build on that technique, but use different ingredients to create a unique and delicious meal. Once you’ve mastered the basic recipe and practiced the variations, you’ll be comfortable enough with the dish to improvise and make it your own! For example, start with the magically simple Basic Roast Chicken. Next, spice things up with Jerk Spiced Roast Chicken; Chipotle Orange Roast Chicken; Summer Ale Chicken with Caramelized Onions; and Five-Spice Roast Chicken. In addition to the basic recipes and their variations, each chapter has Blue Jean Chef Favorites: recipes that don’t fit into the basic groups, but are some of Meredith’s favorite dishes. With chapters on

-Soups and Salads
-Snacks and Sandwiches
-Pasta
-Meat and Poultry
-Fish and Seafood
-Vegetables
-Breakfast
-Desserts and Treats

Meredith will help you have all your bases covered. We spend a lot of time in the kitchen. You may as well get comfortable!

Cooking with Healthy Girl: Everyday Recipes made Healthy

I started revising recipes a couple of years ago when I decided it was time to be as healthy as possible without the loss of the foods that I love. I did a lot of research on foods, nutrition, and the body to discover everything I could to enhance the recipes. Every time I create the healthy version of a recipe, I would follow these 6 points: 1. Healthy - decreasing the bad nutrients and increasing the good nutrients 2. Tasty - the recipe needs to taste the same or better 3. Good Portion Size - enough to make you fell full 4. Easy to Make - with two kids I have to make this quickly! 5. Common/ Everyday Ingredients - ingredients you can buy at the local store and use until they are gone 6. Complete Dinner - pairing a side with an entree makes things a lot easier when trying to feed the family As you will see with my recipes, I still use some of the staple ingredients that I used when I was cooking the unhealthy versions - I just change how much of those ingredients are used and how those ingredients are used. I also added many new staples to my kitchen that help change my recipes to the healthy version. These recipes have helped change my family to a new and healthy lifestyle and I hope they do the same for yours.