Mar 21, 2008

Easter Foods, Traditions, Recipes

Celebrating Easter is a tradition in many parts of the world and usually involves a short holiday, allowing people to make time to get together with family and friends. Sharing the celebration of Easter also means sharing food so it's not surprising that there are also traditional foods for eating at this special time of year. These include hot cross buns, simnel cake and, of course, easter eggs.

Why then are certain foods associated with Easter? It's a good question and one which many of us overlook, simply taking forgranted that we may be given some simnel cake or a hot cross bun when out visiting over Easter. To answer this and other questions about Easter I decided to read more and I found 2 great websites which I'd like to share with you - for no reason other than they are really good, interesting resources of information.

The first is called Kaboose which is a well established site all about family, food, home and crafts. This page is worth visiting - ideas for Easter recipes (including an Easter Basket Cake).

The second is a page on the BBC website about Easter traditions which covers why certain foods have a connection with Easter - eg. simnel cake and hot cross buns. It also goes into the tradition of Easter eggs and why they are still so popular today.

If you are cooking a special Easter dinner this weekend, there's certainly no shortage of ideas for good recipes to try and, not wanting to miss out on such an opportunity, I'm going to add my 'three peneth' (great, old Yorkshire saying!) by suggesting one of my own recipes - rich white chocolate ice cream. I made some recently and even went so far as to add a little mashed banana as an experiment. The end result was delicious though a single scoop was more than enough for me as it was very rich!

Whatever you're doing over Easter - have a happy one!

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Oct 24, 2007

Homemade Ice Cream - The Easy Way

There's no question in my mind that homemade food is always the best - being able to select the ingredients yourself and having it fresh just when you want it, but that is providing you have the time. After all, many recipes require time and patience often with a several step process involved. So what do you do if you don't have much spare time but still want homemade food? Well, with ice cream there are a few quick and easy recipes you can use.

Here are the quick and easy ice cream recipes that I've found work well:


vanilla ice cream
chocolate ice cream
banana ice cream



The banana ice cream recipe is a particular favorite in our house. I recently made a video of me making it in our kitchen so you can see just how quick and easy it is. Visit this page to view the video (my vanilla ice cream making video is also on there)
http://www.ice-cream-recipes.com/ice_cream_videos.htm

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Jul 15, 2007

National Ice Cream Day Is Here!

Yes, it's finally here - Sunday 15 July 2007 and National Ice Cream Day. Whatever you're planning to do today, try and join in the celebration of all things ice cream. Here are a few ideas that might just make your day that bit extra special ....

Let's not forget people less fortunate too - like those who are in hospital today. May ice cream be on the menu for you to enjoy as well. My son got out of hospital a couple of days ago and whilst he was there ice cream was on the menu every single day! The nurses told me how it's always a winner with children, bringing smiles to young faces when they've been through a rough time.

Thank you President Reagan for recognizing the value of ice cream beyond being just a food. It's much, much more than that!

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