Interesting way of building up a virtual recipe collection! Haven't yet tried it but its a very popular among those who are foodie bloggers. I'll let you know when I've given it a run. Hope you feedback on this too!

"Cooking Aficionado is an easy to use recipe management program. It is intended for the home user who wants to enhance their recipe collection by replacing the scraps of paper, computer printouts, and magazine cutouts of their favorite recipes with an easy to use digital cookbook.

Cooking Aficionado allows for recipe storage and essential features such as editing and searching your recipes. With CA Professional 3.1, you get the ability to print, email, and add pictures to your recipes. You also have optional color schemes available, along with support for the English and Spanish languages.

Use CA Professional 3.1 to organize your recipes into categories and store the following information with each recipe: ingredients, preparation details, special notes, preparation time, cook time, and yield. Please visit screenshots for a quick preview of Cooking Aficionado.

Download the free trial version of Cooking Aficionado today!

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I am at an impasse. Is it a midlife crisis impending? I remember Tatay saying that I am at a crossroads and that he felt old. Now suddenly I feel old.

Now a few meanderings on nothing in particular.



Rave: Burt's Bees makes me extremely happy. I love most of their products (what can you say about their peppermint lip glosses and lip blams, and my fave: lemon butter cuticle cream) and I've recently bought their Orange Essence Facial Cleanser. Like all their products, it smells good enough to eat! I gave it a test run last night and came out smelling like mandarin oranges, and invigorated. It really doesn't dry out your skin, and while it feels pretty greasy going on (and there are no suds either) ... wow, what a far cry from the squeaky clean feeling I've gotten used to with Neutrogena products. Yeah, it's expensive but it IS an indulgence.

Rant: Multiply is going through these weird changes that I've had to change my format. if you noticed, my welcome page is now like any other ordinary blog. Why? Because the recipes link no longer comes out. With the recipes being a major feature, it looked pretty funny that it was no longer there. Ha!

So instead of ranting and getting frustrated, I created another blog especially for food. If you arent interested in all my mundane yakkings here (yeah, it's ok to say that, I still love you, dear friend), you can go to I'm Hungry. Everything food related is there - the resto reviews, recipes, food finds, etc. Now you can expect my Multiply site to have more miscellaneous stuff posted. Like about facial cleansers.

Description:
When I mean tea, not the stuff in teabags, brewed tea from loose leaves!

Despite being a nation of coffee drinkers (c’mon, admit it), Yeng and I never really got the knack for drinking it. However, we share a great love for tea. We love it so much that it’s our preferred morning brew, there is usually some leftover tea in the fridge, and we pack our trusty tea ball and a packet of tea when we go on trip.

What I personally like about tea is that it doesn’t have that bitter aftertaste, nor do I get palpitations from it, which I experience with coffee. Then there are all those health benefits too.

There are many techniques of brewing tea, but this one works well for us. We got this trick from Samraj, our Indian friend, who not only demonstrated it to us but also made us firm believers that the nose knows best! We’ve climbed out of the rut of making tea like coffee: brew, pour into cup, add sugar, add milk, stir.

Once you’ve gotten the habit of making your own tea, you’ll prefer it over getting some expensive brew in one of those coffee/tea joints. And it’s so much cheaper!

More reasons to love tea (c/o Natural Health):
Green tea is packed with antioxidants so it’s really good for you! It may protect against cancers of the stomach, lung and colon; reduce arthritis severity; and stave off heart disease.

Studies show that black tea helps lower heart disease risk; protect against high blood pressure and stroke; prevent cancers of the lung and colon; boost immunity and reduce LDL cholesterol.

Ingredients:
Your favorite tea, about a teaspoon per cup of water (any green or black is good; we like sencha for everyday drinking)
Water
Muscovado or honey (optional)
Milk (optional)


Directions:
If you’ve never examined your tea, take a look at it now. Sencha usually is just leaves. But if you are using the kind with bits of bark, stems and a lot of “dust” (pulverized tea), try and fish out the bark and stems as these give a “barky” flavor – not at all bad, but it’s the leaves that give the great flavor.

Boil your water to a rapid boil, i.e. large bubbles boiling to the surface. This should just take a few minutes.

If your kettle doesn’t have a spout cover, fashion one out of aluminium foil. It shouldn’t let steam out. Don’t laugh, you’ll find out why later!

Now, put in your tea during this rapid boil. Turn down the heat to a gentle boil, i.e. or small bubbles breaking on the surface. Leave for about 3-5 minutes for green tea or 5-7 minutes for black tea.

Remove the aluminium cover from the spout and you should smell the aroma of brewed tea!

If you like your tea sweet, put in your sugar/honey now. It’s always better to add this in during brewing so your sweetness is evenly distributed and everything is fully dissolved. Add milk if you like.

Turn off the heat. Pour into your tea cup. Breathe in deeply and sip slowly. Heavenly!

Photo: Some our sencha in a lovely Japanese tea set.