Why are the coffee beans you buy black? Because these "black" beans are coffee beans that have been roasted, which explains the dark "burned" colour.

Roast green coffee beans at home

As with all recipes: the better quality of ingredients, the better quality of end product. Therefore I suggest you only use organic green coffee beans. Flavored with organic coffee sugar, this will not only bring you a very tasty coffee but a complete healthy organic coffee in your cup!

Last few years home roasted coffee is gaining popularity again. Why? Because who doesn’t love to prepare something tasty at home and the aroma that fills the house when roasting coffee beans is priceless!

There are several ways to roast your green coffee beans at home:

• heating coffee beans over fire coals,
• roasting coffee beans in cast iron pans,
• roasting coffee beans in rotating iron drums over a fire or coal bed
• roasting coffee beans in a pan over a normal kitchen fire (my kind of coffee roasting mainly to add some extra aroma in the kitchen ).

Only roast coffee in small quantities so you will be able to consume your roasted coffee beans fast, which will only get you the strongest coffee aroma possible.

The Kapoosh Universal Knife Block is stylish and looks good, and there are 2 types one made from rubber wood and the other in stainless steel. What I like about the Kapoosh Knife Block is that it can hold knifes of different sizes of up to 10-12 pieces, and on top of that it is dishwasher safe.

The video is very informative and it gives a good idea of what the Kapoosh Universal Knife Block can hold and how the compartments can be removed and put in the dishwasher.

“The Perfect Server” is a great waitstaff training DVD: the video is able to show that great serving can be achieved with elegance and style. I personally think the video is very useful as by following the comparison between:

• the “not so perfect server” and
• the “perfect server”,

one can see clearly what should be done and what not to do while waiting at tables.

I was asked by the people of carguygarage.com if I would put their aluminium cabinets in my kitchen? So I went to their website to have a look at their kitchen cabinets. But I only found a humongous variety of garage cabinets.

Myself I use powder coated aluminium pots in my kitchen: good solid cooking pots and they look stylish. Same with the aluminium cabinets on offer at carguygarage.com: stylish and they can be powder coated to any color you want.

So back to their question: I would surely be interested in aluminium kitchen cabinets once I can see some pictures of aluminium cabinets placed in a kitchen.

How to make soy milk

Nothing beats home made soy milk, especially when you are making organic soy milk using organic soy beans. You don’t need a fancy soy milk maker: only if you are an addicted soy milk drinker, I advice you to buy an automatic soy milk maker. Otherwise you just do like me and make sure you have:

• some kind of blender or mixer
• some kind of sieve (or cheese cloth)
• some kind of pot
• some kind of fire

Homemade soy milk

Use about half a cup of dry organic soy beans to make about 2 pints of soy milk (that is 15 grams of soy beans for about 1 liter of soy milk).

How to make soy milk

1. Soak soy beans for at least 5 hours in water
2. Mix or blend soy beans with 2 pints/1 liter of water
3. Sieve the mixture
4. Heat the soy bean milk until it boils. Soy milk vs milk foams excessively when boiling, so I stop boiling at once and make sure I drink the soy milk the same day. Otherwise boil for 5 or 10 minutes so you can store the milk up to a few days in the fridge.
5. Unsweetened soy milk tastes better when you add some salt! Otherwise just sweeten it with sugar.

Technorati Tags: Soy Milk | Soy Milk Maker | Soy Milk Recipe | Soy Milk Machine | Homemade Soy Milk | Automatic soy milk maker | Soy milk vs milk | Unsweetened soy milk | Organic soy milk | Making soy milk

I always get the question: what pots and pans do I need to buy for my kitchen utensils or cookware? Well, your cookware depends on your cooking skills and cooking wishes. If you go for quick dinner recipes, then a grill pan is ideal.

Grill pan

A grill pan is a cross between a grill or a barbeque and a normal pan. The biggest advantage of a grill pan compared with a pan is that whatever you want to grill, wont be swimming in oil like in a normal pan. This makes a grill pan a very healthy companion in my pots and pans cookware collection. On top of that, your grill pan is an ideal kitchen utensil for diet recipes: the access oil drips in your grill pan.

The grill pan on the left is a T fal pan bought in Ikea. The nice thing about this grill pan is that the handle can be folded over your pan, so you have more space to store your other cookware.

A grill pan is a no nonsense solution to grill all your vegetables. In stead of going through all recipes and cook books before making your dinner, you just cut your veggies (sweet peppers, onion-rings, egg-plant slices, mushrooms), drizzle a few drops of olive oil over them and grill on a low fire. Before serving: you add some salt and pepper to taste and another quick vegetable dish has been cooked!