Colors and your appetite

A little psychology mixed with food, delicious. There are colors that appeal and stimulate appetite and there are colors that suppress it. These colors have changed over time and the colors discussed today are accurate as of now.

Red is an appetite stimulant and that's why you tend to see red in so many restaurants. Interestingly enough, red usually signified danger, poisonous, or lethal with animals in the wild. Still, we find it appetizing.

Blue is an appetite suppressant. This is due to the lack of blue foods in nature. Most grown foods that are labeled as blue are actually purple. Weight loss plans suggest eating off of a blue plate because it's proven that you'll eat less. Other programs go as far to tell dieters to put a blue light in their refrigerator to fight the munchies. The last M&M color to be added was blue because the M&M company was aware of the scientific facts about blue. The public isn't aware that they don't like blue though so the color won in a vote and was added to the M&M bag.

Purple in black are said to be appetite suppressants as well. Although we eat naturally purple foods, purple food coloring is just unappealing.

**Disclaimer:
I understand that you might not agree with these. Just remember that they're not my opinions, it's all scientific fact.

क्रेच्कर जैक!

Cracker Jacks grew up with popcorn in America, almost. Popcorn was first noticed in 1827 and became popular around 1835-40. Cracker Jack joined the pop culture scene in 1908. Jack Norworth wrote the song, "Take me out to the ball Game" which advertised Cracker Jack(C.J.) at, well, ball games, of course! In 1912 the C.J. company introduced their famous prizes into packages and in 1918, Sailor Jack was also introduced to the scene with his dog Bingo. When World War II came around the Cracker Jack company had to stop importing their once intricate whistles and trinkets from the enemy(Germany and Japan). This brought men like C. Carey Cloud, a prize designer at the C.J. company, into the picture. Unfortunately, Cloud's story is a tragic one, he designed a line of plastic figures representing different jobs of the time and he made the mistake of designing a plastic sea captain that consumers mistook for Joseph Stalin. Or at least Stalin-esque. Poor Cloud, a designer of 102 different toys in 28 years was let go as the company tried to pull themselves out of their sticky rut. And now you know why there are only crappy scraps of paper at the bottom of your C.J. bags.

Fun fact: During the second World War Cracker Jack's prizes focused on propaganda. One prize was even a picture of a hanging Hitler. Imagine finding that in your bag of tasty popcorn at a ball game with dad!

For those of us who have never heard of Cracker Jack, it's toffee covered popcorn with some nuts. Oh, and it comes with a prize. Well, "prizes." If you want to see some of the earlier real prizes check out this site. Those aren't all of the prizes, just some examples, of course.


For those of you who are confused about my title, apparently my Blogger headings only come in Alien language now. Grin and bear it, my friends, grin and bear it.

Triple Crown Pizza

Pizza Hut or Papa John's? Perhaps Little Caesar's or Cici's. Dominoes? I'm a Pizza Hut fan, best crust and I've ordered many veggie pizzas where the veggies were cooked but they were still crisp on the inside. No soggy veggies! By God, they're miracle workers! And just when you thought it couldn't get any better you find out they have this pizza they call the Triple Crown Pizza.

It's in the shape of a, you guessed it, crown. The crust is stuffed with meat balls and cream cheese balls. The top of the pizza has three cheeses, pepperoni, mushrooms, black olives, onions and green pepper. Although I'm sure you can have other combinations this is how it is meant to be eaten.

This bad boy is a whopping 230 calories a slice. Totally worth it, I bet, but that's only because I have this I have this insatiable love for meatballs. The cream cheese doesn't hurt either.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy mother's day to all of the mommas out there. [: I hope everyone celebrated their mom's accordingly, I did. I decided to make mine breakfast after we got home from church. I made sausage, biscuits, and gravy and it was pretty awesome.

This meal plan should have taken about half an hour maybe forty-five minutes but I took about two hours which was damn embarrassing. My step-dad took me to the store to get the ingredients and I came home and began cooking. Naturally, I started with the biscuits and also naturally I made a huge mess with the flour. For those of you who bake you likely know that there are two main types of flour, all-purpose and self-rising. I'm a bit ditsy and used all-purpose instead of self-rising which made my biscuits look like this. I'm sure you can tell which ones rose and which did not.



After this mistake I had to start over and make a new batch. I don't have self-rising flour and for those of you who don't already know, if a recipe calls for self-rising and you only have all-purpose, add about 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder for every cup of flour and also add some salt. I messed up here as well and measured out tablespoons instead of teaspoons. I had to dig out the baking powder and hope that I'd taken the right amount out. At this point my mom had to intervene and help me make breakfast because it was already lunch time.

While I was doing this I had made the sausage and my step-father had previously insisted that the patties were cooked all the way through and after some arguing, I reluctantly took the patties off the stove and set them aside. To my mom's horror, the patties were not cooked all the way and she had to make that as well as the gravy, which she almost ruined.

All in all it was a great mother's day. Tell me about your guys' mother's days.

My sincerest apologies.

I send out my sincerest apologies to all of the terribly blunt things I've commented in some blogs. If you haven't noticed, I tend to speak first and not think about others sensitivities. I like to think of it as at least I'm honest. I just want you to understand that I treat others exactly how I'd like to be treated, which is honestly. My intentions were not to offend anyone but to simply give advice. You don't have to take it, it is but a mere offering.

Furthermore, I would to ask everybody for some advice. (I'm so excited, I've had this question stored for weeks xD) Give me ideas on topics. I'm open to anything and I appreciate a good, healthy challenge.

This blog is rated mature.

Today we have a sexy blog. Aphrodisiacs have been common in ancient cultures for as far back as you can study and it's no surprise considering they were obsessed with sex. Throughout the semester I've typed up a few blogs explaining different ways food affects your body and I think you're ready to learn the art of love and food.

First you need to understand why aphrodisiacs are considered so as well as how they came about. An aphrodisiac is something that arouses sexual desire. We're going to be discussing food aphrodisiacs. Aphrodisiacs were originally classified as such if they promoted sexual desire or fertility or if the shape of the food resembled the male or female genitalia. The ancients (and I presume people in today's time) would eat the fruits in sexually stimulating fashions.

Some foods that will stimulate your lover and your self are the ever popular chocolate, preferably dark, red wine, oysters, and the like. I'm not too into the common stuff so I'm going to skip it and maybe I'll come back to it.

The avocado is considered a sexual stimulant. It has a sensuous texture and the Aztecs called the avocado tree "Ahuacuatl" or testicle tree, because the hanging pairs of avocados resembled, well, testicles, of course. Sweet basil is supposed to boost fertility and stimulate sex drive. It also produces a general sense of well-being for body and mind. This one's a little strange, asparagus. I've mentioned before that asparagus can make you smell and taste funny so be careful. The Gourmet Sleuth says to "feed your lover boiled or steamed spears for a sensuous experience." I'm sorry but I have to take time to point out how strange this is. A spear of asparagus sounds dangerous, first off. It's frightening, to be quite blunt. Picture: "Do you like your asparagus boiled or steamed?"(<- in the sexiest voice your mind can muster) or "Hey, let me feed you these spears of asparagus. Oh yeah, you eat that steamed, bumpy, phallic shaped, green vegetable!" (<- cue whipping) Yeah, no. The asparagus is not gonna do it for me, personally. Coffee is another popular stimulant, mostly because it alerts your mind and body, making for a good long time(perhaps all night), if you catch my drift. Open figs look like the female genitalia and is traditionally thought of as a sexual stimulant as a man would eat it in a very sexy way in front of his woman(likely a demonstration). Honey is considered to increase potency. Freshly married couples would often drink lots of mead(a honey based drink) on their honeymoon. (I bet I just blew your mind.) This one's a bit far-fetched sounding as well, mustard. Lemme begin by pointing out that mustard is a terrible sounding word. When you say it the word just drops down heavy and has all kinds of sharp turns, not sexy at all. Then you have to think about the taste. Mustard is pretty awkward tasting for a sexual stimulant but it's supposed to stimulate sexual glands and increase desire. Next up we have what are described as, "Both invite love and are described in erotic literature as fruit nipples," the raspberry and strawberry. (That quote is directly from the first site featured below, by the way.) Dip some strawberries in dark chocolate for a really sexy time. [;

Well, my readers, if you want to know some more aphrodisiacs try this place. Or you can check some other places. I hope you enjoyed my blog. By the way, I am not promoting that you guys go out and stimulate other teenagers by brainwashing their bodies with sexually stimulating food. (I'm just teaching you how to do it in style for when the opportunity arrives.) Stay safe.

Quiche

So last week I spaced out and totally forgot about blogs hence I only posted one. I had a topic though and it fit into the theme I'd decided on. The theme for last week was home cooking. Last Saturday I made quiche for my family. I'd always found quiche to be this amazing, wonderful, and impossible thing but as it turns out, quiche was disappointingly simple to make. Not that it wasn't still fun. I made the quiche in a pan that was originally designed for large cupcakes.

First off, I'm going to start by explaining these pans because I find them very important. With your standard large cupcake pan you can make single servings of baked goods. You can make really tall cookies, little pies, and quiche for one. This helps when you only want to make enough for one or two people and you don't particularly want leftovers. The opportunities with these pans are endless.

Now, on to the quiche. I used my favorite pan, the large cupcake one. I made a gluten-free crust with gluten-free baking flour which is just a mix of different gluten-free flours. Then I made some bacon and set it aside where my mom chopped it for me. While my mom chopped I sauteed some chopped spinach in the bacon grease. When this was all good and done my mother and I sauteed some chopped mushrooms in butter. When you've prepared all of your ingredients you can put equal portions in to as many cups as you need to use. Then I sprinkled some cheese and began to prepare my eggs. If anyone recalls, there was a blog done on substitutions, those don't apply here. Please do not use applesauce or bananas instead of eggs. You can but I've never tried it so I'm not making any promises on taste or texture. We (my mother and I) prepared the eggs as if we were making your standard scrambled eggs. Whip some eggs with milk and then add salt and pepper. When this is complete you once again distribute your prepared ingredient into your cupcake pan. All that's left is to wait. We baked our quiche in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit and then raised it to 400 degrees Fahrenheit but that's only because we were in a hurry, you could easily cook yours at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, it would just take longer.