From a very long time ago, the Chinese have regarded tea as a drink that “promotes saliva, relieves thirst, and keeps the body healthy.” In recent years health foods have been in vogue, and the health functions of tea are once again being taken seriously. Therefore identifying tea, and understanding tea, will be helpful to our daily health care, keeping us in good health.

What are the benefits of drinking tea? According to research, tea has ten health benefits:

1. Anti-aging function: Tea tannin and Vitamin P have the anti-lipin peroxidation function. Vitamin C and P work together within tea, and have certain auxiliary function on anti-aging. Drinking tea will make it possible to reduce vitamin C discharge through urine.

2. Stimulate functions of the brain: Caffeine in tea keeps the brain alert and active by stimulating the brain’s central nervous system.

3. Prevent constipation: Tea tannic acid can cause steatolysis, and help promote digestion, especially Pu’er tea.

4. Restore functions of intestines: Tea can help in the restoration of the functions of intestines, preventing dyspepsia and alleviating dehydration symptoms.

5. Prevention of disease: Tea can help reduce blood cholesterol, strengthen blood vessel, prevent arteriosclerosis and hypertension. Polyphenol compound inside green tea can prevent class rheumatic arthritis.

6. Prevention of cancer: Tea helps to eliminate free radicals preventing cancer development by blocking the growth of substance that causes cancer.

7. Effects on immunity function: Oolong tea, floral tea, green tea all can help strengthen immunity.

8. Prevent cardiovascular disease: Vitamin C and Vitamin P within tea can increase capillary strength. Oolong tea may lower total cholesterol and blood viscosity.

9. Beauty and diet function: Tea may help digestion, help maintain skin moisture, and also help weight loss.

10. Prevent halitosis and dental cavity: Tea contains fluoride and alkaline substances that have a sterilization function. Alkaline substance can neutralize the acidic environment of dental cavity. It can help prevent dental cavity and halitosis.

Chinese to English translation by New York Chinese Language Center

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/tea-articles/ten-health-benefits-of-tea-4216155.html

About the Author

As the most professional enterprise in the US east coast region specializing in tea and tea-making equipment, Fang Gourmet Tea offers tea-lovers a wide selection of world-renowned tea. Combining tea and various styles of refined tea accessories, Fang Gourmet Tea is committed to the promotion of the spirit of teaism. Promoting physical and spiritual wellness in daily life, Fang Gourmet Tea invites you to experience the unity of tea and Zen and to fulfill the unlimited sensation of tea.

There’s nothing like a good bowl of hot soup to warm you up and fill you up at the same time.  Hearty Vegetable, Chicken Noodle, Beef, Tomato, Seafood and many, many more.  There are plenty of good off the shelf soups but the best are ones you make yourself so here is a Soup Recipe Website to get you started.

Check it out.  http://souprecipe.org/

Tommy Conwell from Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers will be doing a solo acoustic concert on Sunday Evening, 9/19  starting at 7:30.

This is a ticketed show and you can get tickets on the Coffee Works website.

Coffee Works is BYOB friendly and the kitchen will be offering their full menu during the show.  Coffee, Tea, Iced Drinks, smoothies and other beverages also available.

www.coffee-works.com

ANYONE CAN LEARN TO RECOGNIZE AN EXCELLENT ITALIAN EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL!

A 1996 study by the FDA found that 96% of the olive oils they tested, while being labeled 100%, had been diluted with other oils. A study in Italy found that only 40% of the brands labeled “extra virgin” actually met those standards. Italy produces 400,000 tons of olive oil for domestic consumption, but 750,000 are sold. The difference is made up with highly refined nut and seed oils.

If you want to find healthy and high-quality olive oil, you should focus on some very important things before heading to your local gourmet store to buy a bottle:

What should I read on the label? One of the most significant pieces of information is the date of harvest together with the expiration date. Did you know that olive oil loses fruitiness and flavor as it ages and after maximum two years from the harvest it will be oxidized and rancid? Toss out and replace bottles which you have had for over a year and a half.

The importance of packaging. A dark bottle, a bottle wrapped in foil, a bottle packaged in cardboard or wooden box is a MUST to preserve the quality because it must be kept away from direct light whenever possible.

Is the color important? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Official tasters always use dark glasses so that their sense is not influenced by the color. Many times oils are chemically manipulated to be greener because customers believe that greener oil is better. This is just not true!

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/cooking-tips-articles/choosing-the-right-olive-oil-2676406.html

About the Author

As you may have guessed, we are seriously passionate about food, and especially about olive oil. As Italians, we were raised on it and probably have rarely gone without it on a daily basis. It is our Golden Nectar. It was drizzled into our first “pappe” (mushy baby meals), spiced to top our pizzas, passed around the table to dress our salads, rubbed liberally on every roast, poured generously into every sauce, used in lieu of butter in our favorite sweets – we’ve even seen our grandmothers condition their hair with the olive oil sitting in the kitchen cupboard!

One of the more intriguing aspects of bourbon’s revival is the way in which its stubborn old guardians have been proved right. None more so than Wild Turkey’s Jimmy Russell. A glance at the Wild Turkey distillery confirms that this place doesn’t abide by convention.

As other firms are tidying up their plants, the iron-clad, black-painted Wild Turkey sits teetering on the brink of a gorge, steam rattling out of various chimneys. It is one of those places which feels alive, as if the plant is humming with the measured rhythm of the staff. And, overseeing it all, is the avuncular Jimmy.

Take a walk with Jimmy through his distillery – it may be owned by Pernod-Ricard, but this is Jimmy’s place – and it comes alive. The swirl and changing colours of the ferment; the wheeze, hiss and whistle of the still – these are not inanimate functions, but part and parcel of a creative, living process.

No surprise, then, that he’s a firm believer in the human touch. ‘People are one of the most important things in making bourbon,’ he says. ‘It’s people who are doing the work here, people with generations of experience. All these proud people feel that Wild Turkey is part of them’.

He talks of understanding the meaning in the weird music of the still. ‘You have to have a stillman there, watching and listening to it. The sound tells him what is going on. We can hear a funny noise and know what’s happening. You can’t have that hands-on control with machines’.

Jimmy is no technocrat. His pride in his distillery and his whiskey springs from the heart. ‘There are things which you cannot prove scientifically. You can’t prove why copper works better than stainless steel, but you sure can taste the difference. So, for me, making whiskey is a craftsman’s process, an artistic process if you like. That artistic element is coming back as bourbon’s image improves, and small batch and single barrel brands appear. People are coming back to an old-fashioned way of making whiskey and old-fashioned flavours’.

This belief in flavour is a crucial factor in making Jimmy’s the tastiest bourbon of all. “Old-fashioned’ is often used in a derogatory sense, but when distillers such as Jimmy Russell use the term, they’re talking of a style of bourbon made before the ‘light is right’ brigade began to throttle the industry to death.

These days, people like him have been vindicated, as the whisky-drinking world (re)discovers flavour and complexity. They wanted us to go lighter and lighter, but we never did change,’ he smiles. ‘You’ll see more and more flavoursome, top-end bourbons in the future: but we didn’t have to change anything, we were already there!’

Everything in the production of Wild Turkey is done to maximize flavour. The mashbill is heavy on rye and barley malt, it’s distilled to a lower proof than any other bourbon and aged for longer than average. Jimmy also insists on using ‘the old, natural ageing process’, by rotating the barrels in the warehouses – taking the barrels from the hot top floors and replacing them with those that have started on the cool lower floors.

It gives a more even maturation profile for the Wild Turkey brands, though it’s the middle floors which provide the whiskeys that go into the small batch Rare Breed and single barrel Kentucky Spirit.

Superb though they are, it’s Wild Turkey 101° proof, 8-year-old which defines top-end bourbon. Uncompromising yet charming (like Jimmy himself), the fact that Hunter S. Thompson rates it as his favourite bourbon is no surprise, and speaks volumes about what to expect.

About the Author

Dominic Milner is a well known cyber chef with over ten years experience in the catering industry. Learn how to cook today with his top collection of online free recipes! Whether you want to cook up a meal for the family or bake with the kids he has the recipes for you.

(ArticlesBase SC #2366960)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – Wild Turkey American Whisky

Like everyone else, if you are wondering what makes the Texas barbecues so special, I will tell you that it is almost everything. If you go on to make a list, the whole lot will feature in it – right from seasoning to cooking and smoking to presentation. Above all, you will require patience! If you falter there, you will spoil the barbecue.

To start with, we will be mentioning the cooking process. Texas style barbecue is not cooked in the standard grilling process. While BBQs in general are cooked over searing heat, the secret to grilling (rather smoking) melting soft and succulent Texan barbecues is to cook them slowly over low temperature and indirect heat. The lower the temperature (say, between 200-250 degree F) of the pit/grill, the lesser will be the moisture-loss and so the piece of meat will not get dry. Moreover, the steady and low heat will thoroughly cure the brisket, causing the collagen as well as connective tissues to break down and add to the tenderness of the meat. In fact, it is this prolonged process of cooking (around 6/7 hours) which renders even unusual and more difficult cuts like a brisket, shoulder or ribs utterly delicious.

Adding to this lusciousness, this deliciousness of the Texan style barbecues is the frequent use of mop sauce. After the meat has been smoke treated, say for the initial 2/3 hours, it is basted with a mop sauce containing bacon, beef broth, lemon, pepper, onions, etc. and turned every 30 minutes for another 3 to 4 hours.

The flavor is the other specialty, the ‘tang’ factor of a Texas style barbecue. Both seasoning and hardwood smoke contribute to the unusual flavor of Texan barbecues. Texans prefer dry rubs containing black pepper, cumin, garlic, red pepper, salt, sugar, etc. in powered form. People even use Marinades. There are lots of good dry rubs and marinades available in the market, which penetrates into the meat-cut when left overnight, tenderizing it and making it flavorsome.

Smoke from the hardwoods such as mesquite, pecan, hickory and fruitwoods give the Texan bar-b-qs a typical sweet flavor. Used with charcoal, they increase the food value of Texan BBQs. The much talked-about reddish colored smoke-ring that forms around the internal edge of the meat as a result of a chemical reaction between smoke and air (nitrogen) is another specialty of Texan style barbeques; it is usually considered that the bigger the ring, the greater is its penetrating power and consequently stronger favorable effects on health.

This speaks for the taste and health benefits of the Texan style barbecue, but what about its looks! Well, you can give an appetizing look to your Texas style barbecue by slicing each piece across the grain of the meat. Now, when you serve the Texas barbecues, your guests will be eager to enjoy the well-cooked aroma of the steaming barbeque cuts and will gather around the dining table to bite into the savory, succulent Texas BBQ.

Author: Reinaldo Finch

Want to find out about carbs in carrots and carrot allergy? Get tips from the Benefits Of Carrots website.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Texas Style Barbecue For Everyone