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Button Badges
Button Badges are easily caught by the eye, by many people when worn. A simple badge can display your message in either a simple one colour or various colours. It is very inexpensive to do, so you can give them away with very little cost to you. It is a fantastic way to get your advert or message across whether it`s for charity events, conferences or business use. 2`5mm button badges are ideal for all of the following; music promotions, fundraising campaigns and corporate promotions. You can easily access ideas from using an internet badge store. Many will give you a sample badge free of charge. The people who receive your badge will usually keep it for length of time to furthering your advertising potential. Children love badges so they would be great at a party to make it much more unique. Buying on the web can save you money as there are no costly out goings for an internet store. Take a peek on line to shop for your Button Badges and look at the current offers available. Advertising your shop, party, event or products could not be any easier. It has proven to be a very popular way of advertising of late as it is very cost effective way to get your message across to Joe public.

Personalised Baby Blanket
How can you express your happiness to your friends if they have just given birth to a new baby? A large bottle of champagne might go down well with the happy couple and a thoughtful present for the little one will also be warmly received. Unique types of presents are always the best and if you can personalise the present somehow then so much for the better. Ranges of personalised presents exist for tiny babies and they all look utterly adorable. Items like a Personalised Baby Blanket can keep tiny Timmy or little Lucy snug and warm on the coldest of winter nights. Reversible soft fleece blankets can be bought through retailers and they can be embroidered with the baby`s name and date of birth. Both pink and blue blankets can be purchased to cater for little girls or boys and cute little characters are embroidered into the corners. On a pink or light pink Personalised Baby Blanket you might find some cheeky little bunnies. The blue blankets might have teddies in the corner or perhaps a cute little dinosaur. You can show your friends how delighted you are for their new arrival by giving them a pretty and practical Personalised Baby Blanket to keep their little one warm throughout the day or night.

Newsflash: there is a world beyond olive oil.

Look, I like olive oil as much as the next person and I use it extensively in my cooking. However there are alternatives and there are very good reasons for using some of them. But let?s just stay with olive oil for a second or two longer.

How often have you seen this statement in a recipe; ?use the best olive oil you can afford.?

Well I?m here to tell you that is nonsense. The quality of olive oil is not determined by its price, nor by its fancy packaging. It?s determined by its flavor and what you propose using it for.

For example, while extra virgin olive oil is perfect for salads, there is absolutely no point in using it for high temperature cooking. When heated beyond a certain point it loses its flavor and most of its characteristics, although not its nutritional value. You might just as well use the home brand oil of the store you?re shopping in.

What?s more, the store?s own brand of extra virgin olive oil will be every bit as good as those costing many dollars more. I never buy anything else, and I have yet to come across anyone who can tell the difference. Just don?t let them see the bottle.

Adding flavor

I mentioned before that with high temperature cooking, such as frying, olive oil quickly loses its flavor. Fortunately, all fats are not the same and the best way to overcome this problem is to mix the olive oil with something else.

You could use sesame oil for example, or add a knob of butter which will not burn because, although the oil reaches its smoking point at a higher temperature than animal fats, the overall cooking temperature will be reduced by the butter.

This is not always a disadvantage and I frequently use butter instead of oil for much of the cooking I do. However I use clarified butter, or ?Ghee?, which is simply the Asian form of clarified butter and is usually sold in tins.

Clarified butter is butter with the milk solids removed so that it can be heated to a high temperature without burning. It?s also much better for you than the full fat alternative.

You can make it yourself simply by bringing ordinary butter to the boil, skimming off the solids which rise to the surface and then filtering the remainder. But for the life of me I cannot imagine why you would want to do that when you can buy a tin of it that will just about last for ever if kept in the fridge.

The great thing about using Ghee is that it retains its flavor no matter what temperature you cook it at without overpowering the rest of the ingredients.

Dangerous liaisons

Despite what the recipes may tell you, olive oil is worse than useless when used in egg liaison sauces. It makes them taste bitter.

For things like mayonnaise and hollandaise sauce, I invariably use grape seed oil. I find this has a light, clean finish and produces perfect results every time. Corn oil and canola, which is called rape-seed oil in Britain, tend to be rather too oily and I also find them very bland.

As a matter of fact, I never cook with either of them. Even my deep fat frying is done with olive oil. Which brings me to another point.

Fats and oils in cooking are mainly used for either deep or shallow frying. In both cases the food that results, with just a few exceptions such as omelets, should be crisp and fat free. The main reason this doesn?t happen is because the fat was not able to get hot enough before the food was added.

Don?t let this happen to you. Heat your frying pan until it begins to smoke. Then remove it from the heat for a minute before adding food. Do the same with your wok, and make sure that your deep fat fryer has reached full temperature before you even think about adding the tiniest morsel.

If you have any trouble judging the correct temperature, drop a small scrap of fresh bread into the fat and see what it does. It should sizzle immediately and crisp up in a couple of seconds.

Remember that all fats are not the same. Refined oils such as sunflower, peanut and corn are best for frying because they reach a smoke point of 450�F, while olive oil ? which is what I use for general cooking ? comes in at 410�F.

To give you some idea of the difference in cooking temperatures, ordinary butter has a smoke point of around 300�F.

One more point. Don?t try to cook too much food at once. If you do, you will find that the temperature will drop rapidly, the food will shed water and instead of frying your chicken or whatever, you will stew it.

Better by far to cook small amounts at a time, allowing the oil to reheat between each batch. Do this, and you will avoid the limp vegetables and soggy chips (French fries) that bedevil so many home cooks.

For more information about this article and/or the author visit http://thecoolcook.com

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