Having a green restaurant makes sense for the perception of your paying customers, but it can actually be quite taxing on your budget in its initial stages. Consumers love to see companies that are putting in the effort to go green and so you will certainly gain customers just from making the effort to create a more eco-friendly environment. However, when a business owner decides to make this conversion it can be quite overwhelming and it can often involve heavy initial outlays of capital which will require you to save money in other areas.

An example of an initial cost that can eventually save you money, but can be quite costly to bankroll is switching to energy efficient appliances. There are a number of benefits to making the switch to energy efficient appliances. Not only will you save the environment but you will also save money in the long run.

However buying all new appliances is obviously a very big investment.

The same goes for creating eco-friendly bathrooms – buying new toilets that use less water, as well as automatic faucets and hand dryers is a big initial investment.

So how can you save money when opening or remodeling your restaurant to free up some cash for environmental improvements? Save money on design by buying affordable restaurant booths.

Restaurant booths, which sell for as low as $175 on online restaurant furniture websites, have a number of revenue increasing and cost reducing benefits that will save money that you can eventually put into greening your restaurant.

Restaurant booths allow you to increase your restaurant’s capacity by seating more people. As any restaurateur knows, being able to fit as many people in the restaurant as possible is a massive part of success.

Restaurant booths can also help you attract customers that might otherwise not frequent your establishment. Families with children appreciate the comfort and privacy that a booth provides.

Booths are easily cleaned, requiring less staff to maintain them, which is an additional source of savings.

So, while every restaurateur has the admirable desire to run an eco-friendly restaurant, not everyone can afford to make the necessary initial investment to bring that about. By saving money and increasing revenues with restaurant booths, businesses can help get their dream of a green restaurant off the ground.

Danielle Archer is part of a team that will gladly share with all restaurateurs (new and established) the accumulated knowledge of years in the restaurant furniture  business by providing them with tips and advice in all aspects of running a successful establishment.

Katie shares two of her new recipes for salads that can be used this spring and summer. Her ‘Potato with Kale’ salad’ has abundant potassium and vitamin C in each serving. It comes with Walnuts, Greek yogurt and gorgonzola and tastes really nice.

Katie’s potato salad for spring is also a unique combination of red potatoes, arugula, and baby peas that have been grilled. Top that with a dash of lemon juice, mix with Dijon mustard and don’t forget to sprinkle it with freshly chopped mint leaves.

Do you want to more about these healthy recipes and goodness of potato from Katie? Visit USPB’s Facebook page on 16th April, Tuesday at 5pm PST when Katie comes on live.
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So, how do you make spaghetti? There is a wide range of spaghetti meals that you can choose from; this depends on your preference. Among the best and the most delicious is spaghetti Bolognese. Try it out today and you will surely love it.

Here is a recipe that you can use to make it from the comfort of your kitchen:

Ingredients:

• A three hundred and seventy five gram spaghetti
• About four hundred grams of tomatoes.
• One table spoon of finely shredded fresh basil.
• Two tea spoons of fresh oregano.
• A quarter a cup of beef stock.
• Half tea spoon of sugar.
• Half a cup of tomato paste.
• Half a cup of dry red wine.
• One table spoon of olive oil.
• Half a kilogram of minced beef
• One clove of crushed garlic.
• One finely chopped medium sized brown onion.
• Vegetable oil

How to prepare the meal:

• Heat the vegetable oil pan under medium high heat.
• As soon as it is hot enough, add the crushed onion and garlic into the pan and stir them until they are soft.
• Add all the beef into the pan and fry it while stirring until it turns brown.
• Meanwhile, as the beef cooks, put the tomatoes in a potato crusher and crush them.
• In the pan, add the tomato paste to the beef and stir.
• The tomato paste should be followed with the sugar, wine and the stock and finally add the tomato paste into the mixture and stir until everything mixes perfectly.
• Once they start boiling altogether, reduce the heat and cover the pan. You should do so as to allow the ingredients in the pan to simmer for about thirty minutes.
• As this is cooking, boil some water in a separate pan.
• When it perfectly boils, add all the spaghetti.
• Allow them to boil until they are completely tender.
• By the time this happens, you will notice that the pan will still have water within it. Do not wait for this water to evaporate away, rather you should drain it yourself and serve the spaghetti.
• On top of the spaghetti, put the beef sauce after it has fully cooked.
• You can now enjoy the spaghetti bologna with your guests!

If you are someone who just can’t get your day off on the right foot without a great cup of coffee then you need to know about Kona single serve K-Cup® coffee – it’s the best. You may have seen a single serve or on demand coffee maker in a fancy gourmet cookware store or in a professional office and they likely seemed way too sophisticated and expensive for home use but that’s simply not the case. When you average out the cost of Tassimo® or similar brand coffee discs the price per cup for a cup of truly great gourmet coffee is mere pennies.

The beauty of an on demand coffee maker is that you brew only what you want at the exact moment you need it so there is no waste – it’s far more economical to brew only what you will consume than it is to toss a pot of leftover or burned coffee that has sat on the warmer too long. With an on demand coffee maker there is no warmer to worry about – it brews directly into your cup or mug so there is no pot to clean or carafe to break.

With a single serve coffee maker the coffee is always fresh – you don’t need to buy a pound and work your way through it before it gets stale because each cup of coffee is brewed from an individually sealed insert, pod or packet which is opened only at the moment of brewing. This is especially handy when one person drinks regular coffee and another prefers a flavored coffee or decaffeinated coffee – everyone can get what they want with no waste and no leftover coffee.

Most brands of on demand coffee makers offer a large portfolio of coffee blends roasts and flavors so you have plenty to choose from.

Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook Off is all set to begin with its second season. Food Network icon Rachael Ray and popular restaurateur and author of famous, best-selling cookbook Guy Fieri are all set to mentor and coach the eight celebrity participants. Every contestant plays for a particular charity.

Eight celebrity contestants are divided into two teams, four in each. Each of the team is lead by these two iconic chefs Rachael Ray and Guy Fieri. The celebrity contestants participating in this season include popular names like Gilbert Gottfried, Chilli, Cornelia Guest, Dean McDermott, Hines Ward, Kathy Najimy, Carnie Wilson and Johny Weir. As per the format of the game, te losing team will have to put two bottom-rated contestants from their team to face-off against each other in an elimination round. They compete against each other in a blind tasting elimination challenge where the losing contestant goes home. This goes on for six weeks, with one contestant getting eliminated every week.

The two teams face off at the west coast in some intense challenges working hard, fighting and laughing along the way. In the sixth week, one winner will be chosen who will join hands with Lou Diamond Phillips, winner of the first season of the show. In addition, the winning contestant will be awarded with $50,000 as prize which goes to the charity chosen by the winner in the beginning. Second season gets started on January 6, 2013, Sunday, at 9 PM.

This post is part of our media pack for Food Network Rachael vs Guy Celebrity Cook Off.

Across the UK, they are available in your local supermarket every single day of the year. The majority of people that put a simple salad together always include cucumber with tomato, lettuce and perhaps onions. However, while you may have seen cucumber used as a beauty trick, mostly to people who like to lessen the puffiness around their eyes, you can search the Internet and find hundreds of healthy reasons why you should always keep a cucumber available – in your vegetable tray.

The benefits of greenhouse grown cucumbers

If you were to eat a full cup of sliced cucumbers, you would only have consumed around 20 calories. Two of the biggest dangers to health are consuming the wrong cholesterol and too much sodium. Luckily, cucumbers don’t contain either of these and are completely fat-free.

Cucumbers are easy to grow in your greenhouse. It doesn’t really matter what size or shape they become. They should be harvested when they’re young when they’re sweet and tender. Fortunately, for children, you can eat their seeds quite easily.

Most people eat cucumbers raw and it is common to see them as a vegetable dip, or should we say a fruit dip, often with high calorie counted sauces, instantly negating the value of eating good food that is suitable for growing in a greenhouse.

Cucumbers are packed with nutrients, even though they are mostly made of water and are great as a cool and rehydrating snack. The peel on the outside, which is softer the most fruits, contains vitamin A and vitamin C. If you’ve organically grown your cucumbers in your own greenhouse, your children will be exceptionally pleased to take them to school as a great snack.

Growing your own cucumbers

Growing cucumbers in your own glass greenhouses gives you the opportunity to have organic produce available 12 months of the year. During the summer months, between May and June, you can sow cucumbers outside, directly into your garden, but you need a greenhouse to be able to grow cucumbers for the rest of the year.

When you grow cucumbers in glass greenhouses you have to make sure that the small sap sucking insect, whitefly, is kept away from your cucumbers. Environmentally friendly pesticides will keep the whitefly away from your greenhouse.

You will need to learn about the cucumber mosaic virus as it slows down the growth of your plants and can discolour your cucumbers, even if they do manage to appear. Along with mildew, which is a white fungal growth that you might see on or around your cucumber, you’ll need to use the best and safest of pesticides to ensure good growth for your food.

Although cucumbers originally came from India, they spread around the world over 400 years ago. They’re good for your heart and good for your skin, so it’s great news that they taste so good when they are organically growing in a greenhouse down the bottom of your garden.

When you are cooking in your kitchen, you immediately wipe up any excess mess and try to keep the kitchen looking like a showroom unit. Even these minor cleans keep the cooker looking spotless, but you will also have to complete a major clean in your kitchen from time to time. Why is it, therefore, that your grill rarely gets clean and when it does, it’s a very quick clean that doesn’t remove the residue of food and grime from your BBQs?

Before you jump up and down and say that you always clean your charcoal barbecue after every use, do you mean that the grate is cleaned after every use? As you will have found out, if you don’t clean the grate properly, food will stick to your grill and this will cause you severe aggravation as you try to prise stakes and fish from your BBQs. Fortunately, there are a lot of good products available for cleaning your grate including a full range of stiff wire brushes. If you clean the grate just after you finish cooking, rather than just before you are going to begin the cooking process, it will be much easier to clean food and grease particles from your BBQs. Some grates will require oil from a paper towel occasionally to keep them in excellent condition and also to make sure that the metal does begin to rust.

Do you use a charcoal barbecue?

Instead of cleaning out your charcoal barbecue after every use, many people only dump the ashes safely. Your charcoal barbecue will last you much longer if you clean the grate, removing all of the ashes and any cooked on foods. If you don’t take this action, your next barbecue may provide an excess of smoke and some bad flavouring to your food.

Your charcoal barbecue can be expertly cleaned with hot soapy water. If you scrape away any of the surface during the cleaning process, you should prevent rust by using a can of grill safe paint from your hardware store to bring your unit back to order.

Cleaning gas barbecues

As with charcoal barbecues, you need to clean your gas barbecues after every use and despite wishing you could run down the yellow brick road after a great BBQ, a gas barbecue won’t clean itself.

A gas barbecue usually has more surfaces for you to clean because they are more helpful in providing places to hold food warm and position your tools and plates while you’re waiting for the food to cook. All of these areas can have food and oil dripped on to them so you need to be especially careful to maintain your gas barbecue properly so that it will last longer and less people are likely to get food poisoning from one of your BBQs.

You will need to pay particular attention to keep the burners of your gas barbecue, completely clear and clean. If you don’t keep the burners in pristine condition, your cooking unit will be less effective and you may end up having to replace parts of your gas barbecue, when simple cleaning would have saved you the expense.

It’s fait to say that most people would rather do the cooking than the cleaning, but if you are to maintain a good working BBQ unit, then you must apply yourself equally to both parts of the process.

The kitchen is a great place for kids to indulge their imagination and explore the world. Let them imagine the fabulous journeys taken by each of the ingredients – lemon juice from the shores of the Mediterranean, sugar from the sultry Caribbean, and spices from secret islands in the distant Orient. A well stocked kitchen is a treasure trove of engrossing stories from all over the world.

Sneak in some enjoyable lessons as they weigh out the flour and sugar, then pretend not to see as they lick the caster sugar off their fingers. Long, twirling ribbons of peel make an engaging game of peeling the Bramley apples. Those little fingers will just love working rich Anchor butter through the flour to make the crumbly topping, and the spicy scents of ginger and cinnamon can carry anyone away on a tropical fantasy. It won’t be long before the children are totally absorbed, and the damp autumn weather is forgotten.

Kitchen time with the kids is time well spent. We all know deep down that shared experiences mean so much more to our youngsters than hours whiled away before the television or video games. It’s a time to talk, to play together, and to pass on valuable skills that will stand them in good stead for a lifetime. At the end of it all there is a sense of pride when the crumble is served and the cream or custard is poured, and they can say ‘We made that’.

Always remember whilst you are teaching your kids how to cook, you’re not just baking a dessert, you’re baking a family.

This is definitely the best time to take a brief break from our daily grind and throw a party for your loved ones and friends as your home is filled with the familiar scent of autumn. And you don’t really have to spend much of your time or exert too much effort. You can easily get things going by having the new Pillsbury Supreme Collection Cake Mixes as party items. It is an exciting combination of the traditional Bundt pan and classic flavors. These premium cake mixes from Pillsbury come in 3 different varieties and each is loaded with mouthwatering filling. These include the Apple Spice, which comes with sweet apple filling; Red Velvet, which comes with cream cheese filling; and Fudge Truffle, which comes with rich fudge filling. The suggested retail price of the Pillsbury Supreme Collection Cake Mixes is pegged at $2.99.

And for the coming Halloween Season, Pillsbury is your perfect companion. Go great guns by throwing a party that your family and friends will truly love. Include in your party items the new Pillsbury Funfetti Halloween Brownie Pop Kit. The Brownie Pop kit from Pillsbury comes with candy bits and pop sticks, cocoa confectionary wagers and brownie mix. The suggested retail price of the party item is pegged at $3.49.

So, when you are in a partying mood and you want it to be sweet and fun, then there is no better way to go than by having the new Pillsbury® seasonal varieties and baking kits.

Domino’s Pizza, a global leader in making and delivering Pizza, has never been this excited in its last three years since the launch of hand-tossed pizza in later 2009. With the roll out of Handmade Pan Pizza Domino’s intends to deliver better value to pizza lovers. Launch of handmade Pan Pizza is a move ahead in the same vision. It has launched pan pizza at promotional price of $7.99, which will be a perfect medium sized piece and will be available across all of its 5000 restaurants in the United States.

Pan Pizza has Double Number of Calories

In contrast to traditional pizza verities of Domino’s, Pan Pizza is high in nutritional value. Approximate 12” in size, this delectable variety is going to have 2420 calories as opposed to its traditional thin crust pepperoni pizza which has just 910 calories. But as has been the precedent by taste seekers, calories come second when customers are promised mouth watering stuff!

One of the key features of Domino’s handmade Pan Pizza is that the ingredients used to make it will be purely fresh. This would be made of never frozen fresh dough. Besides, newly launched Pan Pizza would have double layers of cheese and toppings with additional nutritional value.

Sharing his vision on the new launch of Pan Pizza, Patrick Doyle, CEO of Domino’s Pizza, said, “There is a standard for pan pizza which we recognize could be better”. He further emphasized the customer’s preference for pizza with thick crust and said the Handmade Pan Pizza with its crispy buttery taste is going to deliver better value for pizza lovers.