The time for BBQs & outdoor living is upon us. In this short article I’ve gathered together 20 important tips to help you enjoy to the full your outdoor cooking.

1. When cooking outdoors you have to make a choice, gas or charcoal? Chose gas if prefer cleanliness, control & convenience and charcoal if you love those wonderful flavors that seep into your food that come from the smoke. But remember, if charcoal is your choice never use lighter fuels, start the fire naturally or you’ll taste ugly chemical smells,regardless of how long you wait before starting cooking!

2. Ask yourself, are you making an investment for the future when buying your outdoor cooking equipment? Cheap equipment just won’t last and it will disappoint! Make it an investment, go for quality.

3. Go for the size of burner, measured in its BTU output, that meets your cooking needs; don’t go too small; large stockpots require powerful burners;

4. Think ‘practicality’ when choosing your outdoor cooking equipment. Portable grills are great but not for a large family gathering! Often when buying its far better value to select a kit, such as turkey fryer kit, rather than buying the individual components separately.

You won’t go wrong cooking with cast iron cookware; its one of the very best materials for cooking outdoors. So why is this?

1. Comparatively speaking cast iron is inexpensive; especially when its considered how long it lasts. Well cared for your grandchildren will be using your pans and your skillets and in turn will be passing it on to theirs;

2. Cast iron cookware is absolutely great as a cooking medium as it has near perfect heat conduction & heat retention; it heats evenly & consistently without heat spots;

3. Nearly all types of food can be cooked in, or on, cast iron cookware; its perfect as a multi- purpose utensil;

4. It is really very healthy to cook with cast iron because you can cook fat free! This arises because properly seasoned cast iron cookware is ’stick-free’ and so requires no oil when cooking. [Note: Seasoning is done by filling the cracks small cavities in the pan with grease in a very hot oven. The grease gets baked in and gives an almost perfectly smooth surface on which to cook;

5. Food slides easily and freely in a cast iron cookware.

As you start processing your very own homemade wine, you may want a new batch of fruits to create your own wine with which you have never made wine before. For this with certain fruit, if you dont have a recipe then, you would be very tempted to create and produce your own recipe.

Now if you have been making your own homemade wine for awhile then creating or making your own homemade wine recipes should not be too big of a problem for you. Reason being is you should already know how much sugar is required and how much yeast you should be using depending on the fruit that you are using. Now be aware, there are certain steps and precautions that need to be followed to make sure your homemade wine turns out fantastic.

When you are preparing your homemade wine the first thing you need to consider is the amount of produce you will need. If you have ever made wine before with grapes, it’s important to understand that you can’t use the same amount of berries you would with grapes because depending on the kind of fruit you actually use will depend on the how much the fruits will secrete their produce or juice. Also, keep in mind that the strength of the produce or juice secreted by each different fruit differs

Having your own vegetable patch or fruit garden was once commonplace, but fell out of favor as the food industry become more commercial and supermarkets began to take over. In recent years however, more and more people have started explore growing their own produce again. Here we give 5 reasons why you might consider starting your own kitchen garden.

- Freshness

Fruit and vegetables taste better and are healthier if eaten as soon as possible after picking. Most fruit you buy from supermarkets and the like is picked well before it is properly ripe, to extend shelf life, and this usually has an impact on flavor. Growing your own lets you taste the freshest possible produce as it’s meant to taste.

- Quality

Commercially grown crops are often selected for their high yields, uniform appearance and long shelf lives rather than for quality and taste. When you grow your own, you can concentrate on the quality rather than the economics.

- Price