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The following article was submitted by Linda Miller who writes for Diabetic Cookbook ...

School of Montreal researchers recommend us one good way cashew extract may treat type 2 diabetes.

New research published in the journal Molecular Nutrition and Food Research advises cashew seed extract may play an important role in preventing and treating diabetic issues.

The cashew is a tree in the flowering plant family Anacardiaceae. The plant is indigenous to northeastern Brazil.

Scientists at the College of Montreal and the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon analyzed how cashew products affected the responses of rat liver cells to insulin.

In Canada, over three million Canadians have diabetes and this number is expected to reach 3.7 million by 2020, according to the Canadian Diabetes Association.

In U.S.A, according to the American Diabetes Association, from the 2007 National Diabetes Fact Sheet, there are total 23.6 million children and adults in the United States - 7.8% of the population - have diabetes. 1.6 million new cases of diabetes are diagnosed in people aged 20 years and older each year.

Scientists looked at cashew tree leaves, bark, seeds and apples. They found that only the cashew seed extract increased the absorption of blood sugar by the cells.

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Source: Cashew Extract May Help Prevent Type 2 Diabetes

We've been having loads of food fun recently with Spanish Paella. After experimenting a little on our own, we've thrown a couple of Spanish Paella parties to the delight of friends and family.

It all started a while back when my wife and I were browsing through a charming specialty Spanish food and kitchen store (The Spanish Table - Santa Fe, NM location). We marveled at the rows of tantalizing spanish food products on the shelves, probably over 30 different kinds of Spanish olive oil.

And the impressive display of paella pans. From the smallest 7 inch pans all the way up to the giant paella pans, over 200 inches in diameter for preparing an outdoor paella feast over a propane fired burner.

Note: apparently, there seems to be a contest for the world's largest paella pan. This group in Spain looks like they hold the record for the "Biggest Paella in the World" (with a 32 ton paella pan, 24,000 pounds of chicken, and enough paella for 110,000 people).

We thought it would be fun to try our hand at making Spanish Paella. And or course, a great excuse to buy one of these beautiful paella pans and add to our kitchen collection.

We didn't buy a paella pan that afternoon. But the seed was planted.

Well, just recently (now many years later), we finally got around to it. We started with this Spanish Paella kit that we found at La Tienda, a wonderful specialty Spanish food and kitchen supplier located in Virginia. The paella kit comes with a quality 15 inch stainless steel paella pan and the essential (non-perishable) ingredients for making paella for 6 (more like 8 or 10 people).

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Source: Spanish Paella Food Fest

Are you surprised? Didn't know today (April 30th) is National Oatmeal Cookie Day? That's OK, you're probably not alone. Unless you're really tuned into oatmeal cookies.

It turns out, almost every day of the year is a food holiday of one type or another. Interestingly enough, many food holidays are actually proclaimed by the President of the United States.

For example, our US Congress, by Senate Joint Resolution 193, designated March 6th (in 1984) as "Frozen Food Day", and requested the President, then Ronald Reagan, to issue a proclamation for this occasion.

In Proclamation #5157, President Ronald Reagan declared: "Now, therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim March 6, 1984, as Frozen Food Day, and I call upon the American people to observe such day with appropriate ceremonies and activies". And so it goes ...

Now, you probably won't track down an official proclamation for "National Oatmeal Cookie Day" by a US president. However, this food holiday has been celebrated for many years, and there is plenty of documentation to support that National Oatmeal Cookie Day does really exisit.

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Source: How Will You Celebrate National Oatmeal Cookie Day?

It's that time of year again. The spring harvest in our garden is just around the corner. We've planted the spring vegetable garden and it's still too early for the spring vegetable harvest, but the loquat tree in the backyard is brimming with fruit. It's going to be a bountiful year for loquats.

It's a beautiful tree. And not only is the fruit bright and colorful, it's delicious too! Juicy, sweet and tangy all at once.

The yield this year is terrific. We're experiencing an El Niño this season, so the loquat abundance might have to with the extra rain we've been receiving.

At any rate, we're going to be busy picking fruit this weekend. Besides, if we don't get the fruit off the tree, the birds and the squirrels will have a feast.

In fact, we have a resident squirrel that loves to gorge himself on the loquats every year. He stuffs himself and can barely hold himself up in the tree. And mister squirrel also likes to tell a few other squirrels in the area. Apparently, he doesn't mind sharing his loquat find with the neighborhood.

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Source: Loquat Bounty From The Garden

Almost every family has a collection of family recipes that we want to protect and preserve so that we can pass on our family cooking tradition from one generation to the next. Let's face it, food and cooking is one of the universal ways we connect with our families.

Creating a family cookbook is one of the best ways to capture, preserve and share our special family recipes. If you haven't created your family cookbook yet, you should give this some serious consideration. It's not as difficult as you might think. And your family will truly appreciate this gesture of love.

In fact, with today's powerful online technology and tools like we provide at Family Recipe Central, it's easier than ever to collaborate online with your family members and produce your own family cookbook.

Even more compelling, we offer a unique approach to family cookbook publishing that let's your family cookbook become a living heirloom.

So how can a family cookbook become a living heirloom? Well, first consider the more traditional approach to putting together a family cookbook. It's much more a manual process. It goes something like this ....

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Source: A Family Cookbook Can Be a Living Heirloom

I must admit, we take the cooking and food vocabulary that we use and hear every day for granted. At least, that's the case for me. And so it is for Parmesan as in Parmesan Cheese.

I was playing around with a recipe the other day that called for Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. And I had to pause with a brief pondering question "what's the difference between Parmesan and Parmigiano or Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese"?

It occured to me that I've been buying and using these cheeses for years and I've never stopped to understand the difference. In fact, I've probably been mistaken in my assumption that these are just different names for the same cheese.

Well, to some extent, that may be true, but it's a bit more complicated than that as I've come to learn.

OK, some of you (maybe many of you) are probably saying at this point, this one's pretty obvious. Of course, Parmesan is simply the French version of Parmigiano which is Italian. So are these just the French and Italian language equivalents for the same cheese? Not so fast.

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Source: Is it Parmesan or Parmigiano?

More continous improvements at Family Recipe Central

While some of the adjustments, fixes and enhancements that we make at Family Recipe Central might seem small and insignificant, sometimes these minor improvements make a big difference for our users.

One of the frequent questions submitted to our support team is "how to have duplicate ingredient items" in the ingredients section of a recipe. Seems reasonable enough, but this has been a limitation in our system up until now.

For example, let's say you have a recipe that has two sections, a fish preparation, and a sauce that is served over the fish. You might want your ingredients list to look something like this ...

Ingredients

Fish

• 2 halibut filets
• 1/2 med onion, diced
• 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1 leek, diced

Sauce

• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp fresh ginger, minced
• 2 tbsp rice wine vingegar
• 1/2 tsp sea salt

Previously, the problem that you would bump into has been our limitation on duplicate ingredients. In this case, the sea salt in the Sauce section is flagged as an error because it's a duplicate ingredient entry of the sea salt in the Fish section.

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Source: Recipe Ingredients Feature Improvement

We've just added several new get-started guides all about how to create your family cookbook.

If you're wondering how to use the cookbook and recipe publishing system at Family Recipe Central to create your family cookbook, be sure to see these helpful tutorials ...

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Source: New Family Cookbook How-to Get Started Guide

We've made a few adjustments to the Recipe editing module at Family Recipe Central that our users will want to know about.

Recipe Ingredients - Reordering the Ingredients List

The inability to re-order the items in the recipe ingredients list has been a frustrating limitation on our system. After you put your recipe ingredients in and save the recipe, you may want to change the order of one or more of the ingredients in the list. Worse, if you update an ingredient such as fixing a spelling mistake or rewording the ingredient description, the system will change the order of the updated ingredient in the list, usually moving the item to the end of the list.

We're currently working on an update release that will include a number of enhancements to the recipe ingredients list including a drag-and-drop interface to easily reorder the list.

In the meantime, we've provided an interim solution that makes it possible to reorder the ingredient list.

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Source: Improvements to Recipe Editing and Recipe Ingredients

Pizza is definitely a popular convenience food. And while it may seem easier to have that pizza delivered from your local pizza shop, you may not realize that homemade pizza dough is really not that difficult to prepare.

If you're a pizza fan, nothing quite compares to a fresh, homemade pizza!

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Source: Thin Crust Pizza Dough - Video Step by Step Instruction