During the Middle Ages, people in England and France held a belief that birds started to look for their mate from February 14. This popular notion further helped to link Valentine’s Day – celebrated in the middle of the February, with love and romance.
Over the period of time, St Valentine became the patron saint of lovers and they began to celebrate Valentine’s Day as a day of romance by exchanging love notes and simple gifts such as flower.
Valentine’s Day – the popular festival of love and romances traces its origin to ancient Roman festival and has not been created by card companies as some people believe it to be.
The story goes that during the reign of Emperor Claudius II Rome was involved in several bloody and unpopular campaigns. Claudius found it tough to get soldiers and felt the reason was men did not join army because they did not wish to leave their wives and families. As a result Claudius cancelled all marriages and engagements in Rome.
A romantic at heart priest of Rome Saint Valentine defied Claudius’s unjustified order. Along with Saint Marius, St Valentine secretly married couples. When his defiance was discovered, Valentine was brutally beaten and put to death on February 14, about 270 AD. After his death Valentine was named a Saint.
Another popular version of the legend states that while in prison Valentine or Valentinus fell in love with jailer’s daughter who visited him during confinement. Before his death Valentine wrote a farewell letter to his sweetheart from the jail and signed ‘From your Valentine’. The expression became quite popular amongst love struck and is still very much in vogue.
Good news for those who love wine and chocolate is that wine and chocolate complement each other. What might sound at first like an unlikely marriage is quite a harmonious one – with a bit of pre-marital counseling.
As with foods, there are many kinds of chocolate preparations with different flavour profiles; so no one wine is a universal match. While that creates a challenge to find the perfect suitor for a box of assorted bonbons; it also makes it fun to seek your favorite pairings, and test on an ongoing basis which combinations you prefer.
In general, dark and bittersweet chocolates go best with stronger red wines while milk and white chocolates paired better with lighter reds and sweeter white wines. The perfect pairing balances sweetness, fruitiness, and acidity—and your own flavour preferences, of course.
Most of the time, Champagne and chocolate don’t pair well. Against the sweetness of the chocolate, Champagne appears tart; even the secs and demi-secs (sweet Champagnes) are too delicate to stand up to the cocoa butter mouthfeel of chocolate. Save the Champagne for fresh strawberries.
Similarly, Rieslings, Chenin Blancs, and Sauternes lack the right structure to pair with rich chocolate. They do, however, pair with white chocolate.
One prominent sweet wine that does have the balance to pair splendidly is Muscat or Moscato.
Another ideal pairing is fortified wine like Port.
Some experts don’t believe in drinking dry red wines with chocolate. Some disagree, as long as it is a wine with straightforward, strong notes—not too dry, too tannic, or too astringent. Try it and form your own opinions. The cocoa butter in the chocolate mellows out the tannins and astringency; and fine dark chocolate has enough complexity to hold its own with most reds.
Everyone has their own criteria for choosing their favourite Restaurant. It can be the food, the locations, the wine list, the service, the surroundings, the general ambience and of course the price?
I think a great restaurant must first have consistently good tasting food. This applies to all kind of restaurants, from the local cheap restaurant to the super grand ones.
The second thing that makes a restaurant great is good service, and all the things good service entails. If it has good food and good service the battle is almost won.
If you have these two aspects the rest like the ambiance, the wine lists, scenery, famous fellow guests and good value are added bonuses. These added bonuses are usually the features that will determine how frequently customers visit the restaurant.
Thus , a restaurant must get the basics right to start to draw regulars.
I am all for new marketing ideas but Holiday Inn has maybe gone too far by offering a “human bed warming service”.
Holiday Inn, operator of over 4,000 hotels worldwide, will begin to offer a free five-minute “human bed warming service” at it’s London Kensington hotel throughout next week.
If requested, a willing member of hotel staff will jump in your bed, dressed head to foot in an all-in-one sleeper suit, until your nightly chamber warms up.
“Like having a giant hot water bottle in your bed” is how Holiday Inn spokeswoman Jane Bednall described the idea.
Dr Chris Idzikowski, director of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, said the idea could help people get off to sleep.
He said: “There’s plenty of scientific evidence to show that sleep starts at the beginning of the night when body temperature starts to drop.
“A warm bed – approximately 20 to 24C – is a good way to start this process whereas a cold bed would inhibit sleep.
“Holiday Inn’s new bed warmers service should help people achieve a good night’s sleep especially as it’s taking much longer for them to warm up when they come in from the snow.”
Snacks and snacking has sunk many diets but there is hope. Snacks are a terrific way to satisfy your hunger and speed up your metabolism but you need to snack right.
It’s so much easier to eat on the go, but snacking can do major calorie damage to your system. Luckily, it’s possible to treat yourself to snacks and remain healthy
“Snacks are a terrific way to satisfy your hunger and speed up your metabolism,” says nutritionist Bev Croock. But it’s important to pay attention to what you eat: stay away from foods that are high in calories and saturated fats.
“Let no more than three hours pass between meals or snacks,” Croock says. “This way, you’ll ensure a constant supply of glucose to your body’s cells. More energy and fewer cravings for sugary and fatty foods will be your reward.”
Croock has a few quick and healthy snack ideas:
- Apple or banana with almond butter
- Cottage cheese mixed with yogurt, berries and walnuts or pecan nuts
- Hard-boiled eggs with carrot and celery sticks and hummus
- Celery sticks with organic peanut butter (a classic quick snack)
- Avocado slices wrapped in deli turkey breast
- A piece of sprouted grain or whole grain toast with nut butter and berries
- Freshly sliced pineapple with a handful of macadamia nuts
- A bowl of blueberries mixed with raw almonds
- Cottage cheese with cinnamon, apple slices and walnuts
Snacking strategies
Here’s how to ensure healthy snacking becomes a part of your dietary routine:
- Prepare your snacks in advance
- Keep your snacks with you
- Give yourself a variety of choices
- Satisfy cravings with healthy alternatives
- Read serving size information
Some US restaurateurs have elected to drop the corkage fees to attract customers in a climate that has restaurants competing for diners’ attention. This is one thing you can thank the recession for. It remains to be seen if South African restaurants follow this trend.
Diners, of course, are in favour of having the fees eliminated but for some restaurants losing the revenue from corkage can make a real difference in the bottom line and there is also the hope that the fee discourages some customers from the practice. These days restaurants need every last dollar they can get and selling alcohol is a big part of that.
The first trailer for Sex and the City 2 is upon us, and it’s full of the bling, runway fashions, and over-the-top flavah we’ve come to expect … plus a whole desert twist.
The movie’s US release date is 28 May and hopefully the South African release will be soon after. …Read more
Women suffer more nightmares than men because they find it harder to switch off their emotions at the end of the day, research has found.
Women carry their worries into their dreams, and continue to process emotional concerns while they are asleep, according to the study.
The findings came from a study at the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol.
When asked to record their most recent dream, 19 per cent of male students reported having a nightmare compared to 34 per cent of women. Their emotions were recorded in diaries.
Jennifer Parker, a psychology lecturer at the university, who carried out the study over five years, said it was the first to examine the difference between women’s and men’s nightmares.
She said: “From our results it appears that men and women differ in the frequency of nightmares – women have more – and women perceive those nightmares to be more emotionally intense.”
Her work found women’s nightmares could be divided into three categories, being chased or life threatened, losing a loved one, or confused dreams.
Other research found women’s dreams contained more family members, more negative emotion, more indoor settings and less aggression than men’s dreams.
