If you can’t find a local restaurant selling delicious falafel sandwiches, here’s a video that shows how easy they are to make at home.

And here’s a falafel recipe along with recipes for your choice of tahini sauce, yogurt sauce or garlic sauce.

Made from chickpeas and/or fava beans, garlic, parsley, cilantro, and seasonings, falafel is a vegan food that is an excellent ambassador for how tasty vegan cuisine can be.

Falafel is also dairy-free, cholesterol-free, egg-free, sugar-free, and potentially gluten-free.

The safety of aspartame has been confirmed by regulatory authorities in more than 100 countries, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Health Canada, the European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Food, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization and the World Health Organization.

Studies on the safety of artificial sweeteners are ongoing. As part of a continuing review of scientific studies on aspartame, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has issued a statement on two new studies.

 
Read the full article.

What’s the difference between aspartame (Equal), sucralose (Splenda) and all the other noncaloric or low-calorie sweeteners? Here’s the scoop.

Turn them into iced tea.

Whether it’s black, oolong, green, white or herbal, a tea that’s flat, has too much added flavor or has flavors you don’t like may taste better to you iced. Once chilled, tea takes on a different personality.

So brew another cup and stick it in the fridge. Give it a try—straight or with a squeeze of lemon.

And if you still don’t like it, give it to a friend or neighbor, or add it to the tea at your workplace coffee station.

Your white elephant is someone else’s cup of tea.

Drizzle ice cream with Scotch and serve.
Photo by Elke Dennis | Fotolia.

We anticipated something equally elaborate for dessert. So we raised an eyebrow when he scooped vanilla Häagen-Dazs into dishes and topped each scoop with something that seemed bizarre at the time: a jigger of Scotch.

“Really?” we said.

“It’s delicious,” he replied. “Taste it.”

We did, and promptly discovered the easiest fancy dessert in the world. We often serve it at the end of a big dinner. The “recipe” works equally well with Bourbon.

We also created our own spin: sorbet with a jigger of gin (use a very aromatic style such as London Dry or International).

Decades after that first ice cream/Scotch experience, we’ve been presented with a reversed version of that simple pleasure: The Macallan Ice Cream Brownie Sundae.

It’s impressive, but we’ll stick with the two-minute original.

Here’s a dessert for you!

The Macallan Brownie Sundae was created for a private tasting dinner of The Macallan Scotch at Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink in Miami.

Executive Pastry Chef Hedy Goldsmith took note of the guests’ enthusiasm for the dessert and put it on the menu for the month of August.

You can make it at home with this recipe.

 

FOOD TRIVIA: WHISKEY VS. WHISKY

Alcohol distillation was discovered in the late eighth century by an Arab scholar, Abu Masa Jabir ibn Hayyam, “the father of modern chemistry.”

The distillate was used as medicine, and distillation remained a secret process.

But who can take credit for whiskey? The Irish and Scots both claim it. The word comes from the the Gaelic uisce and the Scottish uisge, pronounced ISH-ka. Uisge became usky and then the English whisky.

In Ireland and the U.S., the word whiskey is spelled with an “e”; the British, Scots and Canadians usually opt to drop it.

Scholars can’t determine why the “e” was dropped by the Scots. One theory is that the Irish made whiskey first and pronounced it with a broad “e.” When the Scots began to make it, they dropped the “e” to differentiate their product.

Serve a shot of uisge with your brownie sundae.