Put a spring to your step this New Year. Instead of embarking on ‘diet,’ do a detox to rid the system of all the toxins — rich food, alcohol, sugar, and dairy — accumulated during the holiday season. Aside from your green juices, feed on seeds, sprouts, nuts, and legumes — all good to cleanse and bring out the new you.

THE QUESTION THAT is most often asked about stored food pertains to shelf life and expiry date. The oft-quoted recommendation is that food beyond its expiry date is no longer safe to eat, in the same manner that leftover viands are often discarded as waste after 24 hours have passed.

THE CHINESE BELIEVE that the Chinese Zodiac, also called Chinese Animal Astrology, tells about a person’s character, physical and mental attributes, and even determines the degree of success and happiness. And based on each sign’s personality, it could also determine what type of eater each sign is and what’s possibly the best food to eat to keep them healthy.

BRING in the dough, sprinkles, frosting — and your little helpers into the kitchen. Equip your kids
with baking skills while teaching kindness by spreading good cheer with these festive baked creations.
Just be ready to clean up afterwards.

STOP THE SP-HAM-MING! Instead of serving slice after slice of that holiday ham for every meal,  
turn your excess ham into creative ham hits that will last you from sunrise to sundown.

DID YOU EVER wonder why almost all Christian communities in the world that celebrate Christmas have a ham dish on the table on Christmas Eve, when in fact, early Christians abhorred pork meat and considered it spiritually dirty?

WHAT’S worth getting up for — early — on a weekend morning? The weekend market, that’s what. The metro’s weekend flea markets offer finds from food, fashion, and for the home — with all that sustainable bent. You may even score holiday gift ideas for everyone on your gift list. So wake up, early birds get the good bargains.

Throughout history, vinegar has been revered for its versatility. During ancient times, Egypt’s Cleopatra dissolved pearls in vinegar to win a wager that she could consume a fortune in a single meal. Helen of Troy bathed in it to relax. It helped African General Hannibal’s army cross the Alps. Hippocrates, Greek physician and writer, prescribed drinking vinegar to his patients with ailments. In 17th century Europe and England, citizens used it as deodorizer by holding sponges soaked in vinegar to their noses to reduce the smell of raw sewage in the streets. During World War I, vinegar was used to treat wounds on the battlefields. Among lowland  northern Filipinos, either a vinegar rub or poultice on the forehead is folk remedy for high fever.

A HOMEMADE gift is worth a thousand store-bought treats, especially when it’s also something that tastes good. Not all home cooking is easily wrapped up and exchanged in the traditional sense, but there are a few easily prepared delicacies which make perfect presents for a host who has just invited you to a dinner party. For those who love enjoying good food with dear friends, the next best thing to extending an invitation for dinner is accepting another’s invitation and bringing any one of these gifts as a gesture of thanks and friendship.

HEIRLOOM recipes inspire such proprietary emotions. Take pancit, for example. Everybody seems to have an opinion of the best pancit in town. It’s habhab for the Tagalog of Quezon, La Paz batchoy for Ilonggos, luglog for Pampangueños, and musiko for Ilocanos.