As the enticing beginning to any meal or as snacks for the big game, appetizers are the chance for a cook to show off there imagination and creativity.

If you want great appetizer recipes, below are 3 delicious easy to prepare recipes:

1. All-American Snack

Ingredients:

- 3 cups thin pretzel sticks

- 4 cups Wheat Chex

- 4 cups Cheerios

-13 ounces can salted peanuts

- 1 teaspoon garlic salt

- 1 teaspoon celery salt

- 1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt

- 2 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese

- 1/4 cup melted butter

Directions:

- In large mixing bowl or slow-cooking pot, mix together pretzels, cereals, and peanuts.

- Sprinkle with garlic salt, celery salt, seasoned salt, and cheese.

- Pour melted butter over all; toss until well mixed.

- Cover and cook in slow-cooking pot on low 3 to 4 hours.

- Uncover the last 30 to 40 minutes.

- Serve as appetizer or snack.

2. Appetizer Cheese Ball

Ingredients:

- 8 ounces Cream Cheese - Room Temp

- 4 ounces Blue Cheese - Crumbled

- 4 ounces Cheddar Cheese - Shredded

- 2 teaspoons Mustard - Dijon-style

- 1 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce

- 1/8 teaspoon Garlic Powder

-1/4 teaspoon Salt

-1/2 cup Pecans - Finely Chopped

- 2/3 cup Currants

- 3/4 cup Parsley - Chopped

Dippers:

- Assorted Crackers

- Apple Wedges

Directions:

- Place the cream cheese, blue cheese, cheddar cheese, mustard,

Worcestershire, garlic powder, and salt in a mixer bowl and beat at low

speed just until well mixed.

- Stir in the pecans and currants.

- Taste and adjust seasoning.

- Refrigerate the cheese mixture for 30 minutes or until slightly firm, then shape into a ball.

- Roll in the chopped parsley to coat well.

- Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to serve.

- Let stand at room temperature for about 30 minutes before serving.

- Place on a platter surrounded with crackers and apple wedges.

3. Appetizer Egg Rolls

Ingredients:

- 1/2 pound Pork; Boneless - Cut Julienne

- 1 each Onion; Small - Sliced

- 1 cup Cabbage - Green or Chinese

- 2 tablespoons Vegetable Oil

- 1/2 cup Mushrooms - Sliced

- 1/4 cup Sprouts - Bean or Alfalfa

- 1/4 cup Currants

- 1/4 cup Almonds - Slivered

- 1 teaspoon Cornstarch

- 2 tablespoons Sherry - Dry

- 1 tablespoon Soy Sauce

- 1/2 teaspoon Ginger

- 12 each Egg Roll Wrappers -Abt 6" Sq

Oil for Deep Fat Fry

Ginger Apricot Sauce:

- 1/4 cup Apricots - Dried (Abt. 10)

- 1/4 cup Sugar

- 1 teaspoon Ginger

- 1/4 teaspoon Salt

- 1 tablespoon Lemon Juice

Directions:

- Cabbage should be shredded.

- Saute the pork, onion, and cabbage in hot oil until lightly browned.

- Stir in the mushrooms, bean sprouts, currants, and almonds and saute, stirring for 1 minute.

- Dissolve the cornstarch in 2 T water, and combine with sherry, soy sauce, and ginger; add to the pork mixture and bring to a boil, stirring.

- Remove from heat and cool.

- Stack the egg roll wrappers and cut in half to form rectangles.

- Forming one roll at a time, place a heaping a teaspoonful of pork mixture on one end of rectangle, moisten the long edges, and roll up.

- Press the edges together to seal.

- Egg roll may be prepared to this point, then refrigerated for several hours or overnight or frozen for several days before frying.

- Adjust time for browning.

- If rolls are frozen, let them thaw before cooking.

- Heat the oil to 375 degrees F. and fry the egg rolls, 4 or 5 at a time, until golden brown and crisp on all sides.

- Frying will take about 4 to 5 minutes; turn rolls once.

- Drain on paper towels and keep warm while frying the remaining rolls.

- Serve with warm Ginger Apricot Sauce.

- Ginger Apricot Sauce: Combine the apricots, sugar, ginger, and salt with 3/4 cup water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil.

- Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes.

- Pour the mixture into a blender container or food processor.

- Add lemon juice, cover and process until smooth. Serve warm.

You welcome to visit our website: The Delicious Recipes Package and Cheap Meal Ideas Recipes for more delicious recipes.

Yet another interesting stop in our culinary adventures in Paris, the Le Gourmet restaurant offers great French cuisine for prices I hadn't seen in Paris in 15 years.

Lunch time, where to go?

This is the third installment of the series of articles which I set about to write a couple of weeks ago on eating out well in Paris. I love food, I love good cuisine, and I want fellow travelers to enjoy Paris to the hilt. That's enough reasons to guide them to those places I am certain they will enjoy.

Lunch time in Paris is restaurant time. People who work in the city do not carry their lunch bags with them. They rarely enjoy the benefit of a corporate catering service, but even if they do, such catering is hardly a feat for anyone's eyes and taste buds.

Small restaurants perform a vital service: they feed the locals rather satisfactorily, inexpensively, and in record time.

What applies to locals applies to travelers, and your next culinary stop happens in just such circumstances. After a long morning walk in the quaint streets on the slopes of the Montmartre hill, you feel nicely hungry. Your steps lead you to Place de Clichy, a busy crossroads between the 17th, the 9th and the 18th districts (metro station: 'Place de Clichy').

Time for a gourmet experience!

Le Gourmet

You may be hungry, but you are no fool. You want to eat well, and spend your heard-earned cash on food worth this name.

In my considerate opinion none of the eateries positioned around Place de Clichy are worth the money they ask for. I find their cuisine either overpriced, or downright vulgar. I never had a satisfactory lunch at any of these places.

So where to go? Not far away.

When you are on Place de Clichy, turn yourself so as to face the downward slope, with the metro station in your back. Aim at Rue de Clichy, left of Rue d'Amsterdam. Walk down the street for about 200 yards, and turn left in Rue de Bruxelles. Walk another 200 yards. There you are on the right sidewalk.

Your next favorite food stop is located at No. 19 rue de Bruxelles.

Name: Le Gourmet.

Identifiable sign: its French bistro-style facade. And a crowd.

Entering the bistro

If you happen to walk in at around noon thirty, you may have to wait just a tad. The place is packed. I have been to this restaurant numerous times, and I still have to be there the day it is not packed at lunch time.

My advice: come at around 12:00 am, and grab a spot before everybody else does.

The place exudes old charm, with dark wood panels, old posters, menu slates marked with chalk on the walls, a traditional bar, a mosaic floor, bistro-style chairs and tables. It smells good, though cigarette smoke can become an issue at times when the facade door isn't left open.

The owner and chef bought the restaurant about 2 years ago from its first and long-time owners, an elderly couple who retired after having steered the ship for longer than any local can remember. The new owner liked the decor, and decided to preserve it as-is, except for the facade which was changed early in 2006.

In this very Parisian setting, patrons feel immediately welcomed and are quickly seated either by the boss or a smiling waitress. This is lunch time, and they know patrons are in a hurry. No unnecessary delay.

Seated, and menu in hands

The menu is in fact chalked on the slates that hang on the front and back walls. A remarkable feat for such small a restaurant, the menu changes every day.

Anyone who lived in Paris for some time knows that restaurant menus do not change beyond the 'plat du jour' - the main fare for the day. Even the 'plat du jour' does not change that much: from one week to another, the same courses tend to get back on the menu.

Not so at 'Le Gourmet': the menu changes everyday and no two weeks are alike. True diversity. Even if you were to eat there every day for 20 days, you could try 20 different courses.

Gourmet cuisine is a mission

The boss comes from the province of Touraine, in Western France. He likes to work on French traditional dishes, and his cuisine draws its main inspiration from the famous Burgundy and Lyons regions.

Among the 'terroir' dishes served at Le Gourmet, you can taste veal knuckle (souris de veau), prime cuts of veal (onglet de veau), roasted gilthead bream (daurade royale rôtie), stewed duck (pot-au-feu de canard), pike dumpling (quenelle de brochet). And the list goes on.

To get fresh products from his favorite suppliers, he wakes up at 3:30 am every day to go to the wholesale market (the Rungis market, situated south of Paris). He buys only what he needs for the day, loads up his truck, and heads back to his restaurant where he's spend the rest of the morning to cook for lunch.

The chef's motto is "fresh products, traditional preparation". He uses butter, not margarine. He doesn't buy frozen products, and no off-the-shelf sauces as he prepares his sauces himself. He is light-handed on spices which he thinks 'are all too often used to hide something'.

Appetizer, main course, dessert, wines

Le Gourmet's menu typically offers a choice of 4 appetizers (such as a warmed up goat cheese served on a loaf of country bread), 3 or 4 main courses (meat, fish, poultry), and 4 desserts.

The choice of desserts is also 'old-school': depending on the day, your selection may include chocolate whipped cream, baba au rhum (a spongy cake saturated with dealcoholized rum), biscuits with ganache (a mix of chocolate, cream and butter), orange cake, fondant cake, floating island (beaten egg whites floating on a French custard), red fruit pies, and so forth.

Light wines get the lion's share of the wine list. The chef's hometown is Valencay (in the heart of the Touraine region), and he purchases his bottles directly from local producers. The list comprises a variety of well-thought-of vines: Gamay, Cabernet, Valençay, Bourgueil, and Saumur-Champigny.

All this for how much?

Beyond the quality of the food you are served at Le Gourmet, the check is another pleasant surprise. For a meager 13 Euros (about $16), you have a full meal served in record time in a most pleasant atmosphere. For just a few more bucks, you have the wine to complete your experience.

To be honest, there are very few Parisian restaurants which will give you that much for such a low price. Le Gourmet wins my vote any time, any day. I recommend it to you wholeheartedly.

Where?

Le Gourmet

19 rue de Bruxelles

75009 Paris

Tel: 33 (0)1 48 74 53 42

Subway station: Place de Clichy

Lunch and dinner

About The Author

Phil Chavanne shares lots of useful advices and travel information on Paris with the help of his Paris experts team. Click here: http://www.paris-eiffel-tower-news.com/paris-restaurants.html to find now about French food and Paris hotels.

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