Yahoo! UK & Ireland Answers blog

“How can you eat delicious, fresh food at home on a tight budget?”

– Jamie Oliver

Having a little less in your pocket should not mean you scrimp on healthy food, or so says chef extraordinaire, Jamie Oliver. In posing his question to the Yahoo! Answers community, Jamie reaches out with a dilemma that so many of us face: can we shop, prepare, cook and eat in smarter ways?

As the man who successfully rallied against unhealthy British school food, bringing the expression “Turkey Twizzler” into the national consciousness, if anyone can promote change in our culinary behavior, it’s Jamie. Cheap doesn’t have to mean fatty, salty or processed. Fresh, tasty and healthy doesn’t have to mean expensive. But if you have tips on what this means in pratical terms, why not answer Jamie’s question and share your knowledge with the community?

Answers itself is a hive of amazing cooking know-how, based around the Food and Drink category.

Is it healthy to eat broccoli raw? Nikita thinks so. According to her medical sources, “not only is this cruciferous vegetable high in vitamin C and fiber, it’s also a rich source of compounds known as glucosinolates which are broken down in the body to form sulforaphane. Sulforaphane has been demonstrated in numerous studies to have potent anti-cancer properties.”

On a slightly less serious note, Aurora asks for some tips on how to bake bread. T?R is on hand to offer some of his 25 years of experience with dough: “Kneading, letting it prove well and getting the mix just right. Use fresh yeast, not dried, and a good quality bread flour. Strong flour means it has lots of gluten.”

Est wants to know how to make quiche. David J offers a great way to combine bacon and mushroom with a little bit of Swiss cheese!

And finally we can’t forget our Knowledge Partner in the Food & Drink category, UK TV Food, who have answered some great recipe questions recently. While home cooked, some of these are a little on the naughty but nice side. Just don’t tell Jamie!

• I have a tin of condensed milk and I want to make a nice biscuit recipe: any ideas?
• How far in advance can I make Panacotta?
• How do you make warm chocolate fudge sauce?

The Yahoo! Answers Team are excited to announce a small but significant change to the site. As of today, any links posted by Level 1 Answers users will not be hyperlinked.

It may seem like a trivial change but it is an important step to limit the impact of spam on Answers. The site has had a points and levels system since its inception, which aims to promote activity and trust. Only hyperlinking http URLs from users who are Level 2 and above is a new way to reward and protect our core contributors.

The lack of hyperlinking applies to any link that begins http:// – links that are posted that begin www. are already not hyperlinked for all users regardless of level. We appreciate that removing hyperlinking for level 1 users is not a final or a perfect solution. For example long URLs are currently being truncated but we are working on further updates to improve this.

We’ve taken this action in response to clear user feedback, from you the Answers community. And rest assured that this is just one of a number of initiatives we are implementing to limit the impact of spam on Answers. We hope it’s a small step towards making Answers a better place. We’d welcome your feedback on this change.

– Yahoo!  UK & Ireland Answers Team