With warmer days ahead, now is the time to get your kitchen ready for summer! Refreshing your refrigerator and cleaning out your pantry shelves is a great way to begin creating a balanced seasonal eating plan for you and your family.

The first step to making over your kitchen is clearing out old and outdated packaged goods. Check the “best by” dates on your condiments, cheeses, jarred items and other foods and discard anything expired or questionable. Keep in mind that unopened items typically last much longer than those that have been opened even if kept well sealed. Use labeled air-tight containers to store dry goods like flour, nuts and dried beans. Fill a large grocery bag with unopened, unwanted food items that you can donate to your local food pantry.

Once you have organized and donated your kitchen contents, you will have space to stock up on seasonal produce and necessities. To save time and prevent extra trips to the grocery store, keep on hand nonperishable staple foods such as canned tuna, pasta, olive oil and grains. Be sure to keep older items toward the front of the shelves while storing newer products in the back.

Familiarize yourself with seasonal foods to add into your daily diet. Although many fruits and vegetables are available year-round, certain ones are now in peak season, which means both price and flavor are at their best. Right now, peas, asparagus, corn, berries, lettuce, cherries and apricots are in season, among many others.

Implementing weekly meal planning is a time-saving strategy to help you grocery shop, cook and clean up for multiple meals at one time. First, stock up on different sized food storage containers to portion out meals made ahead of time. Next, decide on meals and recipes to prepare for each day of the week. For many people, weekends are a convenient time to do meal planning. With a grocery list in hand, load up on the ingredients you need for your meals.

Finally, set aside a bit of time to prepare meals for the week, which may include chopping and steaming veggies, roasting a whole chicken, steaming a batch of brown rice in a rice cooker, and hard-boiling some eggs to add to salads.

Getting your kitchen cleaned up, organized and ready with portion-sized items is a great way to establish a balanced, simpler and effective eating plan this summer. Here are some more easy-to-implement tips to get started:

• Place a bowl of fresh fruit on the counter or table to encourage meeting your daily needs while adding a pop of color to the room.

• Preportion snack-sized bags of nuts, sliced veggies, edamame and other snacks to easily grab and go.

• To encourage mindful eating, take packaged foods like cereal or pretzels off countertops and store in decorative bins or baskets to reduce the temptation to graze between meals.

• Try out some new recipes that use seasonal produce favorites like a sweet corn succotash, grilled artichokes or a fresh berry dessert.

• And, if you are looking for beverages that help meet your daily fluid requirements while controlling calories, consider sparkling water, 90-calorie mini cans of soda, iced tea and flavored water.

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Three lucky people can surprise their mothers with a new kitchen this Mother’s Day thanks to Express Kitchens.

On Saturday, May 9th, Express Kitchens will giveaway three kitchens complete with cabinets, crown molding, granite countertops, sink, faucet and stainless steel appliances. Each individual prize package is list price valued at $15,000.

Anyone can enter by visiting any of the seven locations located in Connecticut and Western Massachusetts. You can enter an additional entry into the drawing online by visiting expresskitchens.com.

Three separate live drawings will be held on Saturday May 9th in Orange and Newington, CT and West Springfield, MA.

Recently being named one of the nation’s best small businesses by the SBA, Express Kitchens offers customers throughout Connecticut and Western Massachusetts an increasing number of cabinet options along with better buying power and bigger savings.

Express Kitchens recently purchased a 120,000-square-foot facility in Hartford and will open a new Bridgeport location in May.

For more information on Express Kitchens and its offerings visit http://www.expresskitchens.com or call (860) 247-1000.

Express Kitchens, recently named by Fortune Magazine as one of the fastest growing inner city companies in the United States, continues its planned growth with the opening of a new location on 399 Boston Avenue in Bridgeport.

“We’re thrilled to have Express Kitchens opening a store in our state’s largest city,” said Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch. “It’s a great company that will help us continue making our city a better place to live, work, and raise a family. And, this is yet another example of companies wanting to invest and grow jobs in Bridgeport. Our city is getting better every day, and even more so with the arrival of Express Kitchens.”

The new location is slated to open the first week of May, and follows the purchase of a 120,000-square-foot production and warehouse facility in Hartford that will service Express Kitchens’ 8 retail locations across Connecticut and western Massachusetts.

Express Kitchens offers easy and affordable cabinets and countertops. Providing free 3D design services along with almost limitless cabinet styles, customization features and accessories, Express Kitchens has grown rapidly during its twelve years in operation to become one of Connecticut’s largest kitchen retailers.

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Read the entire article posted on the Small Business Administration’s website here:

https://www.sba.gov/blogs/immigrant-entrepreneurs-help-fuel-record-growth-streak

By Maria Contreras-Sweet, SBA Administrator
Published: February 6, 2015
Updated: February 6, 2015

If the U.S. jobs data released on the first Friday of every month is starting to sound like a broken record, it’s because records continue to be broken.

The American economy added 267,000 private-sector jobs in January. That’s 59 straight months of consecutive job growth, the longest streak on record by a mile. Our last three months of job growth has been the most in 17 years. Small businesses have been at the forefront of our ongoing expansion, accounting for 81 percent of the net new jobs in January, according to ADP data, which is higher than the historical two-thirds job creation rate of small firms.

Small businesses are also creating opportunities for two important segments of the labor market that have historically struggled: younger workers and immigrants.

At its peak, youth unemployment reached 27 percent during the recession – the highest in the 66 years that the federal government has kept track. Today, that number is down to 19 percent, a significant decline but still three times the national rate.

Meanwhile, foreign-born workers have similar unemployment rates compared to native-born workers, but they are paid 20 percent less. Immigrant-owned firms today employ 1 in 10 U.S. workers. Immigrant entrepreneurs are twice as likely to start a business as native-born citizens. While they account for 16 percent of the labor force nationally, immigrants make up 28 percent of Main Street Business owners. Immigrants represent 61 percent of all gas station owners, 53 percent of grocery store owners, 38 percent of restaurant owners, and 32 percent of jewelry store and clothing store owners, according to a recent nonpartisan study.

In other words, immigrants are actually creating jobs in neighborhoods where they’re needed the most. In so doing, they’re contributing to America’s entrepreneurial character.

The jobs report showed that the construction industry added 39,000 jobs last month. Immigrants have also helped drive these gains. Parag Mehta and Hitesh Kothari have been best friends since fourth grade, growing up together in Gujarat, India. They immigrated to the United States in 1983, became business partners, and bought the oldest hardware store in Connecticut with the assistance of a half-million dollar SBA loan. Their company began with three workers in the kitchen department. Today, their company, Express Kitchen employs 140 people and generates $17.5 million in annual revenue while competing against big box retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s.

Headquartered in inner-city Hartford, Express Kitchen has seven locations and is in the process of opening an eighth. In recent years, the company has hired more than 40 low-skilled workers and inner-city youth through a partnership with the local workforce development board to up-skill under-employed workers to assemble and install kitchen cabinets.

Today, Express Kitchens is working closely with an SBA counseling partner, their local SCORE chapter, on an aggressive long-term expansion plan in which they are standardizing processes with the goal of opening five more stores and doubling their workforce.

It is small businesses like Express Kitchens committed to local economic development and urban revitalization – that are the true unsung heroes of America’s economic recovery. They’re the driving force behind our job market’s string of broken records, and the SBA is committed to helping more entrepreneurs sing the same tune.

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On September 12th, Express Kitchens held an employee appreciation breakfast at our Hartford showroom. It was a great opportunity for our newest employees to meet the rest of the staff over some great home cooking. We have to thank our great customers for helping us grow to almost 100 employees – now that’s what you call a recipe for success!