Foodbuzz Publisher Community Launches!!!

I'm a couple of days late, but better late than never! Foodbuzz Publisher Community has officially launched. Foodbuzz was nice enough to ask me in January to become one of their Featured Publishers, so I've had a really good time being part of that community and finding lots of new food blogs to read, and I've also put up a few restaurant reviews myself. So please, if you are not already familiar with FoodBuzz, check it out. You can just click on any of the three buttons on the right.

To celebrate the launch, I recieved a fantastic apron and a nice green spatula (my son took this photo)

 

I'm attempting a Butternut Squash, Rosemary and Ricotta Pizza tonight, so I'll let you know how that goes!

School Has Started!!

Yay - I put their smiling faces on the bus at 7:40 in the morning and they go off to a fulfilling day of learning!! So I'm finally getting the chance to update this blog of mine.

First of all, we had a great time in Vancouver. We did A LOT of eating, and there was tons to choose from. Lots of Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Crepe restaurants and coffee.

We had lunch one date at Hons Wun Tun House which was really good, and lunch another day at a Crepe Cafe, and I had a delicious Spinach and Feta Crepe. The kids had sugar and butter crepes and thought they were great!

As well as eating we did some sightseeing, we went to Capilano Suspension Bridge,and walked around Stanley Park, and even went swimming at the public pool there, although it was way to cold for me. It was only 76 outside with a brisk breeze and the water was FREEZING, but the kids went in.





And in Seattle on the way home we had dinner at Ivar's Acres of Clams. The service was great and so was the food, although the weather and the traffic are totally miserable in Seattle.

Vancouver.

We are off to Vancouver tomorrow until Monday, so hopefully I'll have some beautiful photos to share when I get back. I also plan on eating a lot while I'm there, and I'll have some food photos and stories as well.

Bored!!

This week is so boring at my house. Last week was a frenzy of activity with camps and what not, but this week is sort of dead. And I have no enthusiasm for cooking - anything! Last night we had the salmon tacos again, and on Monday we had some breaded turkey breast cutlet thingys that I got at Wegmans on the weekend. I don't usually shop at Wegmans, but they are the only supermarket in my area now carrying the Hershey's Dutch Processes Cocoa Powder. Giant and Safeway are not stocking it anymore for some strange reason.

I have no clue what we are going to have tonight, but I'm sure it's going to be totally lame and involve some kind of pasta.

The good news is that I did find a great recipe for Beef Stroganoff over at Elle's New England Kitchen so I might conjure some of that up tomorrow night. It's not really the season for it, but I really feel like it!

In the mean time, here are some of my hydrangeas:

FoodBuzz!!

Surprise! I got this in the mail yesterday from FoodBuzz! Thank you! A very nice little bag for shopping at the farmers market .



And it even has a button on it with my bog name! The person who got all the right buttons in the right envelopes was very vigilant.


and ps: Tastespotting is back under new management!!

Chipmunk Update...

I recently posted that chipmunks and squirrels were digging up my basil,and I hooked up an ingenious device to scare them away. Chipmunks are not afraid of ribbon!!! They are still digging. Solutions anyone?

ps.Tomorrow I will be blogging my first recipe for Barefoot Bloggers!

Desperate Times...

...call for desperate measures. The chipmunks are eating my basil!! I didn't have this problem last year at all, but they are going to town on it this year. Two weeks ago I planted 5 basil plants and 2 cilantro. The cilantro are still fully intact but 4 out of 5 basil plants had been eaten and dug up!!

So, I bought 4 new plants today and fashioned this very scary "thing" to keep the chipmunks at bay. There is no way I can go all summer without tons of fresh basil outside my kitchen door!

No Health Food .....Please?

We had Chicken Fajita Tostadas tonight for dinner. They really turned out well and were delicious.

After dinner I found this message from my 7yr old at his place at the table!

All the news that's fit to eat....

Yesterday was a big day for food in the newspaper. First of all it was reported that Nigella Lawson is going to make her kids bring home their own bacon. Apparently Nigella herself is worth about $36 million and her husband about $200 million. Nigella thinks that she won't be doing her kids any favours by leaving them enough to live off without having to work. She's probably right, look what it did for Paris Hilton. Anyway, Nigella is adamant about this. The kids can relax though because I'm sure she'll pack them a fabulous lunch everyday to take to work with them.

The Washington Post Food Section had a couple of good articles yesterday. One was that we the consumers are becoming the new Food Inspectors, reading labels, insisting on organic where possible and shopping at more than one supermarket weekly to make sure that we are purchasing the best food possible. I shop at more than one place and I know plenty of people that do the same thing. I use Giant for my regular shopping basics like cream cheese, bread, canned tomatoes etc, Costco for all the bulk stuff, which includes milk, eggs, cheese and frozen meats and seafood, Trader Joes for all my kids snacks for school, and some of my basics like Pizza Sauce and Wine (haha), and then Whole Foods or Wegmans for a couple of speciality items for the kids, like Yoghurt in a tube that does not contain high fructose corn syrup. (I buy Horizon Organic Yoghurt Tubes Strawberry and Blueberry) . I cannot believe the garbage they they put in kids yoghurt and then have the nerve to call it healthy. Tons of high fructose corn syrup, food colourings, sprinkles, M&M's the list goes on.

I'm also amazed at the schools. They are passing a bill in Virginia about banning trans fats in the food at schools, which is great, but we still have a long way to go before these school lunches are actually good for the kids. My 7 yr old used to buy chocoalte milk three times a week to have with his lunch, which I pack for him everyday. On the first day of school this year he came home and one of the first things he said was "the chocolate milk has high fructose corn syrup in it". The school district changed milk vendors and now the milk has HFCS. Last year it was regular sugar and cocoa. I just don't get it. The school district makes a huge fuss about fat content and balanced diet (that's why they have blue ice cream and huge chocolate chip cookies for sale), and yet they buy milk with HFCS because it's cheaper. I would be happy to pay more for organic chocolate milk and I'm sure that many other parents would be as well, or at least have the option of buying organic milk at school.

Last but not least,the Washington Post gave two different guacamole recipes which looked good, but neither of them looked half as good as the recipe that I use!

The War Against High Fructose Corn Syrup

Mrs Names sent me this great blog post about what we are actually putting in our mouths, and how making stuff from scratch is so much better for us in so may ways. One of the biggest enemies in the food wars is of course High Fructose Corn Syrup. It's in everything and is super hard to avoid, because let's face it, I'm not going to bake my own bread for a family of four, I'd never get any laundry done.

I've completely cut out buying cookies at the store, cakes, pastries or pies. If we want to eat that stuff I make it myself along with all the pizza dough we eat. It sounds like a huge drag, but in fact, once you start eating homemade and made from scratch treats, you'll never be able to go back to store bought again. You really have to want to eat it to make it, so generally you don't have a lot of sweet snacks lying around the house. I was in Costco the other day, and one of the sample ladies was giving out some muffins. Of course I took one, and I couldn't even eat the quarter she gave me. It had the total made in a factory taste that you can immediately identify if you haven't eating that type of stuff for a long time.

I was so happy about that! I'm no longer tempted to buy anything like that! Of course my family doesn't agree with me, and they get really unhappy with me if I try and buy any kind of bread that that is remotely brown and good for you. Everyone here likes the Arnold WholeGrain Oatnut Bread. I've had to totally cave on this and just give them what they want. You have to pick your battles. I try not to eat it, but sometimes I just have some. As far as other bread goes, I try and buy fresh bakery stuff from the supermarket and Trader Joe's.

Arnold's are smug about the fact that they have 0g trans fat and 13 grams of whole grains per slice, but they still insist on putting in High Fructose Corn Syrup in their bread. It's the 6th ingredient listed, and then a bit further down they have also added sugar. I'd rather just have the sugar.

Now that the trans fat war has been fought and the consumer seems to be winning, we need to start fighting the High Fructose Corn Syrup War - we can win that too. Read labels religiously and don't buy things if at all possible with HFCS in it. Or better yet, make as much from scratch as possible, it will also help the environment, with less trash to throw out.

I really believe that High Fructose Corn Syrup is really bad for us, and who knows how it's going to affect our organs in 20 years. Time will tell. Hopefully by then, the manufacturers will be back to using ingredients that might be a bit more expensive, but are not toxic.