Thoughts on Friday in the Middle of the Road-12/17/10

Time to snuffle up some great foodie links! Photo by Gillian Moy

Sending out the link love!

I am probably like most of you this week. Crazy busy trying to get things ready for Christmas, which includes cooking, baking, letter writing, present shopping, wrapping, card mailing and that doesn’t even include tree shopping and decorating!  I am so glad to be able to take a short break from the insanity and sit with you all to share some news and links from our little slice of the foodie blogosphere!

The winner of my $75 Novica Gift Certificate was comment #111. Congratulations to Erin T! I am sure she will find something lovely to claim as her prize, because Novica has so many wonderful free trade artisanal gifts and home goods to choose from! I would like to thank Novica for giving me the opportunity to work with them on this great promotion and thank you to all my readers who entered and made it a big success!

If you have an Iphone, or an Itouch or an Ipad or have a friend or family member who has any of these nifty Apple gadgets and you love to cook, please check out my latest giveaway where you can win a How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman Apple App created by Culinate! If you are interested in learning about the app, please check out my brother?s How to Cook Everything App Test Drive! He did a great job showing all the wonderful features that a cookbook simply can?t match!

I am thrilled to be joining with a few other Hearth and Soul Hop Hosts in running a fun event over the Christmas Holidays to promote all your older posts. I know how difficult it is to get things done during the holidays, and posting new content might come second or even 10th on your list. Each day for 12 days, starting on December 22 and going through January 2nd, 2011 (!) I will be running the 12 Days of Bloggie-mas! Each day will follow a theme and you will be able to link up your posts and recipes that relate to that theme. This way, your older, wonderful work will get another viewing, we can have a lot of fun and you could possibly win a prize! I will be giving away a $45 CSN store gift certificate and another lucky winner can select from 5 different cookbooks as their prize! Other hosts will have some suprises as well!  So, remember to mark your calendars for the 22nd and join me in the 12 Days of Bloggie-mas!

I found this wonderful article on Tom Naughtons irreverent and say it like it is blog Fat Head. Seems a recent study shows that the super sized restaurant meals of today have little or no impact on weight in America. Well, considering there is no way I could even finish most meals in a chain restaurant when I absolutely have to eat at one, I am wondering what the serving size is they are basing their findings on! I always get a good laugh from Tom’s interpretation of things!

The crew over at Civil Eats have our backs. Literally! They write with passion about good food and food advocacy and they are not afraid to bring up the tough subjects and shed some light on them. This article is all about the food industry?s darling the little green soybean and why it is not only NOT a healthy thing to eat, as big agriculture and most mainstream media would have you believe, it is actually quite bad for you! I had first hand experience with soy products being bad when I switched my girls to soy milk after weaning them. They quickly developed breast buds at the age of 2 and 5! After switching off to regular organic milk, the buds went away. Talk about an estrogen boost! If you eat soy regularly, please read this article so you will understand it is just the same, in most cases as eating junk food. It is highly processed and many times even genetically modified. My father is a Greek who grew up in China and he said that the soy products they ate there daily were all fermented! The traditional preparation of soy rendered them much more healthy, but in this day and age of technology, all the shortcuts taken to make food quickly and cheaply fail to render it healthy. Eat with caution! I found this article on the Food News Journal, and everyone really should sign up for their updates to keep abreast of what’s going on in the foodie world!

photo by Jeremy Noble

Rollin’ with my Bloggies is a spot for me to share extra love with my foodie crew, blogs I already know and love and support, or blogs that I have been recently introduced to either through a Blogroll or a kind comment from a foodie friend.

Joanne of Eats Well With Others always makes me laugh when I read her blog posts, mostly because she is funny but also because she is so like me at her age! Always putting things off to the last minute and doing things I loved instead! This week though, she is right on time with 2 wonderful cookie recipes for the holidays and a Tate?s bake shop giveaway, so hop on over to her spot and enter to win some yummy stuff!

What a wonderful experience hosting the Hearth ‘n Soul Hop continues to be as it focuses on so many lovely aspects of food. I wanted to let you all know of a small change in the hop, as it has grown so large, in great part due to your continuing support.

If you haven’t read our Hearth and Soul Hop mission statement, you should check it out. I want to thank everyone for their continued participation and all the great recipes I get to put on my must try list! There are so many great ones, but I thought I would share a few that grabbed my attention or yes, made me cry!

Bonnie of City Home Country Home is certainly in the holiday spirit! I love the photo she has up on her blog now to share her beautiful holiday decorations.  This week she shares a recipe for the most amazing decked out rice krispy treats I have EVER seen! These would certainly make lovely gifts from your hearth for the holidays!

I always love to visit Tanvi at sinfully spicy because she shares so many memories of her youth and I always learn something new from her culture. This week she shares tips on making traditional Indian pickles which are not cucumbers in brine! Her recipe is for a cranberry chili pickle and it looks super delicious. I love the idea of combining the tart cranberries with some spice instead of dousing it with sugar!

Miz Helen is just the sweetest thing! I adore visiting her in her virtual kitchen and having tea and catching up on all the great food she has been making! This week she is sharing a tutorial on how to make tamales which her family makes every Christmas Eve. I have LONG wanted to make tamales but frankly, I was chicken! Miz Helen?s tutorial is awesome and it took the fear factor out of it for me. I will be making these sometime over the Christmas break as my children ADORE them as well!

photo by S. Kaiser

This is a feature that will be as regular as I can make it, and this week, I was craving some bacon and some baked goods so…

bacon spice cookies from Girlichef!

A few months ago, I mentioned a bacon fat chocolate chip cookie recipe on another Thoughts on Friday at a Moderate Life. I was so intrigued by the use of bacon grease as a substitute for butter, but I got distracted and never made the cookies. Then, the other day, Heather at Girlichef tweeted that she was making bacon fat spice cookies, and I started jumping up and down as best as you can sitting on a computer chair. I immediately tweeted her back and asked for the recipe, which she sent me, and today, much to my joy and rapture, I had time to make these lovely, crispy on the outside, melt in your mouth on the inside combination of spice, sweet and oh yah, bacon ?wang?. You know what I am talking about! That thing, that thing that bacon does to most any savory dish, it does to these sweet treats one better! They whipped up quick and easy and I had them out of the oven from bowl to plate in under 30 minutes. I am hooked! My husband adored them, my kids liked them but they were a little bit confused by the taste. I might have to say these are a bit of a ?grownup? cookie, and that is fine by me! I will certainly be making these again and thanks to you Heather for the inspiration to play with my bacon grease!

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend filled with family, fun and most of all great food! Always remember too, if you have any foodie news, giveaways, new blog carnivals or anything you want shared with our lovely little slice of the foodie web, please drop me a note. I adore sharing information with my lovely readers and helping out other foodie love bloggers! Really!