Thoughts on Friday in The Middle of The Road!

Is it just me? Or is time hurtling by towards the holidays for you as well? I am cooking Thanksgiving this year, which is my favorite holiday hands down, so I have been doing my best to get my ducks, or should I say turkeys in a row in a timely fashion! It is nice though, to have this time on Friday to sit with you all and share some news and links from our little slice of the foodie blogosphere!

Holiday Side Dish Showdown at Cinnamon Spice and Everything Nice!

You all should know Reeni of Cinnamon Spice and Everything Nice because I have been featuring her for weeks in the Foodbuzz competition, and her blog is awesome, filled with terrific recipes and beautiful photographs. She certainly is a busy lady because beginning this week, she is hosting a holiday side dish showdown on her blog. Link up your best side dishes to share with others and get inspired to try new ones to spice things up at your table. Her poppy seed noodles made me drool!

An Awesome Nourishing Traditions Giveaway From Nourishing Creations!

Elizabeth of Nourishing Creations offers extensive health and nutrition information and even classes on her website. This weekend, she is going to the Weston Price Conference and hopes to meet Sally Fallon and get her to sign the copy of the Nourishing Traditions Cookbook she is offering in her very first giveaway. Please stop by and enter to win this copy, which, if she gets it signed, will be awfully hard to part with!

Chow and Chatter Recipe App for IPhones!!

Rebecca of Chow and Chatter has a wonderful site filled with travel, food and nourishing information, but she has just gone high tech by producing a new recipe APP for Apple! Check out her information on it and consider getting this cool new application that lists many wonderful Chow and Chatter recipes for your Iphone!

Finally Someone Looks at The McDonald’s “Unhappy Meal” Scientifically!

I am all for limiting fast food, but I am even MORE for truth, and I was a bit concerned about all the media hype surrounding the McDonald’s burger that did not rot. Here, Serious Eats explores the McDonald’s Unhappy Meal myth and actually does the experiment using standard scientific method. See the interesting results!

Raw Milk in New York City? You Bet!

I always like to share links on raw milk. This is an article from the Examiner and it is about getting raw milk in New York City. It?s a pretty basic article that explains the difference between raw milk and processed, pasteurized and homogenized milk, but the more you see on raw milk, and you understand the lengths to which folks go to get this wonderful healthful food, the more you might get off the fence and actually get some. You will love it!

The Twinkie Diet Causes Weight Loss, but Does it Make you Healthy?!

Jason of Alternative Health News shared this article on a diet experiment that was filled with junk food. Yes, professor Mike Haub ate junkfood for 10 weeks and lost 27 pounds. When I say junk food I mean twinkies and other snack cakes. He also took a multivitamin and drank a protein shake daily, so in my mind the results on his health were not as severe as they could have been. What  amazes me about this article is the thought that folks STILL equate losing weight with getting healthy! Seriously, starvation victims lose weight but they are NOT healthy! The whole idea of a calorie is a calorie is also silly in my mind. A similar calorie level of grass fed beef is certainly healthier for you than one of high fructose corn syrup and white flour! Thought I would share the insanity with you! Jay-man, your grandpa ate what the media said not to eat! He ate traditionally and that is why he rocked!

{This week Rollin’ With my Bloggies is gonna show the foodie love to blogs I already know and love}

Rollin’ With My Bloggies!

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.

Foodbuzz Next Big Food Blogger Contest-Support Our Foodie Friends!

If you are a food blogger, you at least know the name Foodbuzz which is a clearing house of recipes and a great foodie community with many ways to participate, network and communicate with others who share your passion for cooking. Foodbuzz is currently running a pretty extensive contest for Featured Publishers to see who the best of the foodie bloggers are. There were hundreds of entrants and each will show a profile on their home page blog and participate in challenges. If you are a registered member of Foodbuzz, you can vote in the popular election on each round, and you can even vote multiple times per round.

The seventh round reduces the pool of foodies by half again from 48 remaining contestants down to 24, and the participants can be very proud to have made it to the later rounds of the competition. Last week I got a little confused on the timing because Foodbuzz gave contestants two weeks instead of one to create an informational food video! The voting begins on November 15th, and I am very excited to see what our favorite contestants come up with. Please check out the following blogs, as I am very proud of all my blogggie friends who are still in the heat of the competition and I want to share them all with you!

Diana of Little bit of Spain in Iowa

Artistta

Reeni at Cinnamon Spice and Everything Nice

The Lunch Box Project

Hearth and Soul Hop Highlights

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!

Stacy of Delighting in the Days has a delightful healthy food blog that is a lot of fun to browse! This week she shares a terrific quick bread recipe with a ?secret ingredient?. Yes just guess what the secret ingredient is in Cranberry Cheese Bread. One hint, it ain?t cranberries!

Rebecca of Midnight Maniac has a lovely retro style old school blog with a very nostalgic feel. She is into all things green and sustainable as well as sharing her love of food and cooking. We are happy to have her join our hearth felt blog community here on the hearth and soul hop! This weeks she shares some wonderful photographs of her CSA share vegetables and a recipe for swiss chard gnocci with a creamy tomato sauce. As you all know I adore dark greens and creamy sauces, this one is bookmarked to try! Please join me in welcoming Rebecca!

Brenda of Brenda?s Canadian Kitchen simply knows how to light my culinary fire! I think it is because, like me she understands the value of comfort food and accentuates its benefits by really playing up the juicy joys of a recipe. This week, she takes chili and cornbread to a whole new level by combining them with cheddar to create a chili cornbread bake that looked so good I almost ate my computer!

Rachel of Hounds in the Kitchen terms herself an urban homesteader. I love her blog because she shows you how to really do it all yourself, from recipes to green living. This week, she shares a sweet tutorial on making your own fruit liquer, which is a perfect hostess or holiday gift. I am certainly going to be making some of this myself!

I Tried It at A Moderate Life!

This is a feature that will be as regular as I can make it, and this week, I had to bring the snack for our Girl Scout meeting on Friday and I always love to bake something fun for the girls, so…

Heather at Girlichef is always creative and interesting! This week, she had to assist her son in being creative in the kitchen for a school project! I adore cooking with my girls as I love sharing my own love of food with them. Heather made this great Leftover Halloween Candy Vanilla Cake and since we had plenty of candy laying around, I thought I would make it for the snack at our Friday Girl Scout meeting. To say it was amazing is an understatement, and this is going to be a regular ritual after Halloween for us in the future! The original version calls for a Bundt pan, but since I didn’t have one, I used a sheet cake pan and it came out almost like a blondie bar, but much more airy.  What I love is it doesn?t matter what type of chocolate candies you use, they all seem to melt together into a joyous union in the delicate cake! Try it and see!

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!