Great to see you again! If you haven't already, please subscribe to my RSS feed, to keep updated on life in the middle of the road or follow me via Networked Blogs by clicking the button in my sidebar! If you are interested in mini-guest posting on A Moderate Life I would love to have you! Please check out my Baby Steps to a Rockin' Life Guidelines. Thanks for visiting!
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to these great foodie links! Photo by Jamie Dwyer
Sending out the link love!
Scroll to the bottom of this page for my new Feed Me! Tweet Me! Follow Me Home Friday Friend Builder Linky Hosted by Me Hella D of HellaDelicious and April of 21st Century Housewife! Also, if you are mentioned in my Thoughts on Friday you are in my Sunday Link Love Paper on twitter so check it out!
Winter break for us here on Long Island, so the kids were home all week wanting to socialize and sleep late and veg out. I so love spending time with them when there is not the pressure of school work and scheduling! We had a little birthday party for my little niece who turned two and she loved the Hello Kitty pajamas and spring dress we gave her so much she put them both on and went to bed in them! We also had snow this week again which makes me want spring time and daffodils even more! You know I could ramble on and on, so why don’t we sit down and attend to the task at hand which is sharing these wonderful foodie links this Friday!
Is local food really all it is cracked up to be?
This is a great article from the Organic Consumers Association warning you to really be careful when purchasing “local” food. Seems that local does not always mean organic or sustainable and many commercial farmers in your area will be jumping on the Locavore bandwagon because they technically can. I would also suggest if you wish to be up to date on food activism and this is important to you and your family that you should subscribe to the Organic Consumers newsletter and support them in other ways by becoming a member.
Get ready to hop on over to the Hearth and Soul Hop Hub!
I am so excited, because the Hearth and Soul Hop Hub website is up and running and it is the happening place that will share all things Hearth and Soul! You will be able to see all the linkys from every hop, get more information on the hosts and share in content specifically designed for the hop hub, become a featured blogger and see highlighted recipes from hop participants, get all the latest news from the hearth and soul hop daily and really share more as a hearth felt blogging community, including all your great blog events, giveaways and posts! This is all about drawing this wonderful community of bloggers and cooks together and really getting to know each other! I am so thrilled to be getting this off the ground and as soon as it is all set to go we will let you know! You can see the brand new Hearth and Soul Hop Hub, which is in it’s infancy at http://www.hearthandsoulhop.blogspot.com so please stop over and check it out!
Politicians kill the Easy-Bake Oven.
This article from Chicago Breaking Biz, about the demise of my beloved Easy-Bake Oven which birthed my love of cooking, that I found on my beloved Food News Journal newsletter (you SHOULD be a subscriber if you are a foodie) irritates me in two ways. First of course is the fact that I am incensed by the fact that the government sees fit to ban incandescent bulbs in lieu of compact fluorescent bulbs as a way to save energy even though the bulbs are extremely dangerous to the environment and cannot simply be disposed of in a garbage can, not to mention the fact that they contribute to seasonal affective disorder due to their limited light spectrum. Second is the fact that I loved my Easy-Bake oven and I still have one for my girls that they will not be able to pass down to their kids because there will be no more unfrosted appliance bulbs available. Understand this means no more bulbs for inside YOUR oven or your fridge either. Who thinks up these laws? They are certainly not thinking of everything when they decide to change the entire world that was lit up by Thomas Edison who most definitely is spinning in his grave!
Top Celebrities promoting Veganism are suspect!
This article from the Huffington Post by Robin Quivers of Howard Stern fame about Oprah’s staff going vegan really burns me. I guess I am in a mood this week because things are burning me! The primary reason is why would anyone take the information presented by Quivers, who has spent numerous months on a strict Master Cleanse Diet of lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper as health information? Secondly, as a reformed raw vegan who saw serious health issues disappear the minute I added grass fed beef, butter, eggs and milk into my diet, I know that Oprah is only going vegan for a publicity stunt. Why would anyone embrace her path after watching her deal with her eating and health issues only to fail again and again instead of finding a balanced way to eat?
Reclaiming your nutrition, one baby step at a time!
Butter of Hunger and Thirst shared this great new blog on Facebook. It is called reclaim nutrition and Sally Crewe is all about moving from surviving to thriving. I wanted to share her small steps towards optimal nutrition because it reminded me a bit of my Baby Steps to a rockin’ life only focusing exclusively on small steps and changes in thinking in your nutrition. The first article is all about water and how much you should be drinking. The second is where I fell in love with her and is all about the saturated fat myth and why you should be loving and eating your butter and grass fed beef! I am sure we will see great things from Sally so please stop by and make her feel welcome!
photo by Jeremy Noble
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. Special events on these blogs have a special place right here!
New HEALTHY vegan recipe link up at Veggie Converter!
I know I just dissed Veganism, and this might seem like a contradiction, but there is a place for healthy and frugal vegan meals in and well balanced diet. My dear friend Kristi of Veggie Converter is certainly in a similar situation that I was in years ago. I know I have told you all before that I was a raw vegan for quite a bit of time married to a complete meat and potatoes man. Kristi is a veggie lover married to an omnivore and she is going about it in a much better way by creating recipes that her husband can eat. Mine wouldn’t touch my raw sprouted veggie logs! Kristi has started a wonderful Monday linky called the Meatless Vegan Monday Challenge. Even if you are not a vegetarian or a vegan it is important for you to learn about healthy dishes you can make the conserves money and animal resources. Please stop by and link up any veggie recipes you have and learn more about veganism if it interests you. You do not have to become a vegan to enjoy a vegan meal and I have to tell you, that many of them are absolutely divine!
Wardeh drops the Twister but jumps on YouTube!
Wardeh of GNOWFGLINS has a wonderful homesteading site filled with ecourses, news from her farm, touching anecdotes about her goats and now cow, cheesemaking info and tons more. She was extremely kind and helpful to me when I first started finding my way in the blogging world and I owe her a huge debt of gratitude. She just announced that she will no longer be hosting the Tuesday Twister real food blog carnival on her blog, but is happy to announce her very own Youtube channel where you can check out video clips of her ecourses, recipes and tons more. Please stop by and subscribe to her channel and let others know where you can find more Wardeh baby!
Check out the Healthy February Carnival Roundup at Fit Foodista!
My dear blogging friend Michelle of Fit Foodista has pulled together a wonderful healthy February blog carnival roundup filled with amazing recipes, health tips, inspirational stories and wellness information. The links are all terrific from all over the bloggie community and I had such fun clicking around! Please stop by to get some inspiration to improve your health and well being as we enter into springtime!
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!
Mango Lassi anyone?!
This week the super talented cook and all around sweet Swathi of Kitchen Swathi shared a lovely recipe for Mango Lassi which is kind of an Indian tropical fruit fermented smoothie. My sister in law actually introduced me to Lassi when we visited my brother’s family and they took us to a lovely little Indian restaurant in Pawtucket Rhode Island. Since I love yogurt and tropical fruits, this lassi, which combines the two was simply delicious to me. So glad Swathi shared the recipe on her lovely blog so now I can try making it at home!
It’s Blood Orange season at Bella Vita and the cake looks divine!
The kind and wonderful Roz of Bella Vita is always sharing lovely Italian inspired recipes on her beautiful blog. This week she spoke to my soul by sharing a unique Blood Orange Polenta Cake with Marscapone filling! I adore winter citrus season and getting my hands on cava oranges, blood oranges and meyer lemons is one of the joys of the bleak January days! Each seasonal citrus has unique qualities that make them worth the wait and price if you enjoy all things citrus! Thanks Roz for lifting my spirits!
I tried it at a moderate life!
I Tried it at a Moderate Life!
Whenever I get a chance, I like to try some of the wonderful recipes that are shared on the Hearth and Soul hop to see how I can weave my magic with someone else’s spells! This week, I was craving lemon curd and since three of my favorite bloggers have posted recipes for it lately, I figured it was a sign that I better make some! So…..
Lemon curd is sunshine on a spoon! Courtesy of Butter, Bonnie AND Andrea!
One of my biggest childhood loves and memories was when my grandma or another English relative would come to visit and they would bring lemon curd and clotted cream. Certainly my mother who was handy in the kitchen could have made the lemon curd for us to enjoy all year long, but she stuck to making marmalade which we all hated until we grew up. My love of lemon curd has never dwindled and I was so happy to find a good version in Trader Joe’s a few years ago and I satisfied my lemon yum by serving it with a big dollop of Greek yogurt. That all changed this week though because three of my wonderful bloggie friends shared recipes for lemon curd recently and inspired me to try it myself. Butter of Hunger and Thirst shared her lemon curd recipe a bit ago, but last week Andrea of Andrea’s Kitchen shared her Valentine’s day gluten free thumbprints and two ways of making meyer lemon curd, and then Bonnie of City Home Country Home shared lovely lemon curd filled cupcakes with another recipe! After perusing the recipes and seeing how many meyer lemons and eggs I had, I settled on Butter’s recipe because it called for the least amount of juice and I only had six lemons left! It came out wonderfully creamy smooth and with a much lighter flavor than the store bought variety which does not use meyer lemons. It was well worth the effort to make and now I have two jars tucked away in the fridge ready to meet some toast or panna cotta or Greek Yogurt. Yum! Thanks ladies for all your lemony goodness!
What are YOUR Thoughts on Friday?!
I am making a few changes to this Thoughts on Friday feature to make it more user friendly. If you have any news to share in the foodie world, a new recipe carnival, positive information about the food world, a giveaway or a new feature of your own and you send it to me by Thursday afternoon, I will include it in the post, space permitting and give you a link back to your blog. This way, you will be a “roving reporter” for Thoughts on Friday and be given credit as a contributor. I am only one person and I obviously can’t see EVERYTHING that is happening even in our little area of the foodiesphere, so if you want to participate and share news and information, I would love to have your contributions. You can drop me a line or email me directly.
Baby Steps to a Rockin’ Life From the Middle of the Road!
I am very excited to be launching a few new features on my blog in the New Year. I took a bit of a break this past Wednesday but there was still a great tip from me on Baby Steps to a Rockin’ Life from the Middle of the Road. Most weeks I share Mini-guest posts from various and wonderful bloggies, offering tips to help make your life more rockin! I do hope you will join us in the Baby Steps Slow-vo-lution, because the slow road will definitely get you there, and you will certainly enjoy the scenery much more if you just keep on keeping on as they used to say!
If you want to participate as a contributor, I would love to have you! The more the merrier, so please check out the Baby Steps to a Rockin’ Life Guidelines and then start thinking about baby steps you take daily to make your life easier.
Find New Friends On Friday!
Feed Me! Tweet Me! Follow Me Home Friday!
I am very excited to be partnering with April of the 21st Century Housewife and Hella D of Helladelicious to offer a Foodie focused find a friend blog hop. I have been thinking for a long time about how many people run giveaways or ask on every blog post for visitors to subscribe to their RSS feed or follow them on twitter or facebook etc. so they can gain a bigger audience. I know there are many “follow me” blog hops out there, but none are related to food so the followers who visit your blog for the day don’t stick around! I want to hop on over to new food blogs and have them hop on over to me! I thought it would be a wonderful service to include a true blog hop feature on Thoughts on Friday for people to list their blogs if they want to be followed. The new linky is called Feed Me, Tweet Me, Follow Me Home and it is a true blog hop. This means, that if YOU wish to run the hop on your blog, all you have to do is get the linky code from the bottom of this page and list it on your blog for your readers to join in.
The rules are very simple, because it is a “follow me” linky.
Just enter your link below, and grab my RSS feed, follow my tweets or follow me on networked blogs.
You can use your blog badge as your thumbnail if you wish and you can link up any time during the week.
Visit as many other blogs as you like, to make new friends and follow their blog, grab their tweets and RSS feed if you do not already. If you do grab their info, please leave them a comment so they know they have a new friend. If someone visits you from Feed Me, and grabs your info, please return the favor!
You can share the Feed Me, Tweet Me, Follow Me Home badge if you want, which will be available only on my side bar. Yes, those are my two lovely parrots, Caliente, a Quaker parrot and Scarlet, a female Solomon Island Eclectus! Aren’t they cute?
It is that simple and hopefully this will help us all gain new visitors to our blogs and expand our audiences while giving us new places to explore and making the bloggiesphere a more friendly place! I follow everyone who visits me and leaves a comment, but if I missed you, please leave me a comment and have fun getting to know more wonderful places on the web!
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!
This article is a part of Fight Back Friday, Creative Girls Blog Hop, I’m Lovin’ It, U Follow Me Blog Hop, Tip Day Thursday and Fresh Pure and Clean Friday.
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February 25th, 2011 on 8:05 am
Thanks for your thoughts!! I think I may have missed your earlier stuff (before I was lucky to find you), but I would love to hear more about why you added meat, etc. back to your diet. I just finished the book, Catching Fire, and the author has interesting thoughts on raw/cooked foods.
Belinda @zomppa recently posted..Tidbit of the Day- Le Parker Meridian’s Hidden Gem
February 25th, 2011 on 9:00 am
Hey Alex, I think I put in the wrong blog code (used on for specific post, not the blog in general), but I am here! Thanks for hosting.
Melynda@Moms Sunday Cafe recently posted..Encore- Green Chili Burritos
February 25th, 2011 on 1:29 pm
Nice writeup yes you are right, it is hard to find a celebrity who actually follow what they talk. Also thanks for mentioning my blog. You are always sweet and love to participate in Hearth and soul Blog hop
Swathi recently posted..Pistachio Raisin Sourdough Bread
February 25th, 2011 on 2:15 pm
Alex, Wow – you cover alot of ground in these Friday posts, and have made them a great resource. I love your idea to take contributions from “roving reporters”!
Thanks for mentioning my new YouTube channel this week. It means alot to me! Have a blessed weekend!
Wardeh @ GNOWFGLINS recently posted..6 Tips For Managing Dry Hands Giveaway
Twitter: andreasjewelry
February 25th, 2011 on 5:05 pm
Hi Alex! Thank you so much for mentioning my Lemon Curd recipe! This week I am sharing another Meyer Lemon recipe- Meyer Lemon Mousse. If you love Lemon Meringue Pie, you will love this Mousse! It tastes like a combination of the filling and the meringue.
Thanks for hosting and have a wonderful weekend!
Andrea (Andreas Kitchen) recently posted..Meyer Lemon Mousse
February 25th, 2011 on 6:04 pm
Wow. you have a lot of thoughts for one day! Several hit home, but I’ll comment on only one: the bulbs. We were early adopters of these fabulous energy saving devices..but I started poking around when our CFL bulbs seemed to continually die quickly. I mean, they are supposed to be years, and they would last a few months. I metered our electricity to make sure the voltage wasn’t too high and poked around on the Internet. That’s when I discovered that people like myself who always turn lights off when they leave a room are cursed by these bulbs.. they rapidly lose their life by being cycled.. and the expected life is based on being on 4 hours at a time… if they are on for an hour, I think they lose 70% of their life, if I recall correctly.. and then there was the environmental/health issues… we read about all the steps to take if you break a bulb (get out of the room, open windows, don’t vacuum). crazy. I felt, and feel, duped.
Renee @ Loca-Faces recently posted..My Friend the Shepherdess
Twitter: miabellavita
February 25th, 2011 on 6:39 pm
Hi Lovely Lady Alex! Thanks for several things that you kindly did today: for posting on Fresh Clean and Pure Friday today and for the sweet shout out about the Blood Orange cake! Thank you also for hosting this get-together and for guiding me to read more of your recommended blogs that you’ve found and follow. That lemon curd looks awesome by the way! I think all things citrus are calling our names lately! Hugs!
February 25th, 2011 on 9:15 pm
It’s always so much fun reading your post on fridays .. so much information you share
Happy weekend!
Kankana recently posted..Mushroom Noodle
February 26th, 2011 on 8:29 am
You guys had snow this week!?!? We didn’t. Weird. I guess those miles in between us makes all the difference.
It’s definitely important to remember that not all local food is organic, but the question can definitely be raised as to how good organic food really is after you ship it across the country. I think it depends on the fruit and veggie in question of course but I do think there are some times when it’s okay to go local over organic.
I wasn’t too bothered by the Oprah thing. I never expected her to permanently go vegan or for her staff to be perfect but I think it raised some good awareness about the vegan diet. I think everyone should eat in moderation and that means eating a few vegan meals every once in a while. Can’t hurt, right?
Joanne recently posted..Wasabi and Crystallized Ginger Dark Chocolate Brownies – Dessert Wars!
February 26th, 2011 on 9:14 am
Hi Alex,
Just love reading end of the week news. I just love the new Hub for Hearth and Soul, it will be really great for all of us. I am number 13 follower. I am really going to miss Tuesday Twister over at GNOWFGLINS,it was one of the first linky parties I took my garden goodies to…oh well time marches on…here come the tubes.Hope you are getting warm and having a great week end!
Miz Helen recently posted..Full Plate Thursday 2-24-11
February 27th, 2011 on 5:05 pm
Thank you for bringing up the CFL bulbs. Not only is it a problem for those suffering from SAD, but for people who can’t handle the constant flickering of fluorescent lighting. I get terrible migraines from fluorescent lights (especially the fluorescent backlit LCD computer monitors), so I’ve been stocking up on regular light bulbs.
Twitter: apriljharris
February 28th, 2011 on 8:49 pm
I’m a bit late reading Thoughts on Friday but I enjoyed it just as much!
We have the same problem with light bulbs. It is now almost impossible to buy traditional bulbs in England and Europe and our new house was built so that you could not use anything but the new ‘energy saving’ bulbs. (It’s illegal to change back to traditional fittings and if you did, you would not be able to buy bulbs!) It does cost less to light our house, but I really hate it, especially in the winter.
I LOVE lemon curd as well, but have never made my own. I must give it a try!
Have a wonderful week.
September 26th, 2011 on 9:56 am
Hello, I love your idea to take contributions from “roving reporters” too
April 5th, 2012 on 7:12 pm
You are spot on in regards to the local produce. I did some research where I live and not a single item that was locally grown was even close to being organic. At least in the stores. Now the Farmer’s Market is a different story.