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!

Time to shuffle on over to check out these great links!

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 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!

Well, we had more snow, and then we had ice ice baby, but things are getting back to normal here and I am so excited to be going to visit some good friends this weekend for a birthday party while my hubby holds down the fort. With all the ice shoveling I got quite a bit of exercise this week, but didn’t have time to try any new recipes from the hearth and soul hop so I tried it at a Moderate Life will take a pass this week, but I still have plenty of other good stuff to share with you all so let’s get started so I can get to packing!

Of Course if it’s about Mark Bittman you know I am gonna share it…Again!!

Last week I shared that Mark Bittman, my food super hero was leaving the Minimalist column at the New York Times to do more opinion based food columns and blogging. Well, he started out with a BANG on his first Opinionator column. Check out his food manifesto for the future. I love him even more now, even though I don’t completely agree with his thoughts on empowering the FDA, but it is a wonderful start and nice to see a food writer making such bold statements and not waffling! Mark, you  wicked ROCK

More great stuff from the Food News Journal!

These two articles came from the wonderful Food News Journal which I love love love and you better sign up for their news letter! I cant list everything, but their February 1^st article roundup had a hilarious article on bacon so go check it out!

This is a great little gallery of healthy eating notes and photos from vintage cookbooks put together on Eatocracy for CNN. It illustrates what most of us know, that the old way of cooking and eating were indeed healthy for you and yep, granny knew best! Check them out! The discussion underneath quite starkly reveals that very few people know the truth or are willing to admit they were duped by the government, large food and health media into eating completely wrong for the last 20 years in the name of good health!

According to an article in the New York Times written by Andrew Martin, the government is again issuing dietary suggestions to the US population related to what to eat but this time they said eat less. Really? The guidelines they do give are just another regurgitation of less sodium, no saturated fat and more media and food industry supported falsehoods. I share this in an effort to point out to you that you have to follow what you know to be true and right for your body and do not for a minute take what the food industry supported media suggests you do.

Gary Taubes says eating fat is heart healthy…right in the Reader’s Digest!

I don’t have a link for you directly to this article, but if you get the Readers Digest, this month, the front cover showed two fried eggs and a bacon smilie face and it said, eat this, lose weight. The article inside was an interview with Gary Taubes, a scientist and food researcher who believes the current stance on nutrition is completely wrong. I was just so glad to see some info in the mainstream media about fat being good for your heart. You can see some of Gary’s info at his website, but read this article if you can get your hands on it. Some I find to be too much about “losing weight” and not about health, but it is a start in the right direction

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!

Check out Girlichef’s great Tackling Bittman Recipe Roundup!

Heather of Girlichef was a guest host this month on the Tackling Bittman recipe hop and she created a wonderful Mark Bittman recipe roundup format. Folks mailed her their recipes and she did a terrific write up in conjunction with a giveaway of the Food Matters Cookbook by of course Mark Bittman! Please check out all the terrific recipes! And remember, if you tackled Bittman this month, please link up to our February Tackling Bittman Recipe Hop which is open for the next week and share the Bitty Love!

Get your Wild Thing on every month!

Butter of Hunger and Thirst and Beks of Cauldrons and Crockpots are two wild and crazy gals! Both live on the wild side when it comes to life and food and they are going to be putting their money where their mouths are so to speak by starting a wonderful new monthly foraging and herbal roundup challenge called Wild Things and all the details are shared at Hunger and Thirst this month. Each month they will be posting about a wonderful wild forage, be it plant, herb, fruit, nut, seed or animal and then giving recipes to try. They then ask that you experiment on your own with the forage and write about it to share with the group. This first month is all about Rose Hips and you can see  a simple Rose Hips Syrup recipe at Cauldrons and Crockpots. I am totally wild for this idea and will be following along closely! I simply can’t wait for spring to get out there and forage!

It’s best to follow these rules when foraging!

Penny of Penniless Parenting has an amazingly informative blog all about living wonderfully and frugally at the same time. She is a huge forager and she shares her rules for ethical and safe foraging. If you are interested in learning the right way to pick wild plants and being respectful to the earth, persons and property, check out her wonderful list of foraging rules . I highly agree with everything she says in her detailed post.

And now for a little Valentine’s Day fun!

Pattie of Olla-Podrida has a lovely post up about making Valentine’s day even more special by having cards canceled in a “love related” town. What fun and surprise it would be to get a card from Valentines Texas or Loveland Colorado? It sounds divine to me and I may just send out a card or two! Check out all the details on getting your Valentine’s Day cards post marked at her blog.  Thanks Pattie for the fun tip!

The Real Milk Revolution will not be pasteurized!

Hella D of the Helladelicious website shares a wonderful resource for traditional food preparation, sustainable agriculture, local and seasonal products and overall health. She is a part of a cowshare program in Vancouver and like in many areas of the US, it is coming under government scrutiny and she is asking for our help. She has always been so very supportive of the hearth and soul hop and of a moderate life, and I am also extremely supportive of her right to choose the food products she wants to share with her family. As a devoted Raw Dairy user, I applaud her in her efforts to start a Real Milk Revolution. If you are interested in maintaining your personal rights to choose the food you want to eat, this issue is important to you. If you are a raw dairy user, this issue is important to you. Please stop over and read her indepth article on the raw dairy issues and how she wants to spread the word and help out if you can.

Add to the Herbal Medicine Chest!

Sharon of the Wood Wifes Journal has a lovely spot in the woods where she shares her experiences with learning herbal medicine. She has recently started a blog carnival link up called the Herbal Medicine Chest. She first shares information on making herbal medicines in your own kitchen (this week it was salves, ointments and balms) and then asks you to link up a recipe for a herbal remedy that you have made. I know many of you have foraged, wildcrafted herbs and made herbal medicines, and this is a good way to showcase your wonderful healing remedies, so please stop by and show Sharon the herbal love!

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!

Gluten free healthy piggies in a blanket!

Lisa of the Nourishing Homemaker is creating a real food world for her 5 small children and she is doing it up right by sharing healthy but fun meals like this awesome gluten free pigs in a blanket recipe! I have yet to “bake” gluten free, as you all know I am doing a test for a month to see if gluten is really my heartburn culprit (so far it looks like it!), but I know my kids would love this simple recipe for hot dog goodness and I am determined to try it very soon!

Healthy soup is quick and easy if you plan ahead!

Debbie of Debbie Does Dinner Healthy is doing a wonderful job creating healthful family recipes that contain ingredients conducive to helping you maintain your beautiful figure. This week I am sharing her recipe for Green Chili Chicken Lime Soup to show you how easy and delicious a recipe can be when you plan ahead and store in some of the key ingredients. Debbie had some shredded chicken on hand so this recipe came together in a flash. I always have chicken stock and can throw a soup together in minutes for a quick dinner and avoid the take out! Planning ahead is a great way to save money and eat healthy!

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. The fifth edition this past Wednesday of Baby Steps to a Rockin’ Life from the Middle of the Road was another step in the right direction and featured 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 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.

1. Prosciutto Wrapped Asparagus in Puff Pastry   2. The 21st Century Housewife   3. A Moderate Life!   4. Susannah’s {Kitchen}   5. Lemon Cheese Cake With Sour Cream Topping   6. Oooey Goooey Cherry tart   7. Baked Beef Chimichangas   8. Slow Cooker Cream Cheese Chicken   9. Super Bowl Dessert Variety   10. Veggie Converter   11. Sprout’s GREEN Family!! need followers pls   12. Bibberche   13. The Woodwife’s Journal   14. The Mom Adventures FOLLOWS BACK   15. Yoghurt Pannacotta with Orange Jelly   16. Nutella Peanut Butter Cups {gluten free}   17. Bizzy B. Bakes   18. My Sweet and Savory   19. Girl Boy Girl Inspired   20. Pasta with leeks and chorizo

This linky list is now closed.

What is a blog hop?
Get the code here…

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