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!

He may be tiny but he sure loves sharing these great big foodie love links! Photo by Kersti Neibelsiek

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 who has a rockin’ new website design 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!

Please stop by my 1 year blog anniversary to celebrate and you could win a $50 CSN gift certificate in my giveaway! Thanks!

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What a busy week we had after spending all Sunday in the city to watch my oldest daughter sing at Carnegie Hall! They did a wonderful job and it was a memory to last a lifetime. If you ever get a chance to see a concert at this historical venue, do it because it is absolutely amazingly beautiful! Loads of stuff going on with my brother visiting with his baby this weekend and my parents preparing to go on a cruise of the south seas for a month!   Time is short so let’s sit down quick and share these wonderful foodie links from around the blogosphere this Friday!

Power house foods to boost nutrition and save you money!

My dear friend Mary of Frugal Buzz has guest posted here when I first started blogging and she just recently wrote a great article about powerhouse foods that will help you save money while still eating extremely nutritiously! I went over to read it and the sweet woman linked to my site! So I wanted to share this great article with you. Mary has her site set up to go directly to her URL so scroll down until you find the article on Top Ten Power Packed Foods. You can’t go wrong with the foods on this list in terms of nutrition and many are extremely economical so if you are trying to save some cash and still eat healthy, this is a great resource!

Another big magazine is telling us what is healthy! Really?

I found this on Stumble Upon. Once again a national media outlet is telling us how to eat healthy! Some of the foods on the Woman’s Day Eat Healthy America list are simply ridiculous if you actually do your research and know what is truly good for you, like whole, traditionally prepared foods. I posted this as a giggle for those who are already eating healthy, traditional, organic, sustainable and seasonal. When will the media catch up with the truth? I wonder.

Today I Found Out: Some fascinating food facts!

I love this site I just found called Today I found out! This is a fun list they put together of 12 fascinating food facts and many of them I didn’t even know so I thought I would share it with all my foodie friends so they would be so much the wiser when asked some food trivia! Though, I do have a bit of a discrepancy with the list. My milk is not white, it is almost yellow right now because of the new spring grass!

Get ready for some more changes on the Hearth and Soul Hop!!

I am sad to see Butter of Hunger and Thirst leave this week as a Hearth and Soul Hop host but I wish her well in all that she has planned in her wild outdoor trekking life! I am excited to be sharing the hosting with all these wonderful new hosts as well as the usual crew. Please take a moment and visit their blogs if you do not know them and get familiar with these wonderful foodie love bloggers!

Christy at Frugality and Crunchiness with Christy

Jason at Alternative Health and Nutrition

Alea of Premeditated Leftovers

April of 21st Century Housewife

Michelle of Fit Foodista

Kankana of Sunshine and Smile

Swathi of Zesty South Indian Kitchen

You are all a big part of the hearth and soul hop and we hope you check out the brand new Hearth and Soul Hop Hub, which is in it’s infancy at http://www.hearthandsoulhop.blogspot.com where you can link up directly to the hop if you like. Other news, features and information are forth coming on the hop hub page so check back often for new stuff!

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!

Thirty day open box suprise giveaway!

Amanda of A Few Shortcuts has an amazing site stuffed full of information to make your life easier and save you time and money in all areas of your life, including the kitchen! She is running a super duper 30 day giveaway in which she will be adding surprise gifts to a box she has in her living room! The prizes that are already in there are listed on her site, so stop by and check it out and enter to win a whole bunch of stuff!

New Meat Lover’s Blog Carnival!

Leah of Beyer Beware is new to the hearth and soul blog hop. She runs a tight schedule of being a farm wife and mom and also working and cooking. Not sure how she does it but she does! She also runs a Monday blog hop called Hunk of Meat Monday and I think that is really a great name and celebration of all things meat! How bold and wonderful! Stop on over and link up a meat recipe and share in Leah’s  jam packed site!

Melt In Your Mouth Monday Blog Carnival!

I adore what Jane of Make Ahead Meals for Busy Moms does for folks. She helps those who are crazy busy to know that with a little planning and preparation ahead of time they can make amazing meals for their families even if they are over scheduled! Jane has recently added a Monday blog carnival called Melt in Your Mouth Monday and I hope you will all stop by and visit her and link up a recipe to share with her crew and check out her awesome recipes.

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. I am sad to say that Heather of girlichef will be stepping down from hosting, but I am certain we will continue to evolve and grow the hop organically as has been the case from the day it’s seed was planted in fertile soil!

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!

Join the Crock Pot Stock Revolution with Alea!

I promise I am not sharing this great chicken stock in a crock pot tutorial from Alea of Premeditated Leftovers because she is going to be joining us as a Hearth and Soul Hop host next week! I am sharing it because I am a crock pot stock maker myself and I truly believe that this is one of the most important things you can make for your family to use in your cooking as much as you can. Stock is simply brimming over with good things for your body and most people simply throw away the things you use to make stock. Why in the world would you not take a few minutes to throw these leftovers into a crock pot and make this amazing source of vitamins, minerals and deliciousness? Alea’s tutorial is perfect and I hope you will read it and get to making stock!

Drool worthy healthy cheese steak sandwiches!

Again, I am flabbergasted! I have absolutely no idea how Jackie of Crest Cottage Creations gets it all done. She works and runs her lovely home, cooks from scratch and blogs! This week she blew my mind with an amazing recipe for home made cheese steaks! I was drooling all over my screen. I mean, I have had cheese steaks before, rather infrequently because they are not called the bomb around here for nothing, but it never even crossed my mind to make my own healthy version! Jackie’s looks divine and I am totally making these very very soon! This is another reminder NOT to visit the hearth and soul hop links when I am hungry!

I tried it at a moderate life!

I Tried it at a Moderate Life!

This week I really wanted to be adventurous because I was stuck inside during the on again off again snow and so I decided to check out the Wild Thing’s Challenge over at Cauldrons and Crockpots and Hunger and Thirst. So…

You will not believe how good spruce salt is from Butter of Hunger and Thirst!

I was inspired to make Butter’s Spruce Salt and I am so glad I did! Actually, I had to use White Pine needles because all the spruce we have around here is generally cultivated and I wanted to be wild. I know, you are thinking evergreen in food? I was JUST like you and I cannot even begin to tell you how amazingly good this stuff tastes! I put it on some Twice Cooked Gnocchi and it was so good my kids wanted some. KIDs!!! The flavor is both woodsy and citrusy and like nothing you have ever tried before! Even if you have had Greek retsina wine, which is aged in pine casks to take on a pitchy flavor, this is nothing at all like that. Get over to the Wild Things Challenge and be inspired to try some evergreen cooking of your own. I am so glad that I did because I can’t wait to try some of this in other recipes!

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.

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