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!

Follow along with these great foodie links! Photo by Oast House Archives

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 latest giveaway to win a pair of sunglasses or prescription glasses from 39dollarglasses.com! Thanks!

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Happy Friday! As you read this I am in Boston on a momma-daughter trip to visit two colleges my oldest daughter got accepted to so she can make an informed decision. Happy to be able to spend some time with my brother’s family and my little baby niece! So, I had to get my thoughts together a little bit early so I wouldn’t miss my time with you all. Enjoy your silly April Fools day too!  Time is short so let’s sit down quick and share these wonderful foodie links from around the blogosphere this Friday!

Can sending love to plant seeds make them more healthy for your body?

Hella D is an amazing person who is deeply in tune with nature and the earth. Her blog is filled with to the brim with useful information on sustainability and self reliance. This week she shares an article that touches on Anastasia and the Ringing Cedars. Anastasia is a very gifted intuitive who shares with us the belief that plants can be imprinted by our very DNA and we can instill in our own garden our very specific needs for nutrients. Please read all about the planting ritual that can help accomplish this and I hope it will peak your interest in bringing more intimacy and spirituality into your home gardening. I speak a lot about food love and positivity and this is taking it to a whole different and more profound level.

Research shows that comfort food is good for your soul!

This short article, featured on the Food News Journal by Phil Villarreal of the Consumerist describes a study that shows comfort food is good for the soul. While the premise that comfort food is bad for your body BUT good for your soul is discussed, he highlights the fact that the study reveals it improves emotional and mental health. I would disagree with the first premise because I believe that when you eat what you really love and you listen to your soul when it comes to cravings its all good, the second part is confirmation that comfort food indeed does something great for your mind which is totally in alignment with what I am talking about here at A Moderate Life!

Please welcome some awesome new hosts to the Hearth and Soul Hop!!

This is our first week of the Hearth and Soul Hop where we have some terrific new hosts. We have also opened the hop up a bit more so that you can share your links from Monday night to Thursday night to make it easier to participate. Please take a moment and visit the new hosts 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!

Mentioning this again because the giveaway lasts so long! 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!

Girlichef in the foodie news again!!

Heather of Girlichef is at it again! Her great blog filled with foodie love always shares not only wonderful recipes but little bits of herself and I love that so much! This week her post on Oatmeal with Bananas and Poppy Seeds was featured in the Food News Journal and I wanted to say congratulations to her and share it with all of you!

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!

Vegetarian and Meat lovers dishes collide!

Wendy of the Local Cook puts together an extensive recipe blog featuring local and sustainable foods. This week she shared a recipe for Venison steaks with Swiss Chard and Orzo that she says she got the inspiration for from a vegan cooking site. If it is one thing vegans know it is how to make veggies delicious and this recipe is something I could dig right into because not only do I love game meat for its flavor and nutrients but dark greens are my favorite!

Unique international fusion dish!

Pinay of Pinay In Texas Cooking Corner writes a lovely blog filled with much loved recipes from her homeland in the Philippines while still mixing it up with more typical fare. She takes her ethnic culture and melds it so well with familiar ingredients, creating delightful new tastes. This week she shared a recipe where she fused German and Asian cuisine in her Bratwurst and vegetables in oyster sauce and I just have to share it with you because I want to taste it so badly!

I tried it at a moderate life!

I Tried it at a Moderate Life!

This week I was bored with my regular green smoothie breakfast and wanted to try a different recipe, and I was so excited to see a new version to try on the Hearth and Soul hop, so…

Yummy frog smoothie that contains no frogs from Tina of Mom's Crazy Cooking!

Tina of Mom’s Crazy Cooking has a lovely family food blog and this week she shared a wonderful green smoothie she called Frog Smoothie. I have green smoothies every morning for breakfast because getting greens and fruit into my diet is so important to me. I wanted to try something new and so I grabbed her simple recipe. It was delicious and easy to make and it will be going into my regular green smoothie rotation!

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!

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