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!

Hop on over and check out these great foodie links! Photo by Free Aussie Stock

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!

This month’s Tackling Bittman and His Buddies ALL cookbook recipe link up is now open so please stop by and share a recipe with us! Thanks!

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Last week I sat down and let out a breath of relief thinking that my life was going to be a bit more normal for a while. Of course, the universe does not always follow your instructions and again we as a family are poised on top of some major changes that are causing a disruption in the normal flow of things. That said, I know without a doubt that the only constant in this universe is change and without change there is no letting in of new and wonderful opportunities. I know I am up for the challenge of change, which is making me focus on what is important in my life and allowing the things that are not so important to fall away. I would ask you to bear with me for the next week or so as I circle the wagons and take a bit of a breather from the hustle and bustle and spend more time with my family and really living my life.  Things will be back to better than normal as soon as possible, but I didnt want to miss sharing these wonderful foodie links from around the blogosphere this Friday!

I’ll have an order of pink slime with my fries!

My brother brought to my attention an article in the New York Times about pink slime being added to burgers as a filler. Seems the pink slime is filled with ammonia to kill off the bacteria in low quality meat scraps and this stuff is then added to hamburger meat in fast food restaurants and even school lunch programs. Well I just came across the Grist response by Tom Philpott and thought I would share the insanity with you if you didn’t know about it. This is why I eat 100% grass organic pastured grass fed beef so I don’t have to worry about this kind of stuff. You expect meat to be meat and not some industrialized slime fractionation of meat!

Marion Nestle on the future of factory farms!

I found this article by Kerry Trueman of Huffington Post Food to be quite interesting. It’s an interview of renowned food author and nutrition professor Marion Nestle. Nestle was asked if factory farming has a future and her response was that it would indeed continue because Americans enjoy cheap meat and this perpetuates the deplorable situations in factory farms. Some of her points for reform are a great starting point, but I believe decentralizing and supporting local family farmers is the way to healthier animals, healthier meats and therefore healthier humans.

How to make eggs taste as good as bacon!

Darya of Summer Tomato has a great article up right now in praise of pastured eggs and she shares her secret ingredient for making eggs as good as bacon! I completely agree with her summation on the pastured eggs and suggest everyone make every effort to obtain great eggs as a part of their healthy balanced nutrition, but I really believe you can make eggs as tasty as bacon by frying them in bacon grease though I do think her secret ingredient is pretty darn good! Check it out! I found this on Food News Journal, of course!

How to take great food pictures and help Japan at the same time!

If you are a food blogger, one thing you appreciate beyond the recipes is the food photography. We all forgive the bad shots because we have all been there, and we all praise the great ones because we know how hard it is to make food look appetizing as a still life. This is why they employ food stylists in the commercial food industry. This week Matt Wright, one of the best self-taught photographers has written a book about his food photography and he is giving all the profits to support the relief effort in Japan. If you want to help out the efforts and learn a whole bunch about making your food photography better, check out the information on the Wrightfood photography manual which I also found on the wonderful Food News Journal.

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!

What foods are in season?

Kankana of Sunshine and Smile shared this great link! The year in food is a website that details seasonal foods by the month which can help you to eat more seasonally for your area which really is another way of listening to the seasons of your own body. If something is in season in your area then it is pretty certain it would be the healthiest thing for you to be eating at that time! The seasons of the body coincide with the seasons of the earth. Check out this great website to discover what is in season for April and make sure you bookmark it to check back all year long!

Look what’s cooking at the Iron Chef Challenge!

Amy at a Latte with Ott A is running her Iron Chef Challenge for April so all you bakers out there should stop on over because the secret ingredient this month is Clabber Girl Baking Powder! I am sure you all have plenty of awesome goodies you can share and you could possibly win bragging rights as an Iron Chef!

Back to Basics Ebook Giveaway!

KerryAnn of Cooking Traditional Foods has been a cheerleader for traditional foods for many years and she is the creator of a real food menu mailer that has been around the longest on the internet. This week she is sharing a great Back to Basics Ebook giveaway on her site, which also has a forum if you have any questions about traditional foods. This book gives you basic knowledge of real food and traditional food preparation so if you are new to traditional foods or just want to brush up on your skills this is a great giveaway to enter!

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!

Excuse me but what the heck is vinegar pie?

Susan of Charm of the Carolines has a lovely down home spot where she shares musings on a southern life and many lovely recipes. This week she had a hankering for Vinegar pie and since I had never even heard of vinegar pie I thought I might share it with all of you to see if I was just odd or if this really is a regional recipe that us northerners wouldn’t have heard of before! The recipe certainly looks easy to make and is filled with nutritious farm fresh eggs so I will certainly be trying it!

Cinnamon banana goodness!

I guess I must have a craving for something sweet! Jan of Jewelry 4 Change is new to the hearth and soul hop, but she makes a bang with her first entry of Cinnamon Sautéed Bananas! This delectable dessert reminds me of a child hood favorite we would get at the restaurant of a family friend. There is nothing better than warm bananas melting in your mouth and this recipe reminded me of that lovely feeling! Going to have to try this one out myself very soon!

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.

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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