Win a Mamma Mia Gift Box from Nudo (All Sorts Of Italian Goodies!)

May 4, 2012 by 76 Comments
This is a super-fun gift pack that any mom will like. I may be a bit biased, being an Italian girl, but this fun and unusual gift set still says “Mother’s Day” with the typical chocolates and fun, scented soaps- just with the amazing addition of olive oil! With all the fantastic properties of olive oil, your mom (or you) will flip for this. I know I would love it. Plus, it’s really pretty. And it’s Italian! Yay! 🙂


This Mother’s Day, tell Mama grazie with the new Mamma Mia Gift Box from Nudo (www.nudo–italia.com), the company best known for their Adopt-An-Olive Tree program. The beautifully-designed gift set, filled with a combination of savory, sweet, and soothing Nudo products, is the perfect way to show Mom you care.

Any mother would be thrilled to receive these special items, which are all handmade in Le Marche, Italy. They support the local Italian economy, small-scale production, and use eco-friendly packaging. Mom will know exactly where her olive oil came from, and she’ll practically be on a first-name basis with Michele and Ivan who handcrafted the chocolates, as well as Luigi and Lucia who made the soap. Show the love with a truly handmade gift that she’ll love almost as much as those macaroni necklaces you gave her as a kid.

Nudo’s Mamma Mia Gift Box ($38.00) includes:

Filed Under: food, giveaway, review

Easy Beef Enchilada Recipe

May 2, 2012 by 8 Comments
With Cinco de Mayo this weekend you’ll want to make this easy Beef Enchilada dish. This recipe may look like it takes up a bunch of time, but it really doesn’t. Once you make your sauce and cook the beef it goes fast. My kids think the sauce is just a little spicy but after they dump more cheese on it they have no complaints. You can easily substitute canned sauce or your own favorite sauce if you’d like. You can cook this with shredded pork, chicken even turkey if you’d like as well.
Beef Enchiladas
Ingredients
1lb ground beef
1/2 cups chopped onion
1/4 teaspoon pepper
Enchilada Sauce- recipe below
8-12 corn tortillas (6-7 inch)
A cup of sliced Black olives for topping
2-3 cups shredded cheddar cheese
Sour cream for serving – optional

Directions
*Cook your sauce first
Spray 9×13 baking dish with cooking spray
Preheat the oven to 350F. In a large skillet cook onion and brown beef over medium heat until beef is no longer pink. Pour off grease and season with pepper. Stir in about 1/2 of the enchilada Sauce and turn off heat. Pour A little sauce in your prepared pan just so it coats the bottom of the pan. Dip tortillas one at a time into the sauce to coat both sides. Lay it in the bottom of pan and [Read more…]
Filed Under: food, recipes

Win Libby’s Single-Serve Fruit Cups Prize Pack

April 27, 2012 by 61 Comments

Libby’s Fruits & Vegetables, is excited to introduce their new Single-Serve Fruit Cups that are newly available in your local supermarket. A great snack-time option for the whole family, these single-serve cups are available in four different varieties; diced peaches, diced pears, mixed fruit and cherry mixed fruit.

Filed Under: food, giveaway, review

Tender Mustard Greens Recipe

April 25, 2012 by 9 Comments
This is my favorite way to cook pretty much any leafy green, whether they are quick or long cooking greens. I use kale, mustard greens or collard greens mostly , all of which work really well with this dish. This recipe does require some time, an hour and twenty minutes all together but it’s worth the wonderful taste. My family really enjoys this and with a non stop growing supply of greens in my garden we have it often. If you use collard greens, use young ones so they won’t require more cooking time. Kale and mustard greens are more tender to begin with so they don’t require as much cooking time as a full collard leaf.
Tender Mustard Greens
Ingredients

1/2 cup chopped up leftover ham or cooked bacon
1 cup chopped onion
3-4 garlic gloves chopped
3-4 cups chicken broth
2 1/2 lbs Mustard Greens with tough stems removed and shredded. You can use either kale or collards in place, only young collards though. if not your cooking time with lengthen until they are tender.
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
**How to cut up greens– Take the freshly washed green leaf and lay it down. Layer about four others other top. Chop off the end stems then starting at the side of all the leaves take hold and start rolling up. You’ll create a leaf log and are ready to cut them into shreds, much like a paper shredder cuts up paper. Repeat with about 4-5 leaves at a time until you [Read more…]
Filed Under: food, recipes

Taste What You’re Missing- A Delicious Book Review

April 23, 2012 by 12 Comments

Have you ever been told to try something because it is so good you will be amazed? However, when you actually try it, its nothing special. Either someone is having some fun with you at your expense, or there actually is something you are missing. You say tomato….

To find out if your friends are all goobers or you just have a junk palette (mwah-haha), you don’t need an expensive class or to spend time with a stuck up snob trying to ‘educate’ your taste buds. Right? How much fun would that be? Not so much.

Check out this book- It’s author, Barb Stuckey, has been a professional food developer for fifteen years. Her goal in writing this book was to make a “Tasting for Dummies” kind of book that teaches the reader to taste all the flavors and nuances of their food. She starts with the five basic tastes- sweet, sour, bitter, salt and umami- to the profiles of spices, grassy, pungent, warm smoky floral, etc. The book is very interesting, particularly in its recipes and experiments, which teach your brain how to taste differences and hone in on what those differences are.


With salt, water and accent flavor enhancer, you can [Read more…]

Filed Under: book review, food, review

Top 5 Healthy Habits to Impart on Your Kids

April 23, 2012 by 7 Comments

When it comes to hygiene and healthy living, kids can definitely “go against the grain”, but as most of us
can recall from our own childhoods, that’s not the result of being “bad” or even negligent. Dirt, messes, and
creative ways of keeping a bathroom, they all simply come with being a kid.

However, there is a wonderful flip side to this coin and that’s while children may not be the tidiest, they do
tend to be the most receptive to change and growth—in other words, they’re teachable and so if you want
them to live a healthy lifestyle, it’s usually simply a matter of showing them what to do.

Are you ready to get serious about imparting some healthy habits on your kids? Here are five ways.

Wash Those Hands

It’s a tried and true rule that should never go out of style. When your child comes inside from outdoors,
when s/he finishes using the bathroom and before every meal, they should definitely wash their hands.
Now, here’s the thing: When you’re teaching them, it’s a good idea to supervise. You can make it fun by
getting their hands full of suds and singing a song (or at least 30 seconds worth of one) along with them
until they are done. Make sure it’s in warm water because a cold temperature won’t do a lot for killing
germs.

Watch the Snacking
A great way to curb constant snacking is to have your children only eat in the kitchen and only during
designated times. For instance, other than the three main meals of the day, there is certainly room for a
couple of treats between meals, but if they can do it while watching television or playing video games, that
doesn’t leave a lot of room for moderation. Snack time should be in the room where most eating takes place
as well and make sure that it’s healthy things like fruits, raw vegetables, nuts, popcorn and dark chocolate.
Does that mean they can’t have anything sweet? Of course not, but that’s what dessert it is for, right? Right.

Drink Water

We’re made up of mostly water and that alone should inspire us to want to drink more of it. However,
another thing to keep in mind is that even if soda is not readily available in your home, juice that’s not
consumed in moderation [Read more…]

Filed Under: family, food, health, kids

Easy Casserole Recipe

April 18, 2012 by 13 Comments

This casserole is ultra easy! I mean it, I have no idea how anyone would mess this up. I’ve changed it up and added broccoli or peas, even chopped up celery with the onions. You can add sour cream if you want, you can even mix up the soups. Don’t have beef on hand? Not a problem, use either turkey or chicken. It’s the go to casserole for leftovers and a no fuss what so ever kinda recipe you don’t want to lose. My kids like this no matter how I make it, and that’s a winner right there.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon oil

1 onion chopped

1lb ground beef

1 package of wide egg noodles (16 ounces)

1 cup or one can of mushrooms (rinsed and drained)

1 can of condensed cream of mushroom soup (or any other condensed soup you have on hand)
[Read more…]

Filed Under: food, recipes

Silk Fruit & Protein Review and Giveaway

April 12, 2012 by 32 Comments

Have you ever been really impressed by a soy milk?
I mean so impressed that it surpassed the original. This is something Silk has done and done well. Silk started out as a soy milk, but has far surpassed the plain ‘milk’ moniker.

First they started with soy milk, then almond milk and coconut milk. Now the newest line, Fruit and Protein. The Fruit and Protein drink comes in three flavors. The flavors are mango peach, mixed berry, and strawberry banana. Of these we have tried mango peach and strawberry banana, both of which are phenomenal and we cant wait to try mixed berry. Mixed berry is a berry blend of blueberry, strawberry, and other berries of course. Mango Peach has a great peach flavor and a hint of exotic mango. Strawberry banana is a classic and is not to be missed.

We [Read more…]

Filed Under: food, giveaway, review