December 2009

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Happy Friday! I have been talking about product reviews for awhile, and what better day than a Friday to share with you some of the things I have been loving lately. Please note that I did receive coupons for free products from Green and Black’s Organics, but all of the other products I purchased myself.

Green and Black’s Organics – Green and Black’s kindly sent me two coupons for free products, and I found the ginger and caramel at my local grocery store. I was excited to sample Green and Black’s chocolate because of their commitment to organic, high quality chocolate made with ingredients fairly sourced from farmers. The chocolate is pretty amazing. The ginger was my favorite, with spicy chewy bits of crystallized ginger woven throughout the flavorful dark chocolate. The caramel was delicious as well. It slightly reminded me of a Caramello bar, only much less sweet, allowing you to really experience the quality of ingredients. Green and Black’s makes a large variety of chocolate bars with flavors such as mint, espresso, and hazelnut and currant. I don’t know how I didn’t know this, but they also make ice cream! Yum. Their site also has all sorts of cool information about the chocolate making process, so check it out!

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Celestial Seasonings Decaf Sweet Coconut Thai Chai

Its cold outside, but my office is hot and dry, making my throat irritated and giving everyone a general feeling of dehydration. I find delicious decaf teas to be very helpful in having something other than water to drink. Perfect for an afternoon. Sweet coconut Thai chai is spicy, sweet, exotic, and completely comforting. I get through my day looking forward to an afternoon tea break.

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Speaking of afternoon tea breaks. . .

Carr’s Ginger Lemon Creme Cookies

I discovered these cookies recently, and they are the perfect little burst of spicy crunchy ginger and creamy, tart lemon. Lemony desserts, with their sunshiny, bright and sour flavors have become favorites of mine, and I look forward to a couple of these cookies with a cup of tea, usually around 3:30 when I am losing steam and need to power through the rest of the day. A little treat makes such a difference!

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Trader Joe’s Super Red Drink Powder

I have reviewed this before, but as it has been a consistent part of my diet for about a month and a half, I wanted to mention it again. Despite everyone else around me being sick, I am feeling great and I think that the vitamin and antioxidant blast that this powder delivers in a delicious powder has something to do with that.

DeLoach 2007 Zinfandel

I had to sneak a wine in there didn’t I? 🙂 After our visit to DeLoach in November, I have had a couple of opportunities to enjoy their Zinfandel, and it just gets better each day after the bottle is opened. A deep berry flavor, almost like a port but not sweet, provides a long, lovely finish. This is by far my favorite wine at the moment, and I am already planning a trip to return to DeLoach 🙂

Blogs! There are SO many great food, wine, travel, and healthy living blogs out there! Chances are, if you are reading this, I read your blog. I can’t always comment because I seem to have a huge problem submitting comments, but trust me, I know you are out there! Recently one of my new Foodbuzz friends, All in Good Food, let me know that she had reviewed my blog on hers. I was so flattered and excited, then thought, “why am I not doing this?”. I talk so much about myself, and I thought it would be great to share some of the talented bloggers that I read with all of you. So, every so often on a Friday I will be doing a Friday Foodie Feature. If you would like to be featured, please send me an email at traveleatlove2009@hotmail.com. I will likely do more than one a week when I am traveling in January. First up is Mardi from Eat, Live, Travel, Write, so check it out!

I have lots of other favorite things which I will share from time to time. I hope you are all having a great Friday! My day was quite bleeeehh, but I arrived home to a lovely holiday gift from Jacobs Creek sent to me by a wine blogger and Public Relations representative. I will be blogging about the wine and recipes they sent me sometime this week. What a great way to end the day! It is ffffreezing here, and I have an 8 mile run at 9 am tomorrow so I am off to do some stretching and TV watching. I will see you when my run is over!

Do you ever have trouble planning out meals for the week, shopping for all of the right ingredients, and executing that plan? We have all been there. Our best intentions are to use some free time on the weekend to plan ahead, but somehow we find ourselves home from the grocery store missing key ingredients or worse, not wanting to create a list to go to the store at all. Have you had that “we have no food in the house” moment, even though you may be staring at a pantry full of random items? They might work together to create a meal, but not exactly what you had in mind.

I recently discovered Plummelo.com, a site that allows you to collect, store, and share recipes, then generates a shopping list from your meal plans. It couldn’t be easier, and it is free. I will be writing for Plummelo’s blog twice a month and would love your feedback for future posts.

What tools do you use for planning meals and grocery shopping? What are some of your biggest challenges to getting delicious and healthy meals on the table?

If you have a minute, please check out my post, Sneaking Vegetables in. . . The Delicious Way on blog.plummelo.com, and while you are over there take a few minutes to browse Plummelo.com to see how the site can help you plan out next week’s meals today!

Tags: Food, meal planning, recipe

After my shortbread disaster on Tuesday I wasn’t sure that flour and I  should be in the kitchen at the same time ever again. . .

But I had planned on making homemade pasta last night and since our delicious Coppa visit got in the way, tonight I was determined to make pasta.

Starting out with a recipe I found on the blog Sugarlaws, I gathered the very simple ingredients required, whole wheat flour, cage free eggs, salt, and water and nervously started making my pasta, hoping to avoid disaster but confident knowing our favorite sushi spot was just a speed dial away!

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Making the dough was as easy as mixing the eggs, flour, and salt, then slowly adding water in a spoonful at a time until I could knead it gently into a neat little ball.

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I’ll tell you a little secret. We don’t own a rolling pin. A wine bottle works quite well though. 🙂

We took turns rolling out the dough, then rolled it into a coil to cut the pasta into ribbons.

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Once the pasta was all cut, we set it aside for awhile so that I could make the spinach pesto. This wintry pesto is an absolute favorite of mine. I used 3 cups of baby organic spinach, 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese, 5 cloves of garlic, 1/4 cup olive oil, salt, and fresh ground black pepper to taste. All whirled around in my food processor and ready to go!

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Once the pesto was ready, we got the pasta water boiling complete with a few teaspoons of olive oil and a liberal sprinkling of sea salt. The pasta only took five minutes to float to the top of the water, and it was ready.

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In addition to the pesto, I topped the pasta with a scoop of low fat ricotta cheese to add a bit of calcium to the dish. The heat of the pasta melted the cheese and pesto together for a creamy, garlicky sauce. The pasta was good! It was a little too thick and would be better rolled out more next time, but overall I am pretty happy with myself, especially after a killer workout this morning and a busy work day. I am looking forward to making pasta again and to adding flavor to the dough. Trader Joe’s has a lemon black pepper pasta I would love to recreate!

Tomorrow is F-R-I-D-A-Y! I am very excited for the weekend despite the fact that I have a 7.5 mile run on Saturday and it is meant to be bitter cold out! We are going to get our Christmas tree and to do some cooking, shopping, family visiting, and resting! Have a great Friday everyone, and I will “see” you tomorrow!

Tags: Food, pasta, recipe

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