Good Guide Interactive!

Great news for those who really liked the website Good Guide. You can now create a member profile to get updates, keep track of products, and a few other features I haven't gotten into yet! Try it out and share the experience!
Let's be healthy. Good food, good products, good life!

Maintenance

I am doing some upkeep and trying to make this blog look a little better. Check out Shabby Blog where I will be playing with some of their backgrounds until I find one I like! Great stuff for you to use on your blog too!

Don't Buy it Just Because it's Pink

It's October and that means it's Breast Cancer Awareness month. Everyone breaks out clothing and accesories in pink and we try to buy products that promise to help raise awareness of Breast Cancer.
This leads me to my argument. Aren't we already aware? Isn't there a crazy level of awareness in this country? We women need to get out there and get mammograms. Do the self examination and encourage each other to care about our health. This is action. But there are more ways to be Action oriented.
I want to draw your attention to an amazing website, Breast Cancer Action. The women behind this are tired of funding going to create more awareness. How about research? How about a cure? Let's raise money for that.
One of the best campaigns that Breast Cancer Action ran was against Yoplait yogurt. We have all seen the little pink lids that yoplait encourages us to end back and they will make a donation. Well up until February of this year, yoplait was putting rBGH in their yogurt. rBGH has been linked to CAUSING breast cancer. Thanks yoplait. Luckily, through Breast Cancer Action, and a whole lot of phone calls to General Mills, rBGH has been taken out of the yogurt. This year, the campaign is against Eli Lilly which is the only manufacturer of rBGH. They also make a variety of drugs needed to treat breast cancer.
These are a few examples of how we as consumers need to be aware and not just buy something because it is pink and promises to donate money. How much money? Donate to whom? Is it better if I just donate that money directly? Is this product actualy harming me more than it's helping?
Product manufacturers are smart. They want us to feel good with our purchases. But we need to make sure that our good feelings are warranted. We need to get smart about our purchases. I encourage everyone to read the Think Before You Pink website for some tips about purchasing pink products.
Let's get aware and let's take some action!

In the Kitchen: Weekly Recipe: Rum Cupcakes

It's Monday and that means... absolutely nothing. Really, where was I going with this? Oh yes!
CUPCAKES!


A friend of mine is getting married in Vegas this weekend. We had a fun little shower for her a couple weeks ago and I made playing card-themed cupcakes for everyone.
The baking of the cupcakes was incredibly easy. I just got a chocolate cake mix and made it the normal way except when it came to the water. Instead of all water, I made 1/2 of that with rum!
It is very important that you do not taste very much of the cake batter before it is cooked. I didn't even think about it and was not prepared for a little alcohol buzz at 10 in the morning while I was baking.



I choose Sailor Jerry's rum to use because of it's nice vanilla finish. I was sad that all that alcohol would be burned off in the cooking process, but it was the taste I was after, not booze.



Decorating was fun! I piped on the vanilla butter cream frosting then used Betty Crocker's easy squeeze icing which was actually not very easy squeeze. I won't use them again, it was incredibly difficult to push the icing out. I sprained my hand! For the black I used the easy squeeze icing for brownies. I had the same problems. Originally i was going to use the icing to fill in the playing card images but after all the trouble to make them, I went ahead and used red and black sprinkles.
The cupcakes were a big hit though. Very moist with the fun rum taste.
I look forward to cooking with more alcohol in the future! He-he!

In The Kitchen: Weekly Recipe: Chai Tea

Fall has arrived! This is my favorite season so allow me to wax poetic for a moment.
The temperature from the hot scorching summer begins to drop. Instead of being sweaty in shorts and tank tops, a shirt and jeans become the uniform of choice.
The colors! Oh the colors that begin to emerge. Nature brings us orange and red with a tint of brown and dark green. The world bursts out with a radiant display of visual tricks before the sleepy winter months take over. The world even smells better! Cinnamon and hay mixed with apple's and dirt.
I lucked out on the genetic lottery and my alergies have no problems keeping away in the fall. I could stuff my head into a hay bale and breath in that smell. I love Fall!!!
To celebrate, I think we need a drink, wouldn't you say?


What is that I spy? Ho-ho! A warm and seasonal Chai Tea. Perfect!

I used to work at Starbucks and I became addicted to their Chai Tea. Of course, if you ever had the powdered Chai Tea mix from Borders Cafe before they had Seattle's best take over their coffee shops, you know that THAT was the best Chai Tea mix on the planet. Chai should be yummy and sweet. Sure, this is not a true Chai Tea, but it's the Americanized version of it.
But I know the calorie content of a Starbucks Chai. I also know that those sugar free Chai's just aren't as good. What to do? (The various flavored Chai's will lead me down another path, but really, I will figure out a low calorie option to pumpkin spice syrup so that pumpkin spice chai's can take over the world!)
Well I swung over to Hungry Girl and found a Chai Tea recipe that I modified a bit.
Here is what we will need:

2 Chai Tea bags
1 Cinnamon Stick
Hot water
Sugar Free Vanilla creamer
Cinnamon Powder

Throw the tea bags and cinnamon stick in with some boiling hot water. The tea bags are going to steep for 10 to 15 minutes, thus why it needs to be so hot. Just walk away and let it sit.



Take out the tea bags and cinnamon stick and set them aside. Add in the creamer until it looks milky then add a dash of the cinnamon powder on top and throw the cinnamon stick back in. I was able to get two batches of tea from the tea bags and cinnamon stick, so when you run out of one cup, make another!
Hungry Girl's recipe is actually for cold chai tea, so you pour everything over ice, but I believe that Chai is a fall/winter kind of drink. Also, if you'd rather use plain milk or even soy instead of the creamer, to get the vanilla taste, either use Vanilla Chai tea bags or add vanilla flavoring to the mix.
Enjoy!

Web Tools: Tasty Kitchen

Tasty Kitchen

I am amazed at how one woman, The Pioneer Woman, can create a movement. My examples are two-fold. When she has a giveaway, her comments number up around the 20,000 mark, and her newest cooking website, from what I can figure out, has at least 10,000 members of Tasty Kitchen. Including me!
All of the categories are pretty self-explanatory I like that it has a gluten-free category although I have not delved into the gluten-free movement. That’s kind of neat though and I know a lot of people eat that way. There are also dairy and sugar free categories.
The joy of this site is that you can exchange recipe’s with other members and keep track of other members and what kind of recipe’s they upload. I like the idea of making food friends online. When you submit a recipe and it’s accepted into the database, you become a member of the “Fraternal Member of the Mitt.” I think that is hilarious!
Recipes can be rated and you can see them by this ranking, or most recent, or most popular. I have yet to submit a recipe but I’ve already found many that I cannot wait to try! So give it a look and see how soon you can be a cooking addict.
My user name is MegBat so please, add me as a cooking friend. I think you will enjoy this website.

Weekly Gratification, I want THAT! : The Beatles

Anytime someone mentions The Beatles to me, my eyes light up and I give a sound of utter peace and contentment. I love The Beatles.
I am not a hippie or over the age of 50. I'm in the 20's but The Beatles hit me at such a time in my life that I will forever love them. While most people my age were hooked on Nirvana and the rest of the grunge movement, I was wearing flannel but channeling the 60's.
Anyone remember The Beatles Anthology? I sat and watched that special with both eyes open. I love history but this was music history! I'd grown up listening to oldies anywhere so these songs were familiar. My brother and I danced around to Yellow Submarine when we were little kids. This was not my parents music either. Sure they listened to oldies, but my parents were children of the 70's. The Beatles were not their rallying cry.
A couple weeks ago some friends bought The Beatles Rock Band and invited us over to play. It was pure heaven for me! I could not stop dancing while I attempted to play the guitar. A few years ago my husband took me to see LOVE in Vegas. If you ever get a chance, I highly recomend seeing this. I was in tears by the end of it. It was invigorating but it broke my heart at the same time. John Lennon is such a figure that I could not help but cry. George Harrison is the same way. My roomates in collect made fun of me when I put up a sign in my bedroom window that said "We will miss you George." What college student is broken hearted and mourning a musician that touched a totally different generation? That's me. I was not born in the right decade. Of course, my husband lives in this decade, so in the end I know why I am here at this time.
Along with Rockband, new remastered CD's have been released. This brings me to the subject of this blog post: I WANT THAT!!!

The entire catalogue, remastered with better sound quality. I am practically drooling over this!
It took us awhile to get to it, but I want that!

In the Kitchen: Your Weekly Recipe

Roasted Ricotta Roma Tomatoes

I am fan of The Pioneer Woman. One of her fellow bloggers, Pastor Ryan, http://www.thisisreverb.com/, that she had stay at the Lodge, gifted her site with a recipe for stuffed tomatoes. They looked good so I thought I’d give it a try.

We will need:

1 handful fresh Italian parsley
1 handful fresh basil
2-3 cloves garlic
8 Roma tomatoes halved
1 ½ cups ricotta cheese
15-20 crushed Ritz crackers
Kosher salt
Olive Oil

Mmmm pretty tomato's!



Here is what we’ve got to do. Scoop out the tomatoes. No need to keep the stuff inside. Perhaps use it in salsa or something. Then salt the tomatoes and turn them upside down to drain out the water.





Chop up the parsley and basil and mix it up with the ricotta cheese. Ad a little salt and pepper to your taste.






Fill each of the tomato halves with the ricotta mixture. Use it all up.



To crush those Ritz crackers, you can put them in a food processor or you can put them in a bag and hammer the hell out of them. Both ways are fun!



Press each tomato with the mixture into the crushed crackers to cover. Place them face up on a cookie sheet and drizzle with olive oil.



Cook them at 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes.



I was expecting these to be a little bit more flavorful than they were. These are incredibly light and don’t cloud up the taste buds too much. Something light before a heavy Italian meal perhaps. I expected a bit more of a hardy flavor. I think adding in chopped spinage might completely change this up. But if you are looking for light and nice, this is great.

Traveling Celebrity

It looks like The Pioneer Woman's cookbook is finally coming out and Ree is going on tour! Sadly, no Boise, Idaho stops, but she is coming to Salt Lake! Take a look here and see if she is coming to a city near you!

I am now on Twitter

I've bitten the bullet, and you can now follow me on twitter at nutmegsgoodies. I will continue to speak in full sentences, no matter what! I think my technical writer husband would lock me out of the house if I started speaking text speak.

Being Crafty: Sewing!

I am not a seamstress. Sewing is a skill I am trying to improve. I can do the basics like sew in a straight line. But actually creating something is fairly hard. I decided on a project for myself. I was going to make a bag. Whether this was a simple grocery bag, or what, I didn't know. I had the fabric and I decided to go for it!
It took me probably about 8-10 hours of manpower to make but I finished it.


The material is just a simple blue canvas. I cut the hearts out of an old t-shirt. One side has 3 hearts and one side has 2.


I cut out each of the sides as a seperate piece which I will not do next time. The sewing is a little uneven, as are the sides, but for a homemade bag/purse, and my first attempt, I think it turned out great!
The inside has a small pocket and a hook for my keys.


I have some other fabric that I am going to make bags out of. Now that I think I've got the basic idea, I should be able to do this fairly easily the next time!
I think I leveled up on my sewing skills!

Web Tools: Good Guide

Every week I point the way to a website that makes life just a little easier.
This week I present: Good Guide.

From their website: Increasingly, you want to know about the impacts of the products you buy. On your health. On the environment. On society. But unless you’ve got a PhD, it is almost impossible to find out the impacts of the products you buy. Until now…
Good Guide provides the world's largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of the products in your home.

The website lets you type in products to see what affects they might have on your health and on your environment. Take that favorite lipstick. Are there actual toxins in it that are poisoning your little one every time you give them a kiss? But it's not just about the fear factor (POISON?!?! AGH!). Many companies have caught the trend of "green washing" which is making generic, no provable claims that their product is the best for the environment. It's hard to regulate this market and in fact, many products are not required to be tested to back up their claims. In this regard Good Guide just helps a person wade through the BS and get the truth.

I took my facial moisturizing lotion that I use twice a day, Cetaphil and plugged it into Good Guides search engine. Here is what I found. My lotion ranked a 7.7 out of 10 with 10 being the highest. It scored a 9.5 in health which means I'm not applying carcinogens to my face. 7.6 in environment. When I checked, it appears that Cetaphil hasn't allowed outside environmental studies of their product and doesn't have a clear conservation plan. Societal influences is where my lotion got the most points taken away, ranking at a 6.1. It appears they have problems at the corporate level with auditing, ethics, and a code of conduct. Each of these has a link to other websites so if there is something that truly bothers you about a product, you can investigate why it was scored that way and perhaps, how you as a consumer, can make a difference.

Play around with the website for awhile, it's addicting. I've heard that people have parties where they take turns putting in products to see who's lifestyle and purchases are better for the world. Go on judge yourself and see if there are better products you can spend your hard earned money on. Rumor is that Walmart has let their distributors know that they will start providing consumers with this information right next to the price tag and anyone who isn't up front with the information, won't be stocked. This affects all companies! So you can see if that bottle of Tide is really worth saving that dollar price difference.

Also, for mobile use, Good Guide is an iPhone app, so you can download it and take a look while you are shopping. Easy, easy. There is no reason not to use this website.

Sweet Salmon

I ended up creating a salmon recipe last night. Unintentionally, but there it is.

My cooking night started when earlier that day I decided to cook a salmon grilling recipe out of my Betty Crocker cook book. I love this cookbook. I enjoy the tips and use them most of all so I have been trying to find recipes that will work with my healthier life style plan. This salmon recipe was one of them. Of course later that night I ran across two problems.
1. I didn't buy all the ingredients needed.
2. The salmon has to marinate 48 hours!!!
Oops!
Not to worry. I grabbed my iPhone and used one of my apps called BigOven that has multiple recipes. Still I ran into the problems.
1. Missing ingredients.
2. Long marinating time.
What to do, what to do...
Create my own non-marinating recipe.
First I decided on my ingredients, then I decided how much of each one I was going to use, then I mixed it together and viola! It cooked well and tasted wonderful. So here is the recipe for what I have names Sweet Salmon.

2 pounds thawed salmon fillets, cut into 8 pieces.
1 1/2 teaspoon orange zest
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce (I used a low sodium soy sauce and think it tastes just as good as it would have with regular soy sauce.)
2 tablespoons honey

Lay salmon out on sheets of tinfoil. Mix all other ingredients together in small bowl. When mixed, spoon mixture over salmon fillets. Flip Salmon and apply to other side. Place another sheet of tinfoil over salmon.
Meanwhile, heat up your BBQ to 350-400 degrees. Place tinfoil packet of salmon on grill with cover on for 15 minutes. Remove from grill, salmon should be flaky when done.


I served the salmon with a regular salad with a nice Asian flavored dressing. Complemented things well.
I love creating food, this was a really fun little meal to make and I am glad/relieved it turned out well.
BTW, you can munch on the orange used for the orange zest while you mix everything up. Yummy, yummy!

New Tool!

I have a new tool that I am completely enamored with. It's an online tool. Ok, i'll just tell you. It is The Krazy Coupon Lady.
I am on this website every day it seems. My favorite feature is the "coupon" tag where it lists all products with online coupons that are available for print. Sometimes these coupons are not available in your area (I'm looking at you Angel Soft and Jello) but the majority are. Idaho even has available some generic "Any kind of cheese" coupons.
This week I saved 10 dollars in groceries and I wasn't even trying!
My project is to get a master list and track prices and such at various stores. Sometimes, Krazy Coupon lady will do some comparisons. She did a good one on meat products with Wal-mart vs. Winco vs. Albertsons. That's the kind of stuff that I like. She has many links which are a big help, I found another coupon blogger in the Boise area that has posted about multiple sales going on. Example: 79 cent liter's of Coke last weekend at Albertsons. We might have stocked up on Coke Zero. I might have cleaned out the store. I might have only spent 5 dollars.
I hope that if you have not discovered this website on your own, this link helps. It is AMAZING how much money you can save. Plus, I have started to try out some new products that are less expensive with the coupons than what I normally buy and found new products I like!
So let me know if this helps or if you use this web site. I'm still learning all the lingo and how I can better use the coupons or store discount combinations. But right now I have the time so I might as well save our family some money!

Birthday goodies

My birthday was a few months ago. I decided to have some fun decorating and making cupcakes! I wanted a simple theme so I went with M&M cupcakes, both inside and decorated on the outside!
I made one batch of cupcakes from this recipe from Cookies and Cake Recipe's.

Ingredients:

• 1 package yellow cake mix
• 1 package vanilla pudding mix
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1 cup milk
• 1/3 cup oil
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup mini M&Ms
• 1 container of frosting

Directions:

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare two 12-cup muffin pans and one 6-cup with paper or foil liners.

2) In a large bowl, combine the cake mix, pudding, flour, milk, oil, and the eggs. Beat the mix with an electric mixer on low speed for about 30 seconds. Then, beat the mix for 2 minutes on medium speed, being sure to scrape the sides.

3) Fold in 2/3 cup of the mini M&Ms and then transfer the batter into the separate muffin cups filling 2/3 full. Drop a few more of the M&Ms over the cupcakes and the bake them 18-20 minutes, or until cupcakes are fully risen and golden brown on the tops.

4) Let the cupcakes cool thoroughly and then frost each cupcake with a dollop of the pre-made frosting. Sprinkle remaining M&M’s on top and then enjoy!

Sadly, these cupcakes came out quite dense. So I made a normal batch of yellow cake cupcakes and threw in M&M's.

The regular batch tasted much better. I had a blast dying the frosting and making the M's out of white chocolate that I froze. Hard work all in all, but these were a big hit. Except the red ones. I had to use a TON of the coloring to make it that red and it made the frosting taste a little funky. But this was fun over all.

Gadgets and Gizmos

I almost moved into Michaels baking isle yesterday. For those not aware, Michaels is a craft store. Here in Boise, Idaho, it is the only place to buy specialty baking item. At least, the only one i've found so far. There were a few others but they have all gone out of bussiness!
The local store had re-arranged a bit and was stocking some new items on their shelves. I was excited because I am creating some fun cupcakes for my birthday party this weekend and I needed some tools I didn't have.
Here is hoping I actually use them correctly!!

A Good Place to Start

There are many skills I wish I possesed. A few of these skills were taught to me as a child but I either forgot or ignored them. Now as an adult i'm trying to figure this stuff out! This blog is my attempt to share my knowledge. Welcome!