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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!