I’ve been so busy lately I haven’t had any time to go looking  for fun food bloggy ideas.  *sigh*   Much as I love to eat, I don’t have many food related ideas when it comes to blogging.  How sad is that with such a terrific little blog title.   I’d diversify, but I already have another blog for that.   Maybe I’ll think of some other things to drop in here when the food news gets scarce. However, that requires thought and I’ve been brain fried for the past few weeks.

Well, I decided today to see what food news might be happening.  I ran across this hilarious article.

Calorie labeling doesn’t curb NYC fast food habits

You don’t say!  BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  All of the nation’s food nannies are cringing as they read this.  Next they’ll make it illegal to buy food they don’t think you should have.  THAT will teach you how to eat!  Good grief!

Or how about this?

What’s the worst Halloween candy you’ve ever had?

There were so many.  I refused to buy that crap to hand out at Halloween.  If I didn’t like the candy, I wouldn’t buy it to give to anyone else!   I agree with the author – the circus peanuts were gross as were those Mary Jane peanut butter taffy things.  GAK!

Okay – at the moment that’s all I’ve got.  Still not much, but it is something.  Back soon with more I hope!

We all have to grocery shop… or at least hit the occasional grocery store even if all we do is buy food to reheat.  Unless you are one of the lucky ones who has a person to shop for you, this is a fact of life.  Personally I find it one of the more irritating facts of life.

Once a week I make a “trip” to the closest Whole Foods to buy meat.  Yes, you read that right, I go to WF to buy meat.  Mostly it’s the chicken that I like the best, but since I’m there, I buy the rest of the meat I’ll be eating for the week.  The chicken is the only kind I’ve found that doesn’t leave me feeling queasy about an hour after a meal.  I have no idea what is in the chicken sold at regular grocery stores, but I can’t eat it on a regular basis.

Since the closest WF is 20 miles away, it has become a Sunday morning trip.  I try very hard to get to the store before the churches turn their captives lose on the world.  Sometimes I’m successful, most times I’m not (I’m so not a morning person and this is one time it becomes a problem).  I have tried to shop on other days of the week, but it never seems to take. Thus, Sunday morning has become the standard and I can’t seem to shake it.

Once I get to the store I have things fairly well mapped out in my head.  I know the store, I know what I need and I have a plan to get in and out as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately, I have to also be in the store with a whole bunch of people who feel they are the only beings in existence.  It’s very annoying.

Currently this WF has plants out front for sale.  They take up half the sidewalk so there is just room enough for one person with a cart to get through.  If they stop, everyone else either has to stop or has to walk around this area in the street.  This weekend featured a guy who was apparently waiting for his wife.  He was an older guy and was pushing an empty cart – looked like he picked it up in the lot and was heading to the store when he just stopped, stepped away from the cart and stared into space (or out into the parking lot – take your pick).  This meant I had to backtrack and walk around him out in the street.  He was completely oblivious.

Of course going into the store after picking up my basket (I always use a hand basket since I can’t stand being stuck with a cart)  I do manage to get stuck behind people who want to stop directly inside the door and stare at whatever display the store has decided to use to festoon the entry way.   (I know Dogette blogged about this phenomena not too long ago, but can’t remember when) Therefore you either have to run them over or wait for them.

We won’t even talk about the people in the produce section.  It makes me want to scream…

Usually once I get to the check out line, I’m good because I know it will be over shortly.  But this week I ended up behind 2 women who were moving so slowly I wanted to either shake them to wake them up or place them out of the way and tell them that they would make great statues for people to stare at while awaiting check out.   I have one question…

How is it that people can move that slowly?  Really.  I don’t get it.  They were moving at about 1/10th normal speed.  How does one even get through the day?  I figured if they lived a mile from the store, it’s likely they started out heading in that direction at about 5am since I ended up stuck behind them at about noon.   I was afraid my meat would go bad waiting for them to get done and get the hell out of my way.  I almost asked the bagger to go get me some ice to put on my meat while I waited for them to move out.

Eventually they got done and it was my turn.  I got my groceries checked out, had them bagged, paid via credit card, signed the slip, and STILL got stuck behind them in the outgoing doorway!!!!

Yes, I know it’s essential to buy food, but I hate grocery shopping.

Since I still don’t have the energy to go looking for good food bloginess, I’m going to wimp out and throw you some recipe links from the last couple of days.  These bloggers have done all the heavy lifting for me.  Okay I like that.

First we have Red Pepper Risotto from the Pioneer Woman – oh my goodness yes! I love risotto, although I usually pay people at restaurants to make it for me. I may give this a try when the weather cools off. Yum!

Then head over to the Rev Paul’s place and check out the Sour Cream and Cheddar Halibut and the Cranberry Chicken.  Both of which look outstanding.

I just finished dinner and my mouth is watering.  My goodness there are so many excellent recipes out there.  I think I need to hire a chef.  Heh.

Wow – I get so behind with 2 blogs to work on!

Once again WordPress is telling me to UPDATE NOW!  But when I try, it fails, telling me it can’t install some file or other.  I haven’t been sufficiently interested to figure it out, so I guess I’ll have to live with it being un-updated.

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I’ve made myself a new snack (well new for me – I know lots of people have done this before me, but I was never fully motivated to make my own snacks)  So here goes:

2 bags roasted nuts (no peanuts) – salted

1 bag sesame sticks

1 bag chocolate covered almonds (mmmmm…. chocolate!)

1 container dried cranberries

Mix together, store in a ziplock bag in the refrigerator, pull out a handful when you want a snack or after pilates when one is low on sugar.  Yum.

I know – lame – I’ll try to come up with something better if I can motivate myself at some point this week.  I’ve been very blah the last few days.

Okay I decided to play around with the template as you can see.  This particular one can be personalized with any pics I so desire in the header.  I don’t have any good food pics yet, so I’m leaving the original header until I get something I like.

While I liked the other theme, I just kept feeling it was too narrow for when I post pictures… not that I have lots, but it bothered me.  I don’t want to spend money on  a theme, so this one seemed to be the best widthwise.

Who knows, I may change it again.  I don’t like changing stuff, but sometimes it takes me a while to figure out what works for me.

Stay tuned.

Haven’t forgotten my poor little food site, just haven’t had the energy to post lately.   As it is, I still don’t have much, but thought I should bring you…

News of the Food

The latest headlines on food.  There have been a few things going on lately.

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No doughnuts under Newsom’s SF healthy foods plan

Looks like the mayor of San Fransisco is going to MAKE you eat healthy whether you want to or not. What a swell guy!  I especially liked this bit:

That means less junk food and smaller portions at staff meetings.

Okay help me out here. If it’s not breakfast or lunch or even dinner – why is there food being served at staff meetings?  Are people incapable of feeding themselves on a regular basis?  Do they need donuts to get through every frigging meeting?

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Domino’s Pizza sales surge amid recession and swine flu fears

Sales at Domino’s Pizza are booming amid the economic downturn and could get a further boost if more people stay at home because of swine flu.

Excellent idea – stay home and get swine flu from your pizza delivery.  You can be sick and fat at the same time. Heh.

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Fruit juice has one slight problem

Oops. No fruit.

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150-pound Minn. cupcake sets Guinness record

Well, I guess it can be called a cupcake if the person making it decides to name it “cupcake”… but anything that big is a cake in my book.

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Last of all, there is something really wrong with chocolate that doesn’t melt.

Low-calorie and melt-resistant: Swiss manufacturer creates the perfect chocolate

I don’t care what they say – if it doesn’t melt when warm, it’s not real chocolate.

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That’s it for now.  Happy Eating everyone.

Ree Drummond (the Pioneer Woman just in case you didn’t know) has started yet another web site.

***how does she do it?  I have trouble keeping up with 2 much less the huge site she has going.  Good heavens!  I am envious – in a nice way – I know how hard it is to simply get posts out and she’s got an entire mega site and photography, cooking, home schooling… you name it thing going on.  I’m not worthy – at all.

Anyhow it’s more like a forum from what I can gather and all about food.  So there will be lots of people contributing.

The Tasty Kitchen

For a long time, I’ve wanted to create a happy little place on the web where people who love to cook could easily share recipes. Where the community would be able to tap into the bounty of tried, true, and tested recipes that exist in the arsenal of home cooks everywhere. Where recipes could easily be shared, searched for, found, and printed—and, most importantly, cooked, baked, prepared…and enjoyed!

I haven’t looked at it much, but if you are looking for new recipes, head on over and check it out.  Ree does love to cook.  It might be very very yummy.

Enjoy!

Last week my neighbor was on vacay.  She asked me to look in on her cats, which I was happy to do (cats are so easy to take care of when the owner is gone for a short time).

Anyhow, when she got back, she brought a blueberry pie she bought up north (where they grow tons of blueberries) and a bottle of wine as thanks.  I love blueberries, but had never had a pie made from them before.  These are the tiny wild blueberries that are very flavorful.

It’s a good pie, but there is something missing… I’m not quite sure what.  Some sort of zip or zing.  Mind you, we are happily eating it, I just think it would be even better with something added. Rather like strawberry pie benefits greatly by adding rhubarb. That sort of thing.

I just can’t figure out what.  I am so not chef material.

Since it’s been a pretty long week for me and I have nothing better to blog, I thought I’d bring you some food headlines in the news.

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Monkeys live longer on low-cal diet; would humans?

Does it matter?  So you can be hungry and miserable for a very long time.  What a great way to spend that longer life.  I think I’ll skip it thank you very much!

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Drunk badger blocks road

Well at least he was very likely happy.  And the police had a bit of a sense of humor about it too:

“It could not immediately be established whether the badger got into trouble with his wife when he came home in such a state,” the tongue-in-cheek police statement concluded.

Ha! Cops with a sense of humor – I love it.

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TV Ads Trigger Mindless Eating

So what do you expect when people plop in front of the television and mindlessly start filling their mouths with food.  If there was some interesting programming on that might not happen.  I have to think it’s nearly all the result of total boredom.

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Well, that’s all the good ones I can find tonight.  So happy eating everyone.

Saw this today and had to read it.

Study: Olive oil touted as natural pain reliever

New research shows olive oil contains an anti-inflammatory ingredient similar to that of some common painkillers, but could it replace your meds the next time you get a headache?

According to a study in the journal Nature, researchers have found a previously unknown compound in extra-virgin olive oil that they say acts in a manner similar to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as aspirin and ibuprofen. They call this ingredient oleocanthal.

Okay, I’ve been using Extra Virgin Olive Oil for years in my cooking.  I LOVE the stuff.  There are very few things I cook that require some other milder form of vegetable oil.  And I get migraines.

I can tell you right now, olive oil never helped me with my migraines even once.  And if it is supposed to help on a general basis with other types of pain, I haven’t noticed it. But hey, if I can make myself believe it, maybe all I have to do is think about the oleocanthal when I hurt and all the pain will go away.

Or not.