So I've been nominated for an award...

Chow.com is doing their annual awards and I was nominated for "Best Blogger". Let me explain.

This is not better than Smitten Kitchen.

See, I was browsing Chow a few weeks ago for recipes and ideas to try and I saw they were taking nominations for various categories of awards. One of them was for blogs. The rules said you could nominate yourself, as long as you were honest and said that's what you were doing. So I said, "What the hell?" and put myself down. I figured they get so many nominations for more popular blogs that mine would get pushed out and nothing would come of it. That did not happen. It looks as if they received very few nominations, so I didn't get filtered out as I anticipated. I am sitting there on the nomination list next to blogs written by professional chefs and people who I have bought cookbooks from. I didn't even know this until yesterday when I was browsing for recipes again and realized voting started a week ago.

So, while I really have no chance of winning this, I'd like my last place to be a respectable one. If you've got a minute between now and January 2, please head over to Chow and vote for me.

Like my poorly lit iPhone pictures? I'm on Flickr now! And you can like me on Facebook!

Roswell Neighbor Article

The Roswell Neighbor did an article on local bloggers this week. I'm one of them. Hooray!

If you're one of the new readers brought here today, welcome! Here's what you need to know about this blog.

I love food. I love trying new recipes and eating new things. I stuffed my face full of Korean BBQ the other day and I loved it. I shop at local farmer's markets when I can. My cooking influences are mostly traditional southern food, with a healthy dash of Asian inspired cuisine. I love to bake, but so far I've been too impatient to manage a decent pie crust. But I do plenty of cakes, cookies and quick breads, along with an assortment of yeasted breads. I love finding hole in the wall places with fabulous food and sharing them. I am not a fan of chains, or fast food (unless it is Chik fil a).  My weakness is Chinese take out. I'm a busy lady who is on a budget, but still wants to eat sustainable, healthy food.  This is what I write about.

When I'm not cooking or blogging, I'm a fan of science fiction and fantasy. I am best known as a fan of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I run a programming track for it at Dragon*Con and I chair a convention dedicated to it here in Atlanta. I'm the kind of fan that gets early copies of the manuscript for the next Wheel of Time novel "for feedback". It's finally turned into a part time job doing microblogging and social networking for the publisher. If I disappear from blogging for awhile, it usually means that I'm either getting ready for a convention, or there's a Wheel of Time book coming out.  Yes, the whole thing is slightly ridiculous, but its also hella fun.

I hope you enjoy reading.

Video of the Week: Brokeass Cooking!

I thought I'd start this up again since I've been a slacker lately.

Brokeass Cooking is a video series started by a friend of mine, Mack. In addition to videos, Mack is also a pretty damn funny writer and the inspiration for the title character  in the comedy horror novel John Dies at the End. What I'm trying to say is the dude knows how to entertain.

Brokeass Cooking is an occasional web series that he's been working on for about a month. The recipes are pretty basic, meats, pastas and easy veggies. It's not fancy food and Mack relies more on getting a great deal than sourcing ingredients. The intended audience for this isn't the foodie crowd, it's the brokeass kid just out of college, starting a job and trying to figure out how to feed himself on a budget without resorting to fast food and frozen dinners. It does the trick, explaining basics like grocery store discounts, shopping sales and figuring what to do with it all once you get it home. He also encourages experimentation and playing with ingredients. I hope Mack decides to continue the series, because I think there's an audience for stuff like this. Too many people these days view cooking as too hard or expensive and this series helps demystify some of that.

Where I think the series can improve is technique. Mack is pretty much a self taught cook and it shows. But that's a minor quibble on the overall strength of the concept and it's execution.

Riverside Market & Dragonfly Farms

I just got a VERY welcome email from Sunni at Dragonfly Farms, one of my favorite sellers at the Riverside Farmer's Market here in Roswell.

Hello All!

Hope you have had a great Thanksgiving and holiday season so far. Riverside Farmer's Market will be having a holiday market on Saturday, December 12th, from 9am until 1pm. I'll let you know what produce we'll have closer to the date. We will be selling our nature photography: some matted photos, some unmatted, some framed, as well as packs of notecards and bookmarks. There will be a cooking demonstration as well as live music. It should be a lot of fun. Hope to see you there!

Sunni Williams
Dragonfly Farm, LLC

I plan to be there nice and early so I can get my pick of seasonal produce. I can't wait to see what's been growing.

To get on the Dragonfly Farms email distribution list, send an email to dragonflyfarmga@gmail.com and they'll put you down for their latest updates.

A real update coming soon, I promise...

In the mean time, one of my friends, who is a local food producer herself, forwarded this me. It also went out on the Moore's Family Farm mailing list this week as well. If you're passionate about locally produced, non-industry food, it would be a good idea to read up on this issue and make your opinion known to your representative. The representative for the 30076 ZIP code is Tom Price.

I rarely send political messages, but there’s a bill that went to the floor of the house today that will directly affect Athens Locally Grown, to the point of possibly making us stop what we do. -eric

PLEASE CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE!
URGE THEM TO SUPPORT THE
KAPTUR-FARR FOOD SAFETY PROPOSAL

There is no question: our food system needs to be safer. But Congress is currently debating food safety legislation (Food Safety Enhancement Act – H.R. 2749) that could hinder beginning, sustainable, and organic farmers’ access to markets, require expensive fees, and lead to the dismantling of important conservation practices and wildlife habitat.

HR 2749 is scheduled to go to the floor of the House TODAY under a suspension vote, which means limited debate and no amendments, but a requirement for a two-thirds majority for passage. With negotiations still underway, however, it seems reasonably likely that a vote could be pushed to Thursday.

Representatives Marcy Kaptur (OH-9), Sam Farr (CA-17), Maurice Hinchey (NY-22), Jesse Jackson Jr. (IL-2), Peter Welch (VT-at large), Chellie Pingree (ME-1) and Earl Blumenauer (OR-3) last week submitted a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee with specific proposed changes to HR 2749 that addresses many of the concerns raised by the sustainable and organic agriculture community.

At the same time, the House Agriculture Committee majority concluded negotiations with the sponsors of HR 2749 that secured one of the changes proposed in the Kaptur-Farr et al request – namely, a greater role for USDA in all the farm-related portions of the bill. That was helpful as far as it went, but it did not directly address other critical concerns.

It is important that you call your Representative TODAY and ask them to join the effort to protect small and mid-sized family farmers, the environment, and consumer choice by supporting the provisions in the Kaptur-Farr proposal to HR 2749.

PLEASE CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE IMMEDIATELY!

It’s easy to call. Please call or fax your Representative’s office and ask to speak with the aide that works on agriculture. If you don’t know your Representative’s name, please click here http://www.house.gov and enter your zip code in the top left-hand corner of the screen. Then call the Capitol Switchboard and ask to be directly connected to your Representative’s office: 202-224-3121.

The message is simple. “I am a constituent of Representative___________ and I am calling to ask him/her to support the Kaptur-Farr proposal to HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009. I am also asking him/her to vote against HR 2749 unless the proposals included in the Kaptur-Farr letter are included in the final bill.”

Oh noes! Too many choices!

There are two "Taste of" events competing on the Northside tomorrow night. I haven't decided which, if any, I will be attending.

First up, is the first annual "Taste of John's Creek" event, sponsored by the John's Creek Chamber of Commerce. Advance tickets were $15, but I think it's too late for that. Day of and at the door tickets are $20 per person. You can purchase them at the main office of the Chattahoochee High School, which is fitting since the event is to benefit extra curricular programs at the school such as marching band, debate and of course, the football team. According to the website, it's an array of local independent restaurants, as well as the big national chains looking to burnish their reputation in the community.

The event will be held at Chattahoochee High from 5pm to 9pm.

The second event is the "Roswell High Taste Fest", presumably called that to differentiate it from the annual "Taste of Roswell" sponsored by the city. Same price as the Chattahoochee High event, but they are limiting attendance to just 3,500 people. They don't list out the participants on their website, instead its a rotating series of logos in the corner. I simply do not have the patience to sit their and watch it. I did note that my personal favorites Relish and Land of a Thousand Hills coffee shop are represented. This event also supports Roswell High's extracurriculars, including sports teams and music programs.

It will occur from 6pm to 9:30pm.

Skip Week

This is a skip week for us grocery shopping. We have everything we need, except for a few paper products, so we skipped going to Publix today.

As I've mentioned before, I am a food stockpiler. Or hoarder, depending on how nice you want to be about it. Ever since we first got married, I've been tracking sales and clipping coupons. I have a frugal nature and I enjoy getting bargains.

The two sites I rely on for tracking deals are The Grocery Game and Coupon Mom. The Grocery Game is a subscription site. You pay ten dollars for eight weeks of one store. You can also subscribe to additional stores in your area and comparison shop. Each week, they publish a suggested shopping list based on forecast trends. You see, most grocery prices are on a three month cycle. If you only buy that item when it's cheapest, and buy a three month supply, you stand to save money. The Grocery Game is very user friendly. It breaks deals down into color coded categories. Green is free. Blue is for stockpiling. Black is on sale, but not the best deal.

More recently, I signed up for Coupon Mom. Coupon Mom is actually a locally run business. She lives in Alpharetta, I believe. So yay, Northside! Coupon Mom is a free service. She makes her money off banner ads on the site. They also allow you to compare different stores to see who has the best deals. They will list EVERY sale, no matter how minor. So it can be a little unwieldy to wade through.

My habit is to get up on Sundays and check these sites. I'll write down the sales I want on the back of an old envelope. Then I'll check my menu plan and see if I need additional ingredients. Then I'll check to see what I'm out of that I can't live without (toilet paper). I'll put the matching coupons in the envelope, then put it in my purse, so I'm ready to go.

The switch up lately has been fruits and veggies. We've been hitting the farmers markets on Saturdays now and getting fresh fruit and veggies there. In fact, I have even neglected to stockpile canned and frozen veggies like I normally do, because we simply haven't been eating them all summer. Since we've only got about six more weeks of farmers markets though, I need to start doing that again. But the only fresh produce we've bought at Publix in months is bananas. We're just getting a better quality, and better prices at the farmers markets. It's not worth it to buy them at the grocery store until they close for the year.

The draw back to using so many coupons, is that you end up buying tons of processed foods. The testimonials on these sites are always things like "I bought $700 worth of groceries for twelve cents this week!" I have never, ever had a receipt that good. Don't get me wrong, I have saved tons of money, but I think in order to get those very high savings, you have to be buying tons and tons of processed junk. And I'm working on cutting that out as much as I can. So I save less now, but I'm eating better. And i make up for it by making things like bread and soup stock from scratch when I can. A bag of flour costs about the same as a good loaf of bread, after all.

Anyways, the big, big payoff to stockpiling groceries being able to say "You know, we don't need to go this week" and just not spend that money. that's when I really feel like this pays off. We bought our produce yesterday at the Riverside Farmers Market around the corner. I had to go to Target today anyways, to take advantage of their big sale on school supplies (I bought 93 yellow pocket folders with brads for less than seven dollars! Whee! Um, I hope no one else needed them...) , so we bought our toilet paper and dish soap there and got pretty good prices on it. It just feels really good to not need to go grocery shopping.

If you decide to sign up for the Grocery Game, please put me down as the referal. My email is jennifer.liang@gmail.com. Thanks!

Vote vote vote like a baby stoat!

The AJC is doing their annual "Best of the Big A" poll. I'll let you roll your eyes over that name later.

Two Northside resturants are in the running. First up is Veranda in the catergory of "Best Outdoor Dining". Of course I voted for it, since weekend tapas lunches on their outdoor patio have quickly become one of my favorite things. You can vote in this catergory HERE.

Our second contestant is The Swallow in the Hollow, in the catergory of "Best BBQ". I don't expect it to win against competitors like Fox Brothers, or Fat Matt's. But we can at least beat Shane's right? RIGHT?? Everybody but my husband (who nearly got slapped this weekend when he said he liked Shane's better than Swallow) is allowed to vote HERE.

Finally, in the catergory of "Best Breakfast" we have J. Christopher's. Alright, so this is a chain. But it's a LOCAL chain. Plus, the Roswell location is the original town general store, in the historic district. And it's reputed to be haunted by Micheal and Catherine, two Civil War era ghosts. I sincerely doubt the Ritz-Carlton offers you a free creepy encounter in the women's restroom with every meal. Wait. That came out wrong. Anyways, you can vote for it HERE if you are so inclined.

You can see the rest of the catergories HERE. Voting is closed on Monday, so get the vote out!

So is 755 Diggs good? I have no idea.

My Cracked article finally ran this weekend.

http://www.cracked.com/article_16587_hollywoods-5-saddest-attempts-at-feminism.html

The comments section is hilarious. My favorite so far? "I thought the writer was absolutely insane reading this article. When it said she was the founder dedicated to the Wheel of Time series, my suspicions where confirmed." I'm not exactly sure what he's saying, but I want to send him a fruit basket.

They did cut it for length, and rewrote some sections for clarity and to punch up the jokes. However, most of what seems to be quoted is all mine baby. Overall, I'm very pleased.


If you like my article, please pass it around. I get bonuses based on traffic.

You may have noticed my absence recently...

School starts tomorrow, which means I've gone back to work. I've had a full week of pre-planning and Open House, and classes start tomorrow. I always get a little thrown by going back to school. I have to readjust my sleep patterns and eating habits to "normal" and so I tend to disappear from the internet for a week or two when ever this happens.

But I have piles of email to attend to before I can think about updating here this week. So instead, I'll link you to an awesome blog I found this morning via my Google Reader suggestions. It's called "Grocery Cart Challenge". It's written by a mom with four kids and a husband that she feeds on an average of $50 per week. Insane right? But she pulls it off each week somehow. Her blog is chock full of shopping tips, recipes, menu planning ideas, and household advice. Definitely check her out.

Well now!

This little blog of mine seems to be exploding lately. The last time I checked my Google Reader stats, I had four subscribers. And two of them were me and my husband. Now I seem to have EIGHT. Hello regular readers! I've also got tons of links recently from other bloggers, mainly the good people over at the Cracked forums. I've got some mega updates to do in my blogroll.

In personal news, I'll be at the Sci Fi Summer convention this weekend, promoting my fandom project JordanCon. So if you are a foodie who also happens to be a huge nerd, come on by!

I'm hoping to get my article about crockpotting up for you all today before I leave. If not, you'll see it Monday.

In the mean time, I invite you to check out The Eatdown, a brand new blog started up recently by an Austin, TX based culinary student. Jess has tons of great stuff already up, including a great series on mother sauces. Any time Jess talks about food is a treat, and giving her an entire blog to ramble in is just decadent.