30-day vege plan

Dear readers,

My apologies for the long hiatus. If you've realised this blog has only been filled with advertisement posts lately. The truth is I haven't been cooking that much lately - hence no real posts to fill.

My family of two is going vegetarian for 30 days for religious purposes. It is a little challenging for me to cook varied vegetarian meals without the food tasting funny or plain monotonous. Have tried googling around for recipes so let's see how everything falls together. I hope I get the time to make decent meals with my hectic work schedules.

Please do expect more food related posts in the next few days.

Modern Family

Post contributed by Toni Jensen

My husband and I have recently started watching “Modern Family.” It is probably the funniest show I have seen in a long time. I am so glad that we have DIRECT TV so we can record it and watch it any time we want. It is the one show that my husband and I both enjoy, so we look forward to watching it together every week. Most of the time I watch reality shows and he likes crime scene shows and we never watch tv together. As weird as it sounds, I would consider watching “Modern Family” together as quality time with my husband. Regardless of how our days went or if we had been fighting, this show will put us in good mood. My friends at work love this show too and we end up talking about how funny each episode was. I’m glad that we’re not the only ones who love it so much. It is honestly one of the only shows that makes me laugh out loud. Maybe we need to get out more, but I really look forward to watching this show every week.

For the Love of Football

I appreciate the guest post, Emerson Moses

Since my boyfriend upgraded to direct TV this year, our weekends and Monday nights have consisted of football, football and more football! Don’t get me wrong; I love football just as much as the next girl, but watching every NFL game just because of his Fantasy team is starting to get redundant. Sometimes I think I should just sign up for a Fantasy league of my own so that I would have interest in watching every game televised during that week. I did implement a brilliant plan recently. Since most nights are filled with manly sports games, I am allowed to pick the TV show of my choice for the remaining nights. This allows me to get my girly fill on Gossip Girl, Project Runway and HGTV. I swear these nights allow me to keep my sanity. I tend to enjoy them so much that I dash home from work, throw on the comfortable pants and slide right into my perfect spot on the couch. This sounds like a win/win situation for us both, if you ask me!

Cooking tips for the busy corporate worker

As a busy corporate worker, investing in a good fridge is imperative in allowing me to dish out quick dinners on busy weekdays. I would usually purchase meats and vegetables over the weekend and blend ready made sauces and purees to enable 30-minute dinners.

A couple of items which are on my regular list for Asian/Indian are:

1. Cut chicken stashed in my freezer

2. Vegetables such as long beans, carrots, cabbage, cauliflower (tends to last longer)

3. Firm tofu

4. Eggs

In addition, I always ensure that I have bottles of ground garlic ginger paste and homemade chilli paste which I keep in the fridge to be able to quickly add dollops into my weekday dinners.

I've been rather busy lately so there has not been much posts from my side. I'll try to add on some weekday dinner meals for posts since that's the type of meals which dominate my cooking these days.

Survival of the Fittest

Authored by Alvaro Jordan

Les Stroud has taught me a lot through his show SurvivorMan aired on the Discovery Channel. I always tune in on my satellite TV, that I got after seeing this Cable vs Direct tv comparison, to his show. I guess I have always been interested in survival techniques. I have often wondered how could I survive should I be lost in the wild. I have seen Les eat worms,snakes and various greens. I have learned you could use a jacket or backpack for a floatation device in a river.

The show also cover shelter building ! and water sources. The show covers different geographical areas and enviornments that are real life possibilities. Les Stroud gets dropped off with no supplies. He has no food, no freshwater, no matches and no shelter. He is armed with cameras to document his adventure and is then picked up in seven days time.

It is an exciting show and it is always interesting as you never know what to expect. While having learned a lot, I am not sure I would eat a worm if I was lost and hungry. I would pick the worm up and take it with me in case I could'nt find any edible vegetation. Thanks to the show I will never be without fire when needed as I now know how to make a prison match. Survivorman shows brains have a lot to do with survival.

Sniffing out Christmas dog toys

Guest post written by Jessie Brighton

I've learned that as soon as I get Christmas gifts for my kids, that I need to wrap them up because if I hide them unwrapped they'll find them. It started happening a few years ago when I found some gifts that had been disturbed. But I thought that I wouldnÕt' have to worry about that with our dog's toys that we normally get him for Christmas to stop him from helping us open up our presents. That's happened way too many times before and so to help keep that from happening we give them their own toys and presents to open up.

I went online a couple of weeks ago and got some great deals on some dog toys. The same time when I ordered them, I randomly found this website www.ClearWirelessInternet.com and after I looked through it some, I changed over our internet service to it.

But when I got those Christmas dog presents in the mail, I just hid them in the bottom drawer of my dresser and the dog figured out they were there. I guess he could smell them, so I had to hide them elsewhere.

A year long hiatus

Phew - 2010 seems to at its tail and I barely remember doing much this year. Looking back at my posts, my last post was in 2009. 2010 has been busy and now that 2011 is coming on my significant other and I are busy moving in to our new crib. Its a nice warm feeling to move in together after living apart for so many years during our courting days. Weekends are generally spent at home depots trying to fill up the home to our taste.

Hopping through one home depot to another trying to find the best deals can be a long and tiring process. Fortunately, there are options to compare prices from different stores in the comfort of one's own home.Commercial couches from various stores for an example, can be viewed in a single page making the shopping process so much easier.

Console marble tables were another item on our list to be used as side tables and it was easy enough to browse through various options online and pick my favourite choice. As both of us tend to eat a lot of fruits in general, we thought getting a fruit basket for the home would be a good option. From this page, we were able to pick out a 3 tiered wrought iron fruit stand while lazing in front of the telly with a steamy cup of coffee.

Have a happy new year folks. Hope to start back my posts in full swing in 2011.