This month I am really excited to announce another awesome giveaway we are doing through The Foodie Blogroll

Saint Cupcake is a Portland, Oregon based bakery that have just started an online store – where they deliver cute customized “Cupcake Kits” around the USA. Jen Endicott, director of cupcake affairs (don’t you just love that title), emailed to see if we would be interested in doing a Cupcake Kit giveaway through The Foodie Blogroll. Cupcakes? How could anyone say no?

These Cupcake Kits include 3 pre-baked cupcakes (you can chose from a variety of flavors – both vegan and regular) as well as 3 different icings of your choice (again both vegan and non-vegan), and 3 different decorations. They get sent to you in a cute decorative box with instructions and are pretty much ready to go as soon as they are delivered. You can check out all the flavor choices here, on their website.

All USA based Foodie Blogroll verified active members will be automatically entered for a chance to win one of these cupcake kits. You will be notified of your win via email, and I will put you in touch with Jen from Saint Cupcake! If you are not yet a member, please be sure to sign up here

Well Roberto and I had some very special guests arrive last week that I was sure were going to really enjoy helping with these cupcakes, my step-daughters Rachel and Gwen! Saint Cupcake sent us a really good variety. I wanted to make sure to sample a good range. So for cupcake flavors they sent us Vanilla Toffee, Vegan Chocolate and Vanilla. For icing flavors we got Cream Cheese, Vegan Chocolate and Pistachio Butter cream. For decorations we got Toasted Coconut, Pink Jimmies and Orange Sprinkles.

We had a great time decorating them and then eating them. I made a vanilla cupcake with pistachio butter cream and orange sprinkles. Rachel made the vegan chocolate cupcakes with pink jimmies and Gwen couldn’t wait to make the vanilla toffee cupcake with cream cheese icing and toasted coconut!

I cut each cupcake into 4th’s so we could all try each one. I think my favorite was the vanilla with pistachio butter cream. It is hard for me not to love anything with pistachio. Gwen’s favorite was the Vanilla Toffee with cream cheese icing and toasted coconut. Rachel loved both of the vanilla flavors. Roberto’s favorite was the Vegan Chocolate. He is a huge fan of all things chocolate, and that just proves how yummy and chocolatey these cupcakes were. I don’t generally like chocolate desserts, and I loved the vegan chocolate cupcakes as well!

We even used the leftover cupcake decorations on some Homemade Marshmallows we made that day!

We got the marshmallow recipe from my friend Emily at Sugar Plum

We had a fantastic time in the kitchen making all these delicious treats! Later in the evening we made some fantastic s’mores using our fire pit! Talk about fun!

Well, The Ginger People have managed to do it again…come up with another fantastic tasting ginger product. I have been the lucky recipient of various samples of their products, and they have done several giveaways and contests with us on The Foodie Blogroll.

This time we tasted classic Ginger Snaps. I am a huge fan of ginger, and I especially love ginger cookies, and ginger snaps are my favorite. So I was excited to try their version. What I did not expect was to become so addicted to these lovely bite sized cookies! These Ginger Snaps are perfectly crunchy, with a wonderful buttery and spicy flavor that really packs a ginger wallop at the end. If you love ginger snaps that are full of crunch and flavor, you have really got to try these cookies! I promise you will not be disappointed! I ate about half of the bag, and am saving the rest to come up with a dessert recipe. I think that these cookies will make a great crust for a pie, or maybe even a cheesecake. We are going to have lots of people staying with us this summer, and so I am going to wait until we have more people around to enjoy this dessert. But keep your eyes out for a dessert recipe based on these amazing cookies.

PRODUCT INFORMATION:

Product Description:

Introduced to Sweden by 13th Century German monks, Ginger Snaps come from the Swedish word pepparkakor, which literally translates as pepper cakes. Baked to a perfect crisp, these wonderful mini cookies are bursting with flavor. Fresh from the oven, we give them a sprinkle of sugar.

Ingredients:

Unbleached enriched flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamin, mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid) cane sugar, cutter (cream), ground ginger, candied ginger (ginger, sugar), molasses, eggs, ginger juice, spices, baking soda, salt.

Currently the Ginger People have a contest going on, that many of you might be interested in entering!

America’s #1 selling ginger brand, The
Ginger People, announces its sponsorship of the 2009 Mambolicious recipe
contest. The Ginger People are calling on all cooks from culinary
professionals to at-home chefs to glaze, bake, broil and sauté their way to
becoming a 2009 Mambolicious contest winner. Winners in the different
categories will receive prizes from a year’s worth of The Ginger People
products or other goods from organic and natural food manufacturers.

As food costs continue to rise and consumers are focused on health and
sustainability, The Ginger People are offering their ginger products as key
ingredients to be used in the competition capturing the essence of healthful
living with great taste. Over the past 4 years, this contest has increased
in size with over 5,000 recipe submissions and over 20,000 votes for recipe
winners.

Consumers may enter in more than one category; however, each entry must
feature a different recipe and must be original. Specific contest rules with
category and eligible products are available at www.mambosprouts.com
.

Mambo Sprouts is the industry’s first and only quarterly direct mail coupon
and offer program created in response to a lack of educational materials and
discounts available to health and natural products consumers.

The Ginger People is the leading brand of ginger products in North America.
It is owned by Royal Pacific Foods of Marina, California. Royal Pacific
Foods was established in 1984. For more product information and
availability, please contact The Ginger People at 800-551-5284, ext. 225 or
email at info@gingerpeople.com.

On a personal note, I may be a little MIA on your blogs over the next few weeks. We are in the process of moving into a new place by June 1. We are just moving across the bridge to the island, and so it isn’t a far move, just time consuming with packing boxes. So I doubt I will be doing a lot of fabulously creative cooking for the next few weeks, but I will be around.

Our second April Foodie Blogroll Giveaway giveaway has us teamed up with D’Italia
D’Italia is an awesome online Italian Grocer! Need some gourmet salami? How about some truffles to shave over pasta, or real Italian espresso? You don’t need to look any further than D’Italia! If you need to send a nice gift to someone who loves gourmet or Italian foods, they also have beautiful and delicious gift baskets! This is a great company owned by Vince DiPiazza – yes you saw that correctly, we share the same last name, but still have not chatted to see if we are related or not! LOL!

We received several samples from D’Italia so far, and all were OUTSTANDING. We first got a fantastic salami trio, and we were ecstatic that not only did it taste amazing, but there were no nitrates in them! Something that is near impossible to find these days, much to our chagrin. Roberto loves salami, and I am big fan, so this totally made our day. We enjoyed the salami with some fantastic Olive Grissini (also from D’Italia) – which are crunchy Italian breadsticks. Grissini is usually what you get instead of a bread basket at restaurants in Italy, and again, my Italian taste tester said these grissini were to perfection. They were light and crunchy with just a hint of olives. Great to serve with an antipasto and Limoncello spritzer like we did!

The winners of the D’Italia giveaway will be receiving a basket filled with incredible goodies:
Aged Balsamic Vinegar, Sicilian Sea Salt w/Fresh Blood Orange Zest, Parmigiano Reggiano Spreadable Cheese, Sapori Italiani Mix (Capers, Olives, & Oregano), Sicilian Green Olives and Olive Oil. Now who wouldn’t want that??? Please remember to to make sure that you are an active member of The Foodie Blogroll, and that you have the widget displaying correctly. This giveaway is available to members in the Continental USA.

If you would like to learn more about our contests and giveaways, and how you can be eligible, please check out the Contests and Giveaways Page on FoodieBlogroll.com
If you are not yet a member of The Foodie Blogroll, you are certainly going to want to join us for your chance to win these awesome gifts!

Remember, we still have 2 more weeks of the Flirty Aprons and FromtheFarm.com giveaways through the end of March! Plus the Patric Chocolate giveaway in April as well!

We are just so lucky with The Foodie Blogroll these days to be working with some really fantastic food and kitchen essential companies month after month! When we started doing giveaways, I had no idea that we would be working with such great people and products. I am so pleased, once again to present to you two new quality companies we are doing giveaways with in April: Patric Chocolate and D’Italia . Today I am going to talk about Patric Chocolate.

If you would like to learn more about our contests and giveaways, and how you can be eligible, please check out the Contests and Giveaways Page on FoodieBlogroll.com.
If you are not yet a member of The Foodie Blogroll, you are certainly going to want to join us for your chance to win these awesome gifts!

This is an awesome giveaway for chocolate lovers! Patric Chocolate is a micro, bean-to-bar, fine dark chocolate maker that uses single origin chocolate made from rare cacao and is based in the Midwestern United States. This means good chocolate people. Real good chocolate, that is good for you too – full of all those awesome antioxidants! Founder and producer, Alan McClure and his chocolate has been featured in everything from local newspapers, to Food and Wine Magazine, The New Yorker, the LA Times and Gourmet Magazine…and his blog Patric Chocolate is a member of The Foodie Blogroll!!! How super cool is that?

It makes up happy to see one of our community members making it big in the food industry!

I of course was lucky enough to sample these bars. I must confess I am very picky about chocolate because I prefer the taste of vanilla. But I do really enjoy DARK chocolate. Tasting quality chocolate is similar to wine tasting, or scotch tasting, there is an art to it, and a streamline of flavors as the chocolate begins to melt in your mouth. Alan sent me 3 bars, one of each percentage – 67%, 70% and 75% Madagascar Sambirano Valley chocolate. These chocolates were fantastic, with lots of berry and citrus notes. To the point that Roberto even thought the 70% Madagascar Sambirano Valley bar had actual raspberry in it somehow. My favorite was the 75% as I really enjoy dark chocolate – and for me, the darker the better!

This is going to be a good ones, guys! So be sure that you are signed up for The Foodie Blogroll and your widgets are displaying! You don’t want to miss the chance to win this package of goodies.

The winner each week will receive one of each of the bars, like I did, and also a bonus pouch a decadent hot chocolate!

Due to shipping constraints, this giveaway is only for those Foodie Blogroll Members who reside in the USA.

Remember, we still have 2 more weeks of the Flirty Aprons and FromtheFarm.com giveaways through the end of April!!

I am pleased to announce another great giveaway we are doing during the month of March.

I am putting it out there first and foremost that EVERYONE can be eligible, no matter where you reside. Those out of the US just may have to wait longer to get their prize, if they win…the only thing you have to do to participate in this giveaway is post on this forum thread which apron you like the best on FlirtyAprons.com and we will chose a random winner from those that posted once a week through the month of March (meaning there will be 4 prizes)!

We at The Foodie Blogroll found out about this great company when Becca, from Baking Becca became our 3,000th blogger on The Foodie Blogroll.

On her sidebar, she had a little icon saying she was saving her pennies for a Flirty Apron, so since she was our 3,000 blogger, we decided to gift her with the apron of her choice. After perusing the Flirty Aprons Website we found out what a great company and product it was and I contacted them to see if they wanted to do a giveaway and they said yes!

Flirty Aprons was founded by two married couples whose passions really worked well together to create the vision and mission of the company. From their website:

” Flirty Aprons is a business that acts as a force for good in the community, in the nation, and in the world. At Flirty Aprons, doing good is not confined to traditional methods, such as community volunteer work and donations. As with all aspects of the company, Flirty Aprons seeks to innovate new methods of impacting the community. The company differs from others in how it employs and compensates people, in helping other businesses around it, and promoting good values. ”

“The Vision of Flirty Aprons emerges in the company’s efforts to create products that truly help women feel important and noticed—products that give new life to mundane activities, and bring color and style to the home. On a broader level, the Vision emerges in the positive day-to-day interactions that customers have with Flirty Aprons employees. We want the community to feel like businesses are on their side and not at odds with individuals. We hope that their interactions with Flirty Aprons will inspire them and help them gain a more optimistic, hopeful view of the modern role of businesses in society. “

So please join us over on the forum for your chance to win a Flirty Apron!

So remember that chicken I roasted in a tagine last week?
Well, after we ate most of the meat heated up again, I decided to make a chicken soup from the carcass, as I always do. Homemade chicken soup is just amazing stuff and a really easy way to get even more out of your whole chicken. One whole chicken usually is 4 or 5 meals for us, including the soup, a pretty good deal, when a nice free range, organic whole chicken is about $7- $8 – making it about .75 cents a meal…

Well it just so happened that the same day I set out to make my chicken soup, I got another package in the mail from FromTheFarm.com , the awesome company that is sponsoring one of our March and April giveaways on The Foodie Blogroll . For details on this giveaway, click here

This package was from Koda Farms, which is a family farm and the oldest continuously run rice farm and mill in California. All facets of production are managed by members of the Koda family from growing and harvesting to milling and packaging.

They are well known for their Heirloom Kokuho Rose – Japanese style, medium grain rice. To this day they maintain their own seed program to preserve the purity of this heirloom rice strain. It is slow to mature, low in yield and tall in stature, making it a true heirloom. To plant this strain of rice every year requires a three year commitment to merely produce the seed. Koda Farms is also known for their Sho-Chiku Bai brand – which is a sweet rice.

In their own words, “One could aptly summarize that rice is our life”. They can trace back their rice growing ancestry back to the 1600′s in Japan. So it is more than their livelihood, it is the continuation of a family legacy and the preservation of their cultural heritage.

They are big on quality control, making sure that even in the processing, the entire rice drying and milling facility is cleaned of rice grains whenever production changes from one rice variety to another. They are also certified organic and all products are also certified kosher.

Besides these two rice varietals I also received three varieties of Organic Nirvana Heirloom Organic Rice and Grains. Each box contains artisan blends of certified organic, all natural ingredients in which whole brown rice is combined with other healthy and nutrient-rich grains and seeds. These rice mixes are prefect for vegetarian, vegan and macrobiotic diets. I wanted to add one of these rice and grain mixes to the soup. So I decided to use the California Whole Grain Goodness which contains heirloom brown rice, pearled barley, millet, oat berries, quinoa and rye berries.

Read the rest of this entry »

So of course after receiving all those wonderful products from FromTheFarm.com I was inspired to start experimenting with them right away.

Santa Sweet Grape and Ugly Ripe Heirloom Tomatoes

Santa Sweet, the name of the company is also the name of the seed variety of this original grape tomato. The company owns the particular seed variety along with the Ugly Ripe heirloom variety seeds. Therefore they are the first company to bring the grape tomato to the United States. Any other company who sells “grape tomatoes” and are not Santa Sweet- their seeds are a cousin of the original. These grape tomatoes are super sweet and very pop-able. Children love their shape and taste. The Ugly Ripe tomatoes are reminiscent of a delicious tomato fresh from my grandfather’s backyard garden. They may be ribbed and bumpy, but their flavor is delicious and full of pure tomato flavor. Perfect to eat like an apple, or chopped in salads.

I live with a “tomato connoisseur” who just fell in love with both of these varieties of tomatoes. So much so, that all we really did with them was make wonderfully simple salads dressed with balsamic vinegar and and extra virgin olive oil.

My favorite salad was these dressed tomatoes over a bed of spicy organic arugala, mixed with a nice ripe avocado and some smoked cheddar cheese. It was like summer in a bowl. We ate these kinds of salads for 3 days straight!

FromTheFarm.com offers a Tomato Variety Pack that includes 6 Ugly Ripe tomatoes and 2 pints of Santa Sweet Grape tomatoes!

********************************************************************************

Sierra Olive Oils and Spice Packets

So everyone has been asking to see how I roast a chicken in my tagine. I love my tagine and I try to come up with as many uses for it as possible. I am a huge fan of roasted chickens, and I usually roast one or two a month and I always make soup from the carcass. So when I got my tagine as a present, I did an experiment and roasted a chicken in it. As with anything you put in a tagine, the chicken came out super tender and falling off the bone – with no basting or liquid necessary. You literally throw it in the tagine, and throw the tagine in a 350 F oven and cook for about 1 1/2 hours. That is it!

This time, I decided to rub my delicious organic roaster with Sundried Tomato and Basil Olive Oil from Sierra Olive Oils. The company had also sent me a variety of spice packets used for dips (which are not available yet, but will soon be), but I thought it would be fun to try one as a rub for the chicken, so I chose the garlic variety.

I had some leftover fresh fennel that I stuffed the bird with. It came out perfectly delicious. Served with peas, it was a delicious and homey dinner, and almost too easy to make!

I am really excited to present to Foodie Blogroll members this awesome giveaway we are doing with in conjunction with FromTheFarm.com in March and April. The giveaway winners will be able to choose any ONE product from their website (www.fromthefarm.com) at a cap of $50!!!!! How cool is that?

Also, as an incentive for others, you can get 10% off your order cost, just by filling out a simple survey at checkout!

FromTheFarm.com is an amazing company that I can really get behind.
Here is their philosophy:

Two generations ago, milk and eggs were delivered to the home.
Our grandparents either grew their own produce, or knew the
farmer who did. FromTheFarm.com™ is bringing home delivery
back, full circle. We work with the same family farms on which
the very foundation of this country was built. We believe in
knowing the people behind the products. And supporting the
people who produce the very best.
Each and every commodity in our store has a family story behind it,
stories that our generation has either forgotten, or never known.
We believe it is time to rekindle that relationship with the families
who are feeding our world.
It is time, once again, to do business together.

The beauty of the FromTheFarm.com philosophy is that if you want to purchase products that are more local to you, you can. If you want to expand your search, and explore a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, organics and gourmet foods, even meats and cheeses, that is open to you as well. But in any case, you know the products you are getting are top quality and from American farmers. I can attest to this because they sent me boxes and boxes of products all week so that I could get an idea of what they have available. I was really impressed with the quality, the information and the company. And receiving all these goodies, I was very inspired to cook! Which is wonderful!

From their website:

“One of the joys of shopping at farmers markets is getting to know the grower who carefully nurtures, then hand-picks and packs those luscious peaches, tree-ripened pears and colorful heirloom tomatoes. These growers sell their products with pride and most often include a few tips about how to store and prepare their beloved items. You leave satisfied knowing you’ve purchased fresh, nutritious products picked at their peak of flavor and ripeness, and that you’ve helped support your community farmers – all at the convenience of being in your own home.
FromTheFarm.com was designed to mirror the flavor, quality, service and grower commitment found at traditional farmers markets. We at FromTheFarm.com both come from several generations of family farmers, so we know what freshness and quality tastes and looks like. What’s more, we use our decades of experience in produce buying, shipping and inspecting to search out top growers who can provide the finest items available throughout the country.”

To learn more about FromTheFarm.com’s Growers, click here

Bloggers are urged to sign up for their newsletter (on the home page) to be included in their monthly e-newsletter and e-mails for specials (ie: flowers for Valentine’s Day, Avocados for Super Bowl, etc…)

Here is how the contest works. To be eligible, you must reside within the continental USA and you must be an active member of The Foodie Blogroll. All current active Foodie Blogroll members are automatically enrolled in the contest. A random winner will be chosen every other week, for a total of 8 weeks (meaning 4 prizes will be given out). That’s it, nice and simple.

Here is some additional incentives for Food Bloggers:
* There is a 5 question survey offered at checkout which entitles the user to a 10% discount upon completion
* FromTheFarm.com is also looking to get the word out about their unique site and product – anyone who is interested in advertising revenue is welcome to contact Christy Farris cfarris@FromTheFarm.com

Please look forward to the following recipes in the next week featuring these fabulous products:

* Simple Tomato Salad featuring Santa Sweet Grape tomatoes and Ugly Ripe Heirloom variety tomatoes

* Washington Pears from EW Brandt & Sons – Wine Poached Pears using Blackberry Cream Honey from Honey Ridge Farms

* Balsamic Strawberries over ice cream using Balsamic Honey Vinegar and Clover Honey Creme from Honey Ridge Farms

* Roasted Chicken (in a Tagine) with Fennel rubbed with Sun-dried Tomato and Basil Olive oil from Sierra Olive Oils and Garlic Dip Seasoning Blend