Foodbuzz and S.Pellegrino Sparkling Natural Mineral Water are providing the opportunity for two Featured Publishers to attend The S. Pellegrino Almost Famous Chef Competition. According to an email I received from Foodbuzz, “The Almost Famous Chef Competition gives top culinary students from around the world a chance to showcase their skills to top chefs, culinary experts and media and the opportunity to win cash and a paid apprenticeship with a top chef to jumpstart their career.”

One lucky featured publisher will be selected to attend the S. Pellegrino Almost Famous Chef Competition in Napa on March 7th, 2010.

I would love to attend this competition for many fabulous reasons – for the cuisine I’d get to taste, the thrill of the competition, the opportunity to see talent executed in person, the people I’d meet, the friends I’d make, and for all the wonderful memories I’d get to take home with me and share with my blog readers. I would help spread the word with my blog post, tweets (maybe some from the competition? that would be fun!), and some old-fashioned word of mouth. And here’s more…

Napa Dreams

The rolling hills of California Wine Country have been wooing me to return since I first visited last March 2009. In those hills, I found a connection unlike any other experienced by my foodie self before.

There, those hills offer a paradise of sorts. While some dream of glowing beaches and white sand or snow-capped peaks and shiny skis, I close my eyes and am taken somewhere else. My mind takes me back to the magical place called Wine Country where farm fresh foods and handmade wines beckon to satisfy my senses in a way no beach or mountain could ever fulfill.

In those hills, all senses are dazzled with breath-taking scenery, curious ingredients, quiet countrysides, clean air, and divine tastings. In that valley this crazy foodie girl discovered a place to belong if not forever, again soon.

A memento, a sticker from one of the wineries I toured sits at my desk at work. It is a talisman of sorts that I use on my worst days to remember one of my best – to mentally transport myself back and relive that sunny day meandering through the smiling, vine-ripened hills of WIne Country.

And what could possibly be better than Napa? Napa taken to a new level with a culinary competition. Could it be that a collection of foodies just like me would all meet for a fantastic food event? Yes, the fantasy is possible! A room full of food loving friends, each with their own talent: the chefs, the judges, and me – the one who will capture the moment, the beautiful foods, the magical people, and the butterflies of excitement, with her camera and words and memories. Me – the one who will share the experience to the world via a blog so that others can live vicariously through my storytelling. I can only hope such a dream could become reality.  

Please pick me Foodbuzz!

I got a package in the mail yesterday.

It seems that mail these days is no fun, but packages are almost always awesome. This one turned out to be a great one!

Navitas Naturals was kind enough to send me some free goodies to sample! How pumped am I!?

They sent a nice letter. Check out the slogan – “Power Foods For The Modern Lifestyle” – Love that!

I also got a recipe book…

…and a catalog.

Now for the best part – the food!

I got some Cacao Power – Organic Sweet Raw Chocolate Nibs – from the site – “soaring levels of antioxidants, as well as trace minerals like magnesium and iron, and you can feel good in every way about enjoying this superfood.”

Organic Raw Coconut Oil (been wanting to try this for awhile) – from their site – “Among the many benefits of MFCAs are long-lasting energy, increased metabolic rates, as well as anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-fungal activity.”

Organic Superfood Chocolate Kit in Goji Berry. I love chocolate and I love goji berries…so I’m sure I’ll love this. Can you believe I don’t have an ice cube tray, though!? I need to get one stat so I can dig into this. I’ve heard this kit is selling well via their twitter. I bet it would make a great stocking stuffer for your favorite foodie out there.

A couple last tidbits… (and no, they didn’t pay me to say this…I just think the following is useful)

• Living Green Magazine included Navitas Naturals Chocolate Kits in their Fresh & Green group of products for the month
• Check out Navitas Naturals on twitter – DM them your fave superfood @NavitasNaturals for a 10% off coupon for your next online order! (see their twitter for details – I’m not sure when this expires)
• Check out their recipes online for some ideas on preparing your superfoods to eat

I can’t wait to dig in!

What’s your favorite superfood?

This morning started off quite brilliantly. I brewed a pot of coffee….

…and was sipping on nice, hot mug of Fresh Market Breakfast Blend when I remembered today is Bagel Day Friday! Starbucks Monday I almost never miss or skip, but Bagel Day Friday hasn’t been seeing as much love. I skipped eating at home to save room for bagels.

On the way to work, I made a pit stop to pick up my new love – Pumpkin Bagels! Not only does Einstein Brothers Bagels make Pumpkin bagels, but they make a Pumpkin Schmear, too!

I tried my first Pumpkin Bagel, toasted, with Pumpkin Schmear earlier this week and couldn’t resist getting another today.

If you like pumpkin oatmeal or pumpkin pie, you will LOVE this pumpkin bagel/schmear combo. When I first tried this breakfast, I didn’t notice a lot of pumpkin flavor in the bagel. That was probably because the pumpkin schmear was so flavorful. It reminded me of pumpkin pie filling…yum! I loved the fall-spice flavor. Not sure what they used, but I definitely got some cinnamon.

I enjoyed my bagel with a nice, hot cup of Autumn Roast (chestnut) coffee. Mmm…breakfast put me in a GREAT mood today!

I was hoping to go to zumba after work, but my leg is…not hurting, but kind of bothering me still. After waiting several weeks before being able to go back to class, I’m not going to risk re-injury for ANYTHING! I figure better safe than sorry, right? I am still dying to show my potential choreography to my instructors for Te Aviso, Te Anuncio!

Have you seen Kath’s Nerd KERF Gmail Tutorial? It’s pretty sweet! I was totally inspired by Kath’s tutorial. Stuck at home with no zumba, I decided to tackle my horrible gmail inbox. See, I spend almost every day in front of the computer for my day job, so the last thing I want to do is read the hundreds of emails that have poured into my inbox (except for the comments…I can’t get enough of those! ). I haven’t been keeping my email box organized at all, which has been driving me CRAZY. A lot of things around me related to organization are driving me crazy at the moment, so I’ve decided to tackle these things, 1 small win at a time.

I also multi-tasked by working on clearing out my DVR list. I have more Food Network DVR’ed than I could possibly watch, so I figured rather than delete all my old episodes, I’ll just play them in the background when I’m blogging, etc so I can catch snippets at least. I had an Everyday Italian marathon and drooled over Giada’s kitchen. I hope I can channel her kitchen while we’re remodeling ours.

Besides re-organizing my email and clearing out my DVR list today, I also managed to take my starred emails down from 180 to 20 and I’ve sorted and archived hundreds of emails. I feel so productive…yay! I had a shocking 1500 unread emails in my inbox, and most of those emails were read but marked unread since I use unread emails like a “to-do” list sometimes. I’ve decided to use my starred emails as my to-do as far as my email goes. I think my newly organized system will keep me productive!

Now if I could only managed to get the 1,261 emails sorted with a snap of my fingers. Oi!

Hubby and I are going to a wedding tomorrow night, so between packing, gmail organizing, and other errands, we decided to do something simple, easy, and affordable.

We decided to make Breakfast for Dinner. We had eggs, cheese, spinach, and bread, but hubby wanted to pick up a couple things for the weekend and grabbed a red bell pepper while he was out.

I was already hungry when I left work and knew I didn’t want to wait till hubby was home to eat. So, I decided to have an itty-bitty yogurt parfait using Stonyfield Organic Oikos Greek Yogurt in vanilla with Bear Naked Fruit + Nut Granola with a sprinkling of chia seeds.

This was the cutest parfait – check out how small it was compared to my hand!

Hubby picked out a great red bell pepper with a nice, tight skin. I actually got all the pepper I needed for our Egg Scramble just using the ring around the top, sans the stem.

I sliced the rest of the bell pepper up – this will make a great snack tomorrow.

Dinner came together quite quickly, which I was pretty happy about since I have only 1000 unread emails calling my name.

We had an egg scramble with: cage-free eggs, red bell pepper, organic baby spinach, and TJ’s shredded cheddar cheese. We also had some Great Harvest Bread Company Dakota toast. I had 1/2 with real butter and 1/2 with Dark Chocolate Dreams PB.

Hubby turned his eggs and toast into a sandwich. I swear, the mean will put anything and everything on bread! lol

We ended up watching a re-run of last night’s Flash Forward. Does anyone else watch this show? It’s pretty good so far. I’m curious to see if their visions are their true futures and if they are, if they’ll be able to change them.

Phew, well, I have some more emails to tackle and then I’m off to bed.

What are you guys up to this weekend? Any one headed to the Farmers Market?

I have a TON of recap posts to make up for the last couple days (those business trips really throw me off!), but in the meantime, it’s late, and I want to go have sleepy time. So, just a few tidbits for now…

First up…

I PASSED THE AFAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (check here for recap of the AFAA certification) I’m so excited and happy and proud and elated. That test was no joke and I was really worried I failed possibly both the written and practical portions. I just have to get my CPR certification to make everything final, but I’m just so happy that I DID IT! *jumping for joy*

After receiving the good news about the AFAA, hubby and I went tile shopping. We’ve been in negotiations with a couple contractors over the last couple weeks and while we really like both of them and had a tough time choosing, we think we found our contractor. Either way, we’re tiling over the kitchen floor and have to find the perfect flooring now. I want my kitchen to look like Giada’s (the version before her Giada at Home kitchen), but they never show floors! I can try to match everything else, but I have no clue what the floors in Giada’s kitchen looked like so we’ll just pick out whatever we want.

The mailman brought me some goodies.

I received two loaves of Nature’s Pride’s new bread products to sample for free via the Foodbuzz Tastemaker’s program.

I received a loaf of 12 Grain and a loaf of the 100% Whole Wheat. I can’t wait to dig into these. I’m a BIG fan of their cereal and other food products, so I’m sure these will be just as great. I’ll let you know!

I’m off for now to relish in my AFAA success…you guys have no idea how worried I was about passing the AFAA so the news is especially sweet! Now I just need to get 100% better so I can get back to zumba! I’m hoping to start going back to classes at a low level in the next week or two. Hopefully the home renovations allow me some workout time! If not, I’ll have to make some!

I decided to try out Trader Joe’s Fully Cooked Uncured Bacon – No Nitrites or Nitrates Added – Apple Smoked bacon recently.

I’ve heard both good and bad things about nitrates and nitrites, but mostly that you should try to get your nitrates and nitrites from natural sources over those added to processed meat products.

This was my first time working with fully cooked bacon. The cooking time to re-heat and/or crisp the bacon was so short! The box recommended 10-15 seconds for 2 slices.

Here’s what the bacon looked like after removing from the box. I thought it was really well packaged.

To get the bacon as crisp as I wanted, I cooked it way longer than the 10-15 seconds recommended (not to mention I had 4 slices to cook up, not the 2 referenced for the 10-15 seconds cook time). I think I ended up cooking it for a total of 1 minute, but in 15 second increments.

I served the bacon with a fried, cage-free egg. Btw, I’m pretty bad at cooking fried eggs…I don’t know how they make them look so pretty at most breakfast spots. Perhaps when I get my griddle the eggs will be easier to flip?

All in all, I thought the bacon was really good. The short cooking time was nice and the apple-smoked flavor was really good.

Does anyone else do nitrate/nitrite-free bacon?