When I moved to CT, I joined a local Cooking Light supper club.  My group meets up once a month for dinner, usually on a Sunday evening, and each member takes a turn to host in their home and to come up with the dinner theme.

The host will prepare the main course and every one else will bring in the appetizers, snacks, salads, sides and desserts to go along with the dinner theme.

We’ve had some great themes like an all pizza theme, a chocolate theme, Mediterranean theme and even a Presidential theme!

Since joining the group, it gave me a wonderful opportunity not only to meet new people who also share a love for food like I do, but also the chance to make dishes I would not even think about making.

Most of the inspirations come from the Cooking Light website (duh, hence the name of our club).

But I also love checking out other food sites for inspiration.  So in no particular order, here is a list of food sites I ♥:

1.  MyRecipes.com – I really like their quick and easy tab cuz well, sometimes I don’t always have the time to make a great meal.

I also found a recipe for Chocolate-Apricot Bread pudding.

As you can see from the picture, it turned pretty damn close to the one on the site.

BTW, it was yummy too!

2.  StartCooking.com – I totally enjoy this site and since then I’ve been subscribing to blogs and Podcasts on iTunes.

Founder & Author of StartCooking.com, Kathy Maister was a former Home Ec teacher.  She not only has great recipes listed to try, but she actually SHOWS you how to prepare the ingredients and pull them all together with pictures and video!!

She definitely makes cooking easy!!  You can also select certain recipes on the iTunes Podcasts to download.  And whenever you’re in the grocery market, hey you can whip out your iPod and everything there is listed.  How convenient!!

I’m really looking forward to making her Tex-Mex Bean Salad for an upcoming gathering next month.

3.  Simply Recipes – DK mentioned this site to me several years ago.

Elise Bauer started Simply Recipes as a blog where she posts her own personal, family members’ and friends’ recipes –   all tested by their respective owners.

One of the first recipes, DK tried out was Hot Mulled Apple Cider for the holidays.  This became an instant hit among our friends!  And it’s perfect for those chilly days when coffee just doesn’t cut it. – at least, that’s what DK says.

4.  Betty Crocker – Betty’s Cooking Basics was my very first cookbook I bought when I moved out my parents’ house.  The recipes and instructions listed in the book were easy enough for someone who was not (at the time) very domesticated and knew her way around in the kitchen.  One of the first recipes I made was Parmesan-Dijon Chicken along with Twice Baked Potatoes – a meal that is still enjoyed in my household.

I like to refer to this site for some quick and easy tasty, dessert treats for the family.

So what’s your favorite foodie sites?

eat and be well!

If there is one thing I can say that I do as a major plus towards “keeping healthy” (and believe me, there aren’t many on THAT list…) is that 99.9% of my liquid intake comes from water,

I’m not a major caffeine consumer, I will have the occasional black or earl grey tea if I’m feeling cold or when I have one, and as for carbonated beverages, well, I haven’t drank cola on a regular basis since I was 8 years old, but if the occasion calls for a soda if I’m having a sandwich like a really good, hot BBQ-hamburger or cheesesteak, I’d prefer the lemon-lime variety.

And for coffee, I was completely put off by the taste at the age of 6 or 7 when one of my titas (affectionate name given to extended older family female friends in the Filipino community) unintentionally gave me a bowl full of coffee ice cream when she thought it was chocolate.

And at that moment in time, my future, adult self curses and bemoans that turning point for she will not be able to enjoy coffee as many adults do.

Even after all this time, I will still not drink black coffee and while I do like the taste of a Wawa French Vanilla Cap – deep down it isn’t a real cappuccino, just lots of flavored milk and sugar.

For the past couple weeks, our family has had to adjust to a new routine in our schedule – Mini C-Flo began nursery school – which means I had to get up earlier than usual and make sure that she was ready to go on time.  And as an obvious result, this leaves me just a little more tired and a little less perkier than usual.

DK said suggested that a cup of coffee in the morning would help solve my morning dilemma.  I had to consider the thought if consuming caffeine would help wake me up.  Then the flashback of once taking medicine that had 5 mg of caffeine had given me the shakes for 4 hours.  It wasn’t pleasant.

And then I remembered DK’s phase of caffeine withdrawl when I refused to buy his flavored creamer because it was just getting too expensive for the grocery budget – that was even more unpleasant to deal with.

But he had made some suggestion on what flavor would be good to start out with.  He also look online for other suggestions.  And when we had gone grocery shopping yesterday, we considered this….

Oh what hell, right?  So, once we came home the experiment began.  DK also offered to try each one and give me his opinion of their taste.

Boiling water, 4 teaspoons later and a sip of Vanilla Caramel…

DK:  “It’s a bit frothy for your taste.  I don’t think you might like it.”

Me:  “Why?”

DK:  “It taste too milky.”  As he is all too familiar with my milk-intolerant tummy.

Ok, I’ll put that one on hold.

Boiling water, 4 teaspoons later and a sip of French Vanilla…

Me: “Is it supposed to have that bitter after taste?”

DK:  “I think it taste fine; you don’t need to add sugar.”

I add a teaspoon of sugar and the taste is a little less bitter.  I think it has finally hit me.