Getting ready to take a summer vacation? Been reading diet pill reviews?
I’ve never gained weight on a vacation. Not a pound, not even on our trips to Disney or on the Disney cruise, when we all ate a lot because the food was so good. We were talking yesterday and I realized why I’ve never gained weight while vacationing. It’s because we keep very busy and are always on the go. It’s the exercise. So eat if you want to eat. Just make sure you do lots of sight seeing and you’ll burn off whatever you eat.

Want to go out for a family meal without breaking the bank? Try searching on MyKidsEatFree.com before leaving the house. This site allows users to search for restaurants in your area that offer specials or free meals for children. Search results include the name, address and phone number for the restaurant and the available deals. I love the idea of this site and hope over time more restaurants in my area will be listed.

Winter is here and we’ve had some really cold days. Cold winter weekends are my favorite time of year to cook our favorite comfort foods. These foods take a while to prepare and can really help heat the house. Even boiling water when cooking adds steam which will help warm the house as well. And don’t forget, you end up with the smell of home cooked food and you get to eat whatever you made as well. Some of my favorite things to cook in the winter include creamy chicken noodle soup, chili, corn sausage chowder, lasagna and baked goods. What are your favorite things to cook during the cold weather?

Many people know what a crock pot is. Some people also call it a slow cooker. No matter what you call it, it’s an effective and affordable way to save time, money and energy in meal preparation. The last thing that I want to do after working all day is stand on my feet for a half hour or more cooking a meal. If you place whatever ingredients your recipe calls for in the crock pot in the morning you’ll come home to a tasty, ready to serve meal. Crock pots add variety. There are so many crock pot recipes you could go a very long time without eating the same thing twice. And, having a crock pot also means you can buy different cuts and quantities of meat, increasing your variety and decreasing the amount you spend on meat. Crock pots are easy to use, you just plug them in and turn a knob. They don’t require anything special to use them and you don’t have to buy memory for them.You don’t have to constantly open the lid to check the food and you don’t have to stir them. The food is very tasty too. Do you have a crock pot?

Another way to change the look of a room is with fruit,flowers and plants. You can display fruit in a nice glass bowl and it makes an attractive (and mainly edible) centerpiece. A vase full of fresh cut flowers will add a lovely scent to the room and they’re lovely to look at. A big floor plant in a corner will change the color of the room and offer a different focal point. And before you ask, I didn’t mean trees when I said plants so you can’t get a two fer by using fig trees.

Some people don’t realize that they can have a positive effect on our environment by changing their grocery shopping habits. Here’s five tips you can use for greener shopping.
1. Buy locally and you’ll lessen packaging and transportation costs.
2. Buy concentrated forms and stop paying for packaging water.
3. Buy in bulk and lessen the amount of packaging of lots of smaller packages.
4. Using reusable cloth bags when you go grocery shopping.
5. If you use plastic bags, or even paper ones, be sure to recycle them.

I love coffee and haven’t gone a day without at least one cup in a very long time. I have two cups a day on a typical day. I have noticed for the last couple of years that more and more people seem to buy their coffee while they’re on the go rather than make it at home. I see people lined up ten people deep in the coffee store and 8 cars long on line at the drive through and they’re there every day. I asked someone once why they bought Dunkin Donuts coffee every day and they told me theirs didn’t taste as good. Now don’t get me wrong, Dunkin Donuts coffee does taste good. But it’s too expensive to buy every day. These people could save a lot of money if they made coffee at home. There’s lots of really good coffee makers out there. Anyone who says their coffee doesn’t taste good should try either different coffee or a different machine. I love the taste of fresh ground coffee so I have a coffee maker with a built in bean grinder. It tastes as good or better than any restaurant out there.By making coffee at home you’re saving the trip out, which will cut back spending on gas and coffee as well as your time. Do you buy something out that you could make at home?

There’s a new fast food restaurant in the US called Cereality. It’s a restaurant that serves breakfast cereals. Yes I mean regular boxed breakfast cereals, the kind you get at the grocery store. Their menu consists of a couple of options that are simply two cereals mixed together. There are already several of these restaurants open and more of them are planned. There’s even franchise opportunities for them. I can’t believe people would actually pay to eat out what they can eat anytime at home, and surely for much less money. I wouldn’t go to one of these. Would you? What do you think of this idea?

Where do you keep your cookbooks? I’m always curious to see where people keep their cookbooks. I know some people that keep them on bookshelves like regular books. I have actually run into two people that keep their cookbooks inside the kitchen cabinet. I have a small bookshelf about two foot long that I have on the far end of my kitchen counter near the frig that holds all of my cookbooks. They look nice there but besides taking up space sometimes I don’t feel like looking through book after book for something, maybe a nice French toast casserole. I had an idea for a kitchen appliance that would allow me to get rid of my cookbooks. It would be about the size of a open cookbook but instead of open pages it would have a horizontal touch screen. Recipes could be stored in it like ebooks and you’d just navigate through by touch. It could be connected to the internet or stand alone. The whole thing would probably not require much more computing power behind it than a good pda has.What do you think?

Of course I’m not referring to noses. Or butts. I’m referring to picking your own fruits and vegetables. It’s a fun way to spend a day with family and/or friends and save some money on foods you love. The Pick Your Own website allows visitors to find farms in their area, as well as offering how tos, guides, picking tips and canning instructions. Farm listings are available to the US, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, South Africa and New Zealand. Fruit picking can be lots of fun and fresh fruit tastes soooo good. Have you ever gone picking for fruits or vegetables?