Andrea Meyers » Announcements

OpenSky Is Coming

Andrea — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0000

As an avid cook and gardener, I appreciate good tools that make tasks easier and more enjoyable. I look for form and function, and I prefer tools that have multiple capabilities or are so good at a single task that it’s worth buying and using. For example, my santoku chef’s knife from New West Knifeworks is invaluable and does an amazing job, and the wood handles are gorgeous. My KitchenAid mixer is a workhorse in our kitchen, making so many tasks faster and easier. Fiskars garden tools are durable and the soft touch tools make them easy to grip while digging up weeds or harvesting vegetables, and they don’t break the bank. My Oxo cherry pitter does one job, but it makes that important job so much easier and faster that it’s worthwhile to have in the kitchen. (I don’t have the same feeling about avocado slicers.)

Some things I like aren’t available through large distribution outlets, and I seek them out online or occasionally find them at local stores I frequent. I think that excellent products deserve to be promoted, and that’s why I’ve partnered with OpenSky, a company that brings relationships back to shopping. As an OpenSky partner, I offer a few select products that I truly believe in and want to share with you. Starting on August 10th you’ll see a link on this site to my new OpenSky Shop, and I hope you’ll find it useful.

If you are interested in having an OpenSky shop or want to offer your company’s products through OpenSky, visit the OpenSky Project website for more information.

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CleverGirls Wine Club Deals

Andrea — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0000

It’s time for some new selections from the CleverGirls Wine Club. These values will only be available for another week, so check them out. And remember, shipping is free if you purchase 3 or more bottles, which saves you even more.

Current Wine Club Selections

Wine notes from WineTasting.com.

Bell 2006 Sierra Foothills Rose
CleverGirls Wine Club Price: $14.29 (regularly $15) Plus FREE SHIPPING on 3 or more bottles
About The Wine: The rich fruit flavors in particular make the wine an excellent accompaniment to Pan-Asian cuisine and spicy eastern dishes. The wine has a delightful salmon pink color, with gorgeous floral aromas, bright fruit flavors on the palate and a crisp, refreshing finish.

Forefathers 2009 Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough, New Zealand
CleverGirls Wine Club Price: $12.14 (regularly $17) Plus FREE SHIPPING on 3 or more bottles
About The Wine: Forefathers Sauvignon Blanc is a single vineyard wine produced from the 19 acre Wax-Eye Vineyard on Hawksbury Road in Marlborough. The glacial soils offer the vines good water retentivity and this glacial minerality often shows itself in the finished wine. Ripe melon and fig form the center of this refreshing, medium-bodied Sauvignon Blanc. On the palate Forefathers Sauvignon Blanc is firm, creamy, and viscous with a bright finish of lemon.

Esser Vineyards 2006 California Merlot
CleverGirls Wine Club Price: $8.21 (regularly $12) Plus FREE SHIPPING on 3 or more bottles
About the wine: “The aromatic profile of the wine reveals a striking combination of ripe plum and black cherry fruit, along with savory complements of cola, sweet tobacco, anise, and some vanilla and toffee notes of oak. It has a remarkably smooth texture for a young wine; flavors are of baked stone fruits, spice cake, and espresso. At the table, a great match for grilled red meats, game, and full-flavored pastas.” – Paul Moser, Winemaker

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The CleverGirls Wine Club

Andrea — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Yes, that’s right, this website is a founding member of the CleverGirls Wine Club. The club is a group of bloggers who all enjoy wine and share information about special savings on wines from WineTasting.com. The wines are selected by the CleverGirls and aren’t the wines you might typically see in your local grocery stores, which gives you a chance to try something new. As an affiliate of the CleverGirls Wine Club, I earn a small percentage on each purchase made through my blog.

Once or twice a month, the club selections will change and new wines will be available at a reduced price. Shipping is free if you purchase 3 or more bottles, which in itself is a good value. Each time the selections change I will post information about the new wines available and you can check them out by clicking on the link to the special page especially for the wine club.

The current selections will change on July 17, so you still have a few days to take advantage of these special prices.

Current Wine Club Selections

Wine notes from WineTasting.com.

X Winery 2006 X Carneros Chardonnay
CleverGirls Wine Club Price: $12.37 (regularly $18) Plus FREE SHIPPING on 3 or more bottles
About The Wine: Offering crisp, mineral notes on the front palate rounded out with rich, tropical, buttery flavors on the finish.
Noteworthy: “The most obvious question with respect to X Winery and proprietor Reed Renaudin is how can these wines be this good at these prices? Everyone is looking for good values today, and here are some e(X)ceptional bargains.” – Robert Parker, The Wine Advocate

Bonneau 2005 Amador Zinfandel
CleverGirls Wine Club Price: $15.71 (regularly $22) Plus FREE SHIPPING on 3 or more bottles
About The Wine: Fragrant suggestions of blackberries, dark plums, raspberries and cassis with supporting notes of black pepper, clove, and nutmeg. On the palate, the wine is smooth, juicy and plump with great integration of fruit and spice, with full body and great purity. The finish is long and refined.

Speedy Creek 2006 Knights Valley Sangiovese
CleverGirls Wine Club Price: $18 Plus FREE SHIPPING on 3 or more bottles
About the wine: The color is dark cherry red, ruby-hued. Nutmeg, potpourri and sweet strawberry on the nose, black cherry and plum palate, and a black pepper spice finish. The wine has a firm tannin structure that relaxes over about 20 minutes.
Noteworthy: This Sangiovese won a silver medal at the 2009 Sonoma Harvest Fair after getting a bronze in 2008.

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Good Bite: Everyday Meals with a Twist (Orzo Salad with Pesto)

Andrea — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 02:06:03 +0000

GoodBite.com has a new video series called Everyday Meals with a Twist sponsored by Heinz 57 sauce, and I shared one of our favorite easy recipes for the series. My dish with a twist is Orzo Salad with Pesto, a simple salad that you can serve warm or cold anytime of the year.

We make basic basil pesto and sun-dried tomato pesto with our homegrown basil, but you can also use purchased pesto. Just toss with the cooked orzo, tomatoes, and kalamata olives, sprinkle a little Parmesan on top, and it’s ready to serve.

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Adopting a Blogger

Andrea — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Meet Anne, who writes about her love of food at http://annacotta.wordpress.com. Anne started blogging after her senior year in high school and says she’s “glad it stuck.” She spent a gap semester in Indonesia and fell in love with the food, and is now a college student spending this summer in a restaurant kitchen learning about technique and how restaurants work. In spite of her busy work and school schedule, she still manages to find time for cooking and baking at home. Her gap semester in Indonesia reminds me of how I wish I had done something like that during my college years, and I highly recommend it. Spending time in another country while working on your degree can be one of the best things you’ll ever do, both for your professional career as well as your world view.

Anne and I are partners for Adopt-a-Blogger, a terrific program founded by Kristen at Dine & Dish which pairs experienced food bloggers with newer bloggers. We get to know each other, help each other with blog stuff, answer questions, and share tips. Anna and I have both been busy this spring: she’s had school and work; I’ve had the kids, the garden, blog duty, life in general. We might have gotten off to a slow start, but we are catching up now.

Anne and I decided to introduce each other with a brief interview, so we chose some mutual questions and picked a few of our own. I hope you enjoy meeting Anne and getting to know her through her blog.

My questions for Anne:

You are working in kitchens now. What are your professional aspirations?

Hm. Well, I like working in the kitchen, but I think my real interest is turning out to be in the broader restaurant business. It’s exciting back in the hot kitchen, but I’m more interested in FOOD as a whole rather than just cooking, if that makes any sense. Making the same thing over and over in the kitchen seems like it could easily become more mechanical and job-ish than inspired and exciting. Plus I just love the idea of having my very own restaurant; the thought of finding a space and designing logos and choosing linens and creating my own menu makes me just squirmy with excitement. The food-love isn’t going to die out though, I can say that for sure. I’ll be involved in the strange world of feeding people in some way, whether I stick in the kitchen or venture out into restaurants or make my own jam and sell it on the side of the road in Kentucky.

Eat out or cook in?

Depends what’s in the fridge. Or where I am. If I’m away from home, I feel the need to eat at as many restaurants as humanly possible, doing a bit of a scavenger hunt meal; apps here, entrée there, dessert at that shiny little bistro around the corner.

You wake up in the middle of the night, starving. What do you make?

Depends how lucid I am. Probably a banana with Nutella.

What’s your favorite dish to order at your favorite restaurant?

Any of their ever-changing pasta dishes, or lamb chops.

Breakfast, lunch, or dinner?

Breakfast or dinner, lunch is the awkward middle child.

You have to cook in just one style (Italian, Basque, Thai, etc.) forever. What’s it going to be?

American I suppose, because it’s sort of a big grab bag of everything.

Favorite fruit?

A really good mango. But more often, strawberries.

Anything you’ve eaten traveling that you craved for ages but could never re-create just right?

Soto ayam, this deliciously limey and almost-spicy Indonesian chicken soup.

Street food or Michelin starred restaurant?

How sketchy is the street food? How pretentious is the starred-restaurant?

Any guilty pleasure foods? Mac and cheese from the box? Oreos? Orange Fanta?

I love Coke. I wish I didn’t, but I get insane hankerings for the real-sugar Mexican Coke that comes in a bottle.

Summer favorite? Winter favorite?

Winter: our very dear family friend’s Christmas Day coffeecake, I swear it could heal the world’s problems it’s so amazing. Get all the world leaders around this cake and there shall be peace among men. She delivers them on Christmas Eve, I get almost equally excited for “Camie Cake” as the rest of Christmas.

Summer: Raspberries from my mom’s garden… or caprese salad eaten on a deck… or ribs… or corn succotash…

Top three reasons food bloggers rock.

1. Humor. There are some clever ones.

2. Creativity. Always new stuff getting posted.

3. The fact that bloggers often get little glory but do it anyway because they are rad.

Finally, tell us a few things you enjoy besides food.

I like waffles, puppies, dancing poorly and wildly, being on planes, Google, sunshine, warm laundry, sitting in coffee shops, lemon soy yogurt, people who play harmonica, The New Yorker, and my ma and pa.

You can find my interview responses at Anne’s post Little Orphan Annie.

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Good Bite: Real Fast Food

Andrea — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:15:16 +0000

Have you seen the Real Fast Food series at Goodbite.com? The concept is simple: make healthy fast food at home with 5 ingredients or less in 15 minutes or less. There are great ideas to help you eat well in a short time, and I am excited to be a contributor to the series.

Prosciutto Panini

The video is based on a post I did about panini (Panini with Prosciutto, Fontina, Spinach, and Slow-Roasted Tomatoes) a couple years ago, and it’s still one of my favorite sandwiches. Make sure you check out David’s idea for using pesto in the sandwich, which is also in the video.

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Good Bite and Real Women of Philadelphia

Andrea — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 22:32:28 +0000

I’ve been keeping a bit of news under wraps, waiting for the right time to announce it, and today is the day…

I recently joined the cast of contributors at GoodBite.com and I am thrilled to be a part of it. Good Bite and Philadelphia Cream Cheese asked me to participate in the Real Women of Philadelphia campaign to promote this fun opportunity. Paula Deen is looking for the next big cooking stars, and enthusiastic home cooks are encouraged to submit videos of you making your favorite dish with cream cheese. I made my own cooking video featuring one of my favorite cream cheese recipes, which you can view below and on GoodBite.com (recipe on Good Bite). Four women will be selected to be the Real Women of Philadelphia and win $25,000 plus a chance to meet Paula Deen.

This will be a lot of fun and a great opportunity for the four winners, so make sure you check out the details at PaulaDeen.com and the Real Women of Philadelphia website to enter your own original recipes with cream cheese.

So let’s get cooking!

More Recipes with Cream Cheese

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Menu for Hope VI, December 14-25, 2009

Andrea — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:00:00 +0000

UPDATE: Menu for Hope winners have been announced! Check out the post at Chez Pim to see if you won a prize.

UPDATE: Menu for Hope winners will be announced on January 18 at Chez Pim.

UPDATE: Menu for Hope has been extended to December 31, so you have more time to bid and support the World Food Programme.

It’s time! Menu for Hope starts today and runs through December 25. Each December food bloggers from all over the world work together to raise money for charity, and last year the event raised over $62,000 in support of the U.N. World Food Programme’s work in Lesotho, a model food program that encourages local farming and uses the locally grown foods to feed lunch to local school children

This year the recipient will be a new initiative with the WFP called Purchase for Progress (P4P), a program that enables smallholder and low-income farmers to supply food to WFP’s global operation. These farmers learn better farming practices and increase their income, which helps their local economies and creates more jobs.

The raffle is managed by First Giving and all money passes through their hands. Tickets cost $10 each and each ticket gives you one chance on the item of your choice. There is a wonderful list of bid items to choose from, and Pim has the master list of bid items on her site. There are also regional coordinators who have helped organize the items and donors, and we give hugs and many thanks to:

US: West Coast
Shauna of Gluten Free Girl

US: East Coast (I’m in this group.)
Helen of Tartelette

Europe *and* the UK
David Lebovitz

Canada
Tara of Seven Spoons

Asia, Pacific, Australia, New Zealand
Ed Charles of Tomato

and, last but not least, our special Wine Blog Host
Alder of Vinography

And now for the bid items I’m hosting…

BID ITEM 1 (Code: UE26)

Stonyfield Farm Yogurt is supporting Menu for Hope with a package of Stonyfield Products:

Stonyfield Yogurt cookbook
Coupons for free Oikos yogurt, value US$65
Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World, by Gary Hirshberg (CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm Yogurt), the inspiring story of how Stonyfield Farm built their business based on environmental principles and practices.
Stonyfield Fleece Jacket
Oikos Organic Cotton T-shirt
Oikos tote bag
Stonyfield hat

TOTAL VALUE: US$202.78

This item can only be shipped to U.S. addresses.

BID ITEM 2 (Code: UE27)

I am offering a 2-piece kitchen knife set from New West Knifeworks. These are beautiful and functional pieces of knife art. The set contains a chopper and a paring knife with Fusionwood handles, and the winner gets to choose the color of the handles. Each knife comes with its own leather sheath and a lifetime guarantee. For more information on New West Knifeworks knives, take a look at the review on the New West Knifeworks Santoku knife I wrote earlier this year.

VALUE: US$139.00

This item can only be shipped to U.S. addresses.

If you want a chance to win either of these items, go to First Giving – Menu for Hope 6 and enter code UE26 for the Stonyfield Farm Yogurt gift package or UE27 for the New West Knifeworks knife set. Be sure to check out all the bid items available as there are always some great things to bid on!

To donate and enter the Menu for Hope Raffle, here’s what you need to do:

1. Choose a bid item or bid items of your choice from our Menu for Hope main bid item list.

2. Go to the Menu for Hope donation site at First Giving and make a donation.

3. Please specify which bid item you’d like in the ‘Personal Message’ section in the donation form when confirming your donation. You must write-in how many tickets per bid item, and please use the bid item code. Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a bid item of your choice. For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for EU01 and 3 tickets for EU02 – 2xEU01, 3xEU02. Don’t forget to enter this information!

4. If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box and fill in the information so we could claim the corporate match.

5. Please check the box to allow us to see your email address so that we can contact you in case you win. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.

Thank you for supporting Menu for Hope!

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Menu for Hope Starts Monday

Andrea — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 06:00:00 +0000

It’s that time of year, when food bloggers from all over the world work together to raise money for charity. In years past Menu for Hope, founded by Pim of Chez Pim, has raised money for tsunami and earthquake relief and supported the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP). This year Menu for Hope will continue supporting the work of the WFP via a new initiative called Purchase for Progress (P4P). This project enables smallholder and low-income farmers to supply food to WFP’s global operation. These farmers learn better farming practices and increase their income, which helps their local economies and creates more jobs.

We raise money via a raffle, with prizes donated by bloggers, restaurants, chefs, authors, and companies from all over the world. This year I am excited to host two prizes for Menu for Hope, one of which has been donated by one of my very favorite companies, and the other a prize that I selected personally and am sure any cook will enjoy. But I’m not telling what they are just yet! Come back on Monday to get the full details on the prizes and how to enter the raffle!

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The Springpad Thanksgiving Menu Contest

Andrea — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:03:38 +0000

Have you planned your Thanksgiving menu yet? I confess it’s just over a week away and and we are still finalizing the menu. Right now we know we are having turkey—we already have the turkey in hand—and some kind of rolls, the rest is still to be decided. We always have a hard time narrowing down from our list of favorites and of course we like to try at least one new dish, so I need to get cracking!

This year Springpad wants to help you with your Thanksgiving meal planning and give you and a blogger a chance to win a little cash. Check out their Happy Springsgiving contest and pick your favorite Thanksgiving dishes from seven different menus selected by food bloggers, including yours truly. Vote for your favorites by springing your favorite recipe(s) to your Springpad account. The blogger whose menu gets the most total springs (votes) will win $500 and one lucky voter will be randomly selected to win $100. And of course I hope that one of my readers wins!

The other bloggers who entered the contest:

Back to the Cutting Board

Biscuits and Such

Coconut & Lime

Daily Unadventures in Cooking

Food Tastes Yummy

Healthy. Delicious.

Here’s my contest menu with a small family in mind:

Carrot Ginger Soup

Slow-Cooker Turkey Breast and Gravy

Brown Butter Green Beans with Almonds

Roasted Butternut Squash Puree with Ginger

Cranberry Orange Upside Down Cake with Grand Marnier Whipped Cream

I hope you have fun with the contest!

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