its creepy, its eerie and a bit spooky....tonght on 24/7 MOMS Weekly Webcast ...spooktacular ideas join the fun at 7pm PST and 9pm PST on www.247moms.com

Wondering what the best dinner is to take to a family with 2 toddlers and a brand new baby?

Slow Cooker Recipes Under 300 Calories OK, I'm firing this thing up this weekend. Here are some good recipes to consider for Sunday night! Yum! http://www.myrecipes.com/healthy-diet/calorie-counts/low-calorie-slow-cooker-recipes-00420000001431/

This week, at work, we are having Crock Pot Thursday. Most of the folks in our office are working parents (or just uber busy folks). This is our way of sharing recipes, getting tips on meal planning, and making people get up from their desks to have lunch!

All Things Turkey This Week ON 24/7 MOMS Live Webcast "All Things Turkey" a Live Webcast filled with Thanksgiving ideas, stories and celebrations. This Tuesday night at 7pm PST/ 10pm EST or 9pm PST / 12am EST at www.247moms.com...

Meatloaf: It's sexier than you think http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/22/meatloaf-is-sexier-than-you-think.html A writer declares in The New York Times that Americans eat far too many animal products; he advises that if we do as the French do and limit our intake of meat, we will be healthier and spend less money on food. Michael Pollan, in this month’s food issue of the Times Magazine? No, a reader with the initials A.B.C., writing to the paper—in 1856. Instead of bacon and eggs, A.B.C. suggests Americans begin their mornings with café au lait, defined as a “decoction” of coffee with boiled milk—still a popular breakfast choice, as the lines at any Starbucks will attest. Food writing is almost always infused with nostalgia. But when it comes to food trends, we have a recurring case of cultural amnesia. The Food Network, molecular gastronomy, vegans, locavores, heritage chickens, the obesity tax: it’s easy to assume that our current obsession with food is unprecedented. Surely our palates are more sophisticated, our recipes more complex, and our ideas about health and nutrition more enlightened than ever. In fact, most of our current obsessions are as old as Spanish cream. Never tasted it? It was all the rage in 1878, and, after reinterpretations as Bavarian cream, pot de crème, and crème brûlée, was featured on the Food Network’s Everyday Italian in its current faddish, egg-free incarnation, panna cotta, last May.

http://lifesimplifiedforyou.com/2010/11/29/fun-fancy-foodie-stuff/ Not quite dinner time but fun food suggestions for your next holiday party. Phat Beets, Mean Beans, Smokra, The People’s Pickle, and new Hotties from Rick’s Picks are perfect when you want to make an impression with quick, healthy, and delicious hors d’oeuvres. Try pairing them with cheeses and cured meats, eat them straight out of the jar & use the delicious brine in your cocktails! Next try.... Find other fabulous foodie finds at the link above.

The Humble Plate of Hash Has Nobler Ambitions http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/dining/05hash.html?src=me&ref=style By JULIA MOSKIN “I WOULD never call myself a meat-and-potatoes guy,” said Robert Newton, the chef at Seersucker in Brooklyn, where the country pork hash has a devoted following. “But I really like hash.” Modern meat-and-potatoes lovers, meet hash, your new best friend. Friendly to home cooks and on the upswing with chefs, who make it from corned beef, pastrami, Texas barbecue, leftover prime rib, lamb necks or duck tongues, hash is thrillingly easy to cook and deeply satisfying to eat. (Especially at this time of year, with holiday feasts receding in the rear-view mirror and leftovers lurking in the fridge.) The essence of hash is meat that’s already cooked, potatoes for starch and usually onions for sweetness. A couple of loose-yolked eggs on top provide a sauce that brings all the flavors together. As meat has become larded with high status, and as diner food is reinvented with culinary credibility, hash is coming up in the world.

http://lifesimplifiedforyou.com/2011/04/12/lets-get-cookin-2/ Let's Get Cooking! Admittedly I’m not the most comfortable in the kitchen but with the help of two new (to me) cookbooks & some dandy accessories, I’m at least starting to feel mildly competent & have some fun. Squeaky Gourmet is the first cookbook that I have truly loved. Don’t get me wrong, I can spend hours flipping through beautiful 20lb cookbooks, but never have I found one small cookbook so fitting to my most basic needs & skills. Let me warn you that there are NO pictures and this delighted me to no end – nothing to show how sad my food looked compared to professional photos. What I’ve enjoyed best about this little book is that I have most ingredients on hand for every recipe. It’s all of 138 pages, contains great nutritional info, and as stated on the cover, Simple – Clean – Food. One of my other hesitations in the kitchen comes from the fact that you have to clean up afterwards. Elizabeth Yarnell’s Glorious One-Pot Meals... Read the article in its entirety at the link above.

Can Recipe Search Engines Make You a Better Cook? By JULIA MOSKIN LET’S say you have invited four people for dinner on Saturday. It’s now Wednesday morning, and reality is setting in. On the guest list: two pescatarians, a “Top Chef” fanboy and a gluten avoider. Also, spring is in the air; local asparagus, arriving now. The challenge, as always: how to find dishes that are reliable, delicious and gastronomically correct? The year has brought a rush of new recipe search engines designed to solve such quandaries. In February, Google introduced a tool called Recipe View that lets you specify ingredients you do or do not want to use. (For example, a general search for “chili” can be refined — by, say, a Texas-chili purist in Austin — to exclude any recipe that calls for beans.) Microsoft’s Bing browser has had its own recipe function for more than a year, and allows you to search within a single source, like a blog. A few weeks before Google’s new tool was introduced, Foodily went live, with all results integrated with Facebook so that you can see which recipes your friends say they like. A new, photo-heavy site, Cookzillas, the brainchild of a passionate cook in Bucharest, Romania, who happens to be a multimedia programmer, has more global recommendations than the United States-based engines, with English, Australian and Canadian sites in its scope. With 10 million recipe searches a day on Google alone, the results surely influence what Americans eat. But when you idly type in “cookies” — the most common recipe search, according to Google — do these systems evaluate recipes the way a good cook would, by the clarity of their directions, the helpfulness of their warnings, the tastiness of the results? Probably not, based on extensive test-runs of the new tools. “Their challenge is to translate ‘yummy’ into digital fingerprints,” said Paul Kennard, an expert in building Web traffic. Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/dining/can-recipe-search-engines-make-you-a-better-cook.html?hpw

5 real, fast, delicious meals from around the U.S. Eatocracy - Rachael Ray, Robin Miller and Martha Stewart all whip up some quick-and-easy meals on TV, but for those of us who aren’t gifted in the culinary sense, they might not be that simple. Well folks, CNN iReport has answered your cooking prayers. We’ve collected real recipes from real people as part of the cultural census for CNN's Defining America. For each night of the busy workweek, we’ve selected five fast, delicious meals that won’t eat up too much time or leave you scratching your head. Arturo Navarro of Chula Vista, California, can make a meal of scrumptious salmon, brown rice, and spinach salad in 15 minutes flat. The salmon cooks in virgin olive oil for three minutes on each side. In the meantime, he washes and prepares the spinach, tomato, bell pepper, and avocado salad – a favorite he makes a few times a week. “I’ve changed my diet since last May, so I’ve been eating salmon; better nutrition than what I ate before,” he said. He now prepares fresh meals each day. Michelle Chu’s typical weekday dinners usually consist of a protein, veggies and of course, dessert! She and her boyfriend, who live in Richmond, Virginia, recently visited Omaha Steaks for the first time and were sold on the tender meat. “It’s something we eat frequently because it’s filling, easy to prepare and tastes great.” Chu’s meal of steak, asparagus and whipped sweet potatoes took about 30 minutes from start to finish. And, she ended the meal on a sweet note – angel food cake drizzled with raspberries and Biscoff spread. Are we in heaven yet? Keep reading: http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2011/07/06/ireport-5-real-fast-delicious-meals-from-around-the-u-s/?hpt=hp_bn8