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2012 Wrap-up: Nifty Finds and Favorite Things

OK, so we’re a few days into 2013, but I still want to share some of the nifty things I found over the course of 2012 in the hopes that someone else may find them useful.

So here it is; my list of nifty finds and favorite things.

Writing Books & Tools:

  • Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success – This book by K.M Weiland has become somewhat of my pre-writing Bible. I fell so much in love with it and talked about it so much, my sister ended up buying a copy. Don’t let the “Outlining” part of the title fool you; this book has so much more. It covers brainstorming your ideas, developing your characters, setting, conflict and story premise and how to turn all of that work into one big story map. And yeah, it covers outlining too.
  • Evernote – This free and nifty tool was my introduction to Cloud Storage. I have it on my computer, my tablet and my phone and use it on all three. It allows you to store photos, scanned images, PDFs, collaborate with others through “shared” notebooks, and store your favorite websites with the click of a button or swipe of a finger. My sister and I are currently using it to collaborate on a project. One note about the shared folders: you can share a folder and allow a person (or persons) to view the notes within, but if you want him or her to modify those notes, that requires the “Sharer” to have the premium version of Evernote.
  • yWriter – Another free tool that became an obsession this year is Spacejock’s “yWriter.” It’s a word-processing program designed specifically for fiction writers by novelist and computer programmer, Simon Haynes. It acts as a digital story bible that keeps track of all the pertinent details of your Character Sketches, Setting Sketches, Plot Sketches, Summaries and, of course, your story itself. If you’re interested in taking a peek at it, you can find it here: http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html

Favorite Writing Blogs:

  • Terribleminds – Chuck Wendig –  Ok, this one needs a slight disclaimer. It contains some foul language. If you find the “f-bomb” offensive, you may want to pass over this one. But don’t let it scare you if you can stomach a little “colorful metaphor” mixed in with top-notch writing advice. According to his bio, Chuck Wendig has done a little bit of everything: Screenwriting, fiction, game design, zombie hunting… Ok, I added the Zombie hunting myself. But I can totally see him doing it. Catch the action at: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/
  • Make a Living Writing – Carol Tice – Carol Tice is a successful freelance writer and she started “Make a Living Writing” as a way to pay it forward. Her site and blog are full of years worth of experience in how to make it was a freelance writer. She’s not shy about sharing the secrets of her success with other aspiring and professional freelance writers. I stumbled on her blog (from another blog) over Christmas 2011 and have been a faithful reader since. Read all of the great advice at: http://www.makealivingwriting.com/ 
  • Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors – K.M. Weiland –  Wordplay is author K.M. Weiland’s blog. The same, in my opinion, genius, that brought us the “Outlining Your Novel” book mentioned above. ‘Nuff said! You can find her blog at: http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com

Gluten-Free Goodness:

  • This first favorite is a combo Gluten-Free blog and Cookbook find. Gluten-Free on a Shoestring is the brain child of ex-attorney and mom of a Celiac child, Nicole Hunn. She has this crazy notion that gluten free food should be a) affordable and b) not taste like flip-flops with a coating of beach sand. After sampling some of the recipes on her blog, and loving them, I found both of her cookbooks under the Anniversary Tree (thank you, Husband!)

That’s it for now; some of the things I’ve stumbled on over the year. Thank you for reading and feel free to all “Sound of Music” on me in the comments below and share a few of your favorite things!

Disclaimer: I’m nearly positive that none of the people I mention above know that I exist. These reviews were not solicited by any of them. I share these things because I either found them incredibly cool or incredibly useful. Though, if any of the above mentioned folks do know that I exist, that would border on nearly cosmically cool. Also, those boxes are Amazon affiliate links. If you happen to click and buy, it will NOT raise the price of the product for you.

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If You Can’t Eat It, Drink It! How I Learned to Like Fruit

Fruit in a blender.

I hate fruit. I’ll bite on a banana or nibble on an apple now and then, but grapes, berries, melons, citrus; they all make me gag.

One of my new year’s goals is to get healthier though, and that includes healthier eating. Since I have quite a few vegetable allergies, that means adding more fruit to my diet.

So, how to overcome the urge to vomit when I take a bite of berry?

To answer this question, I put on my industrial sized thinking cap and burned up some synapses. After a while my youngest child, tired of the smell of frying brain cells, offered his own solution.

“You could drink it,” he said, waving his hand in front of my face to clear away all of the smoke pouring from my ears and nose.

I felt the light-bulb blink on. What a fantastic idea. I don’t like oranges, but I love orange juice. I can’t stand strawberries, but I can easily scarf down a pint of strawberry ice cream.

So, I dug out the blender, grabbed the berries and bananas that I bought for my kids to eat, added some milk, yogurt (which I also hate) and some protein powder and 60 seconds later, drank a glass of pureed fruit.

By my third smoothie three days later, I’d quit gagging and managed to drink a whole glass of it and not hate it.

Problem solved! By my twelve-year-old no less.

So, lesson learned this week: If you can’t eat it, drink it!

How have you learned to eat foods you hate? Feel free to share your stories in the comments below.

There’s a lot of blog fodder coming up as I start a 90 day fitness challenge on February 14. Visit often as share my efforts to get healthy!

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Bread is How Much?

A receipt, debit card and a handful of cash.I feel like Jerry Seinfeld: “What is with the price of bread?”

Right now, the bread brand I usually buy hovers around $3.00. When money’s tight, that’s a lot for a loaf.

With my bank account whimpering like a little kid facing a tetanus shot every Grocery Day, I decided to look into how I can save a little dough on my food bill.

What things could I swap around to save a few bucks?

First went the bread.

In this instance, I spent a little money to save a little money and bought myself a bread machine. That baby’s paid for itself in the past few months. Instead of spending $3.00 on one loaf of bread I spend that money on a bag of flour and get three or four loaves. I haven’t bought a loaf of bread since October.

And making my own for the kids and husband has the added benefit of being healthier. I know exactly what’s going into that loaf and there are no additives, preservatives or words I can’t pronounce.

After the bread I ditched my “convenience veggies.”

I don’t mind cooking at home (which is a huge money-saver in and of itself) but I’m a lazy cook. The less I have to chop and prep to get dinner ready, the better. But I had an epiphany in the produce aisle not too long ago.

Why spend $2.00 on pre-washed, pre-peeled, pre-cut packages of carrots when I can spend $0.89 on plain old packages of raw carrots?

Needless to say, that rockin’ set of knives my husband got me for Christmas is getting a workout. All my veggies now come “unprepared” and I peel, scrape, and cut them myself.

And I’ll be a big girl admit that it really doesn’t take that much longer to do it myself. Plus I save a few dollars every week.

The next money-saving epiphany came while perusing the cheese selection.

Healthy or not, we’re cheese-eaters in this house. Shredded on chili, sliced in sandwiches, snacked on with rice crackers. But now, instead of buying cheese in bags or wrapped in convenient individual slices it comes in a brick and I slice and shred it myself. I save even more pennies if I get the store brand rather than a name brand.

Those are just a start. I see the fine art of couponing in my future. I’m also tossing around the idea of turning my brown thumb green and starting a small vegetable garden somewhere in the yard. Why buy it if I can grow it myself? Of course, growing it myself might be the problem… I can kill AstroTurf.

Anyway, those are a few of the changes I’ve made on grocery day. What tips and tricks have you come up with to help you save on groceries?

And do you have any tips on couponing? Feel free to share in the comments!

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New Culinary Love

I’m part Italian. I love pasta and when asked about my all-time favorite food, I still say “my grandmother’s homemade meatballs.”

Needless to say, giving up pasta dishes was probably one of the hardest things about going gluten free.

Whole grain pasta dishes made up at least a third of my diet. If I’d had a sucktastic day and was too tired to cook what I’d planned on for that night, out came the Barilla Penne. The whole “no wheat, rye, barley, semolina…” thing kicked my go-to dishes out the proverbial kitchen window.

I had to find a new go-to dish, pronto.

Enter brown basmati rice and the rich flavors of India.

I have to credit my husband for my first taste of the goodness that is Indian cuisine. He loves Indian food and I’d always been afraid to try it due to my twitchy stomach. So for one of our first dates two years ago, he took me to this great little hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant here in town. There I got my first, gentle introduction to Chicken Tikka Masala. I still order that same dish every time we eat there.

What was once an occasional culinary treat is my new last minute meal savior. Now when I need a quick meal, I break out my brown basmati rice, a thing of chicken breast, some veggies and a couple packets of Sukhi’s Vindaloo or Tikka Masala sauce.

Dinner is served in less than 45 minutes.

I still miss pasta and someday, I’ll find a brand of gluten free pasta that I like.

But for now, I’ve found a new culinary love: Indian food.

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Food Fanatic Friday – Gluten Free Pumpkin Cupcakes

Six weeks ago I went gluten free. While I could probably write a whole series of blog posts about learning to live without my favorite food group, Pop-tarts and Little Debbie Cakes, I’m going to dedicate this post to my new favorite dessert – Gluten Free Pumpkin Cupcakes.

Most of the gluten free “sweets” and bread products I’ve tried in the past six weeks have a noticeably grainy texture. Like someone whisked a cup of beach sand in with the batter before they cooked it.  Then, while desperately searching for some form of sweet-tooth satisfier the week before Thanksgiving, I stumbled upon this Gluten Free Pumpkin Cream Cheese Cupcake recipe by Andrea Wyckoff.

I didn’t hold out much hope for them. But since I had the ingredients on hand I threw a batch together. Before they finished cooling, I took a tentative bite. Wow! They were delicious. So delicious that the kids ate nearly all of them before I could even get them frosted. (I used vanilla frosting instead of the cream cheese one.)

The cupcakes were moist and tasted like spice cake. And while there’s no nutritional information posted (that I could find) I assume they’re relatively healthy. There’s no oil or butter in them, though there is a cup of sugar.

They’re super easy to make as well (which is a prerequisite for me cooking anything). From mixing bowl to cooling rack they took less than half an hour. I do recommend using a “waxy” type of muffin cup over plain paper ones. The second batch that I made stuck to the paper and half the cupcake peeled away with the cup.

Among other things at Thanksgiving, I was thankful for these little bites of bliss! I was beginning to think my sweet tooth would drive me nutty.

Now if only Kellogg would make a tasty, gluten free version of their brown sugar cinnamon Pop-tarts…