rated 5 stars

Ingredients

2 arms

1 all-natural smile (separated)

1 pinch non-artificial sweetness

1 dollop of compliments (as needed)

1 heaping cup of gratefulness

Season to taste with love & respect

Directions

1.      Take two arms and wrap the Mom in a hug. Around the middle or around the neck is fine. Wrap firmly,   but gentle enough to allow circulation. After wrapping, let arms remain around the Mom until full. *See recipe note below if arms are not available
2.      Find one, all natural smile. Separate it a little, or a lot, let simmer awhile to warm the Mom. Sprinkle doses of all-natural sweetness wherever sourness of the Mom is detected.
3.      Scoop up one heaping cup of gratefulness, preferably overflowing, and douse the Mom until she squeaks. *Repeat Step #1 if the Mom faints at this point.
4.      Mix in dollops of compliments to prevent stiffness.
5.      Season with love & respect as needed.

Notes

• Serve up all of the ingredients mixed together, or in separate doses. 
• Omitting arms from this recipe will not affect the Mom, just substitute with your head on her shoulder… preferably with a chubby cheek, and sprinkled with freckles, or dirt.

]]> http://donatefruitblog.com/?feed=rss2&p=494 0 http://donatefruitblog.com/?p=481 http://donatefruitblog.com/?p=481#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2012 22:42:28 +0000 naumes http://donatefruitblog.com/?p=481

Remember the day you heard about this curious thing called Facebook? And the day you succumbed, signed up, and found your long-lost high school friends?  Pinterest is nothing like that. However, it IS addictive.  It IS unlike any other social networking site. It HAS a unique service like no other! You may think you do not have time for another time killer  hobby.  But then again, you may find Pinterest to be a time saver, like I have!

Think about those piles of magazines you have stacked & saved, earmarking the exact paint color you have planned for the living room… or building plans for your dream closet… or maybe it’s a scribbled list of images you want to capture on your next photo shoot of the kids?  Pinterest to the rescue!

Before Pinterest:  Conjure up a mental image of a corkboard, if you will.  Hold out your hand as I pour out a slew of pushpins.   Your corkboard(S) will be labeled for each category, to view and organize your area(S) of interest, such as; Wedding Ideas, Recipes, Gardening designs, Remodeling Projects… you get the point.  Before Pinterest you would be off to buy, stack and store all of the magazines and images to snip, or you could always print out the images from the computer… If you can only remember that one website that had that one thingy called… shoot.

Hello, handy Pinterest,  it’s nice to meet you  I love you!

Not so shy anymore, eh?  Pinterest is another virtual world created to collect, organize, and share (if you wish) all of the most incredible things you could possibly find on the Internet.  Pinterest has helpful categories like; Art, DIY & Crafts, Wedding & Events, Hair & Beauty, and even a Geek section, so I have heard, to help refine your searches.  If it’s something you could imagine collecting and keeping around for later reference, Pinterest has it.  And what if they don’t? YOU can create your own “pins” from any website you want to, with the downloadable “PIN IT” button for your toolbar!

So, you browse around the Pinterest world, and quickly find yourself drooling at a lip-licking recipe. PIN IT! Which means, click on the image and click on the “PIN IT” button.  Your new “Pin” will be stored on your personal, “pinboard!” Easy to find, whenever you need it. From there you have your world in complete control & domination to “pin” and save whatever your pretty little heart desires.

Wait, it gets better!  Not only can you “Pin” the images you like, but each image you “Pin,” takes you immediately to that specific website, just by clicking on the image! I particularly like this feature when I am hunting down a specific recipe.  I will click on the image that I’m interested in, which takes me to the website with that recipe.  If I like the ingredients and if it suits my fancy, then I pin it.  Oh, and about those pins that you hate, changed your mind about? It’s YOUR pinboard, so hey, erase it!  I pinned some kind of meat recipe that said it was a husband’s favorite… which was not the case with mine, so it got the boot from my “Recipe Box” pinboard!

Create your own categories, with fanciful names if you dare!  And you might want to accept this dare, because others can see your “pins”, if you wish!  Friends can “follow” you to see, admire, and “pin” what you have “pinned.”  Find a particular person or website that shares your style, cause, or has a TON of ideas you like?  Pinterest lets you stalk “follow” them.

Take a leisurely stroll through Pinterest and get familiar with your new obsession helper.  Here are a few bits of inside information that will boost your pinning experience!

• Download the “PIN IT” button for your computer’s toolbar.  You can find a lot on Pinterest, but this allows you to pin whatever you want from any website.
• Pinning something to sell?  Pinterest will automatically add the price tag ribbon on the top left of your picture, if you put the $ symbol in with the price of the item!
• You can connect your Pinterest with Facebook & Twitter to share your favorite pins, or not.
• Now that you are friends, let Pinterest be one of your besties.  Tomorrow you can learn how to pluck away for the perfect eyebrow shape.  Next week have the kids try that DIY craft for their bedrooms.  Next month it’s off to plant that eye-catching herb garden for the following month’s recipe you just pinned.I happened to pin five seven ten new pins while writing this piece!  Happy Pinning!

     Every single purchase with Donate Fruit® makes a significant difference in the fight to end hunger in America, putting fresh and nutritious fruit into food bank networks across the country.  Your participation and purchases totaled to a record-breaking 2,205,422 pounds of donated fruit, smashing the 1.8 Million total pounds donated in 2010!  This astounding amount of nationwide donations is possible because of your investment in the Donate Fruit® cause to help Feed the Need™.  2.2 Million… a massive number, with countless stories of how individual people are nourished, encouraged, and restored with hope, because someone cared to help them in their time of need.  Donate Fruit® thanks you for your part in a successful 2011! Watch out 2012… here we come!

First of all, Salt Plates stand out as gourmet serving platters of artistic & natural beauty.  The rough rocks are hand cut, revealing natural, colorful streaks from light petal pink, golden peaches to rosy hues… each rock with its own distinctive magnificence.  Serve both sweet & savory favorites atop your salt plate and wallah, the natural minerals enhance the flavors without an overly salty taste.

Salt plates can handle the most extreme of temperatures from your freezer to your broiler or grill, and will hold their temperatures for preparing and serving perfection.  Just imagine searing, curing, or stir-frying on your new salt plate, right in front of your awestruck dinner guests!

The endless uses will keep you reaching for it over and over, so keep your salt plate easily accessible (some display it in artistic flare in a kitchen window, where the salt crystals shimmer with natural elegance!)

Throw out any doubt of this being a novelty trinket that gets shoved to the back of your cupboard. If anything prepare to find yourself scurrying for more ways to use it. Typical kitchen fads can wear out their welcome because of their tedious cleaning regimen. Not with salt!  Simply wash your cooled salt plate with warm water and a soft brush, and then pat down with a paper towel. This process is simple, but allows a fine layer of salt to be washed away.  Anti-microbial elements within the salt plate remove bacteria, making detergent or soap unnecessary.  Other than that the only, “no no’s,” are submerging your plate in water, and of course no dropping it.

   But lets say you do drop it!  Your Himalayan salt plate will not go to waste… grind it for garnishing (did you know upscale restaurants do this?), or use it as restorative bath salts until you use it up completely.

To start your salt plate experience, we have provided Smoked Salmon, Ascolano olive oil, Fig Vinegar, Walnut fig crackers, and Kalamata Olive Walnut Tapenade. For the sweet tooth, try creamy pear slices and chocolate cherry truffles on your chilled Salt plate. A simple, short rinse with water (no detergent/soap needed, as the salt has inherent antimicrobial properties,) and you are ready for years of more creative Salt plate uses!

Join Donate Fruit on Facebook where you can share your Salt Plate successes, pictures, and ideas! Or, give the Himalayan Salt Plate gift to someone and your gift will donate fruit, pound for pound, to a food bank!

Now for the tantalizing part… the never-ending ways to use it! Follow along as we look into several foodie blogs, all about Salt Plates!  Please share with us what creations you and your salt plate discover together!

The Italian Dish; featuring vegetables, seafood, eggs;

http://theitaliandishblog.com/imported-20090913150324/2010/9/4/cooking-on-a-himalayan-salt-plate.html

Richard Huff’s Seattle Social Blog; featuring cooking flank steak & veggies;

http://www.richardhuff.com/archives/100-Cooking-On-A-Himalayan-Salt-Slab.html

Salt News; featuring cured meats, ice cream & a variety of other uses;

http://www.saltnews.com/cooking-with-himalayan-salt-plates-blocks-bricks-platters/

HimalaSalt Blog; Organic Watermelon Skewers;

http://himalasalt.blogspot.com/2010/05/organic-watermelon-skewers-on-himalayan.html

When raising funds for your school is a must, why not involve the students in selling healthy fruit, AND have every gift matched with a fresh fruit donation to food banks?!

Donate Fruit gourmet gifts are a tasty & healthy choice for our children, PLUS every gift sold is matched with our pound for pound commitment to donate fruit to food banks across the country. Every pound sold equals a pound of fresh fruit donated! Ask your school if Donate Fruit can be a part of their fundraising, for a healthy & cause-oriented event!

Past fundraising groups have been as large as entire school, and as small as individual classrooms. At the end of the fundraising event a check is presented for the group’s earnings, PLUS a certificate of the total pounds of fresh & nutritious fruit they helped donate!

We encourage kids to sell healthy & natural fresh fruit gifts to friends & family, as well as teaching them to get involved in helping others!

Find out how YOU can take part in the next generation’s focus on health & giving back… with Donate Fruit $chool Funraisers!

This year’s pear harvest has been delayed due to unusually cooler and wetter spring months, and looks to rank as one of the latest harvests we have had to date.  The traditionally warmer and dryer California orchards will be harvesting later than normal as well, usually ready in late June, but this year they are behind by three weeks already.  Yet, patience will surely have its payoff!

If valley thunderstorms and hail keep their fair distance, the pear orchards could very well produce a fruitful harvest, just a little later than usual.  An extended, warm fall would also help to fill the fruit crates, and give us armfuls of fresh fruit for months!

Thankfully, the Naumes farms amount to some of the biggest orchards around, growing pears in three states; California being the first to harvest Rogue Red pears just this week. The Naumes pear orchards in the Rogue Valley total 2,100 acres, 750 acres in Washington, and 1,700 in California.

While the waiting may be painful, we promise a tasty reward for your patience!

Standing helpless in the kitchen with an increased headache, still satisfied stomach, and admittedly annoyed, I put the unused can opener back in the drawer and sighed loud enough to make it worthwhile. And then something foreign took over. I’ve experienced it before, and undeniably have a love-hate relationship with it. I call it the, “crazed cooker,” stage. Pots of water are brought to a bubbling boil, fresh herbs are harvested from the garden, and an armful of options are pulled from cupboards, pantry and fridge, and displayed on the counter for my next creation.  Half an hour later a picture and taste bud worthy plate of deliciousness is steaming with pride.  Love the flow of creativity when these random winds blow my way, but hate the overflowing sink of dishes that haunt me afterward.

Moments of culinary inspiration come and go, but what about the days of pure boredom and cookery cluelessness?  Those are the days when I pour over recipes, new and old, online and in various cookbooks, or grab the can opener if those don’t work.

What does work for me is a compiled, organized and easy-to-find accumulation of recipes. Save them in a file on your computer, with dividers for different categories.  If you’re like me, you may want the hands-on approach, and print off all of your favorite recipes and slip them into a three ring binder, with labeled tabs that you can add or rip out!  For the older, smaller, and stained hand-me-down recipes, you can tape them inside of a clear, plastic notebook sleeve… and wallah! I am especially fond of my, “Evolving,” recipe book section, which means I like the recipe’s concept, but still need to keep tweaking it for that, “just right,” taste. The fullest part of my recipe binder is the, “Get To It,” section… which means I fell head over heels with the delicious picture and have yet to carve out the time to actually make it.

Above all else folks, when the creative culinary bug bites you, that is one bug you want to share!  Hand out the recipe, offer up your tips, and most definitely… pass the plate!

Have any tricks that increase your all-star chef status?

What drives you to enhanced creativity? What moves you inside, into dancing on the outside? Some hobbies and passions in daily life come and go with the tide, but this new craze has everything to do with FOOD, and I do believe it will stick around.

Entire television networks revolve around food creations, experimentations, competitions and even hole-in-the-wall, diner discoveries. Blogs and websites flood the internet with food-crazed fans. Recipe-helper iphone apps and chat rooms all center around what gourmet meal you can whip up with  the remaining pantry items you might have, or how to transform the mundane staples into the most mouthwatering creations.  Have you fallen into the raging waters of this wave…‘Cause it is flowing forward with great momentum and widespread attention!

The “Foodie,” is defined by Wikipedia as, “A person devoted to refined sensuous enjoyment (especially good food and drink.)”  If that definition isn’t tantalizing enough, think of all the kitchen thingamajigs you can accumulate with this newfound trend! Of course there is always the immediate, taste-bud gratification to help boost the “foodie” in you!

Your “foodie” needs have been delivered! We search high and low, near and far, to provide the hottest culinary finds.  From the latest classy kitchen helpers, and the finest tools for grill & bbq fanatics, to upscale gourmet nibbling discoveries…

Did you know that Honey Flights are the new rage?  Have you had the tasting pleasure of French Chocolate Fondue or Finishing Sauces?  Or have you possibly seen the brightest star in versatile dining; Himalayan salt plates? These are just a few of our upcoming gourmet gifts… soon to meet your every “foodie” craving!

We scour foodie shows for the upcoming stars, and bring them to you and the ones you love!. We match every purchase with a pound for pound, fresh fruit donation to food banks across America! The best of both worlds!

However you slice it, fruits will always be a focal point in health benefits and weight control. How sweet is that? The earth hath again provided for our natural & nutritional sweet tooth satisfaction, with body benefits to boot! WeightLossForAll.com cites;

Potential health benefits of eating fruit…

*potential for weight control

*more energy for exercising

*reduced risk of cardiovascular diseases

*reduced risk of developing cancers

*lower blood pressure

*potential to lower cholesterol

*reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes

*potential to slow down age process

A mouthful of pure, fresh from the tree sweetness… and we have just the recipe for that extra “umph” in your fruit dishes!

“WOW” ‘em dishes, grab and go recipes, kids in the kitchen dishes, and adult beverages… really, take your pick and bring your taste buds back for more.

We dig our fruit fresh, poached, baked, grilled, blended… and shared! So, snap a pic and share your recent fruit masterpiece…for the love of all fruit lovers!

Find every day gifts that always give back to food banks at donatefruit.com and “LIKE” us on Facebook to share in everything to do with fruit, and donating it to others!