Here are some of my favorite fall time links for enjoying the autumn time. You might also want to click to Hip As I Wanna Be, where Jennifer interviewed me and featured me in the Working Mom Spotlight. I’m revealing some secrets there and more about those soon – living exciting times here, that’s for sure. Enough about teasers, here I represents some fun fall links.

Fall in Love: Beautiful Boots at the Blonde Episodes is a fall boot & shoe drool fest. I could take every.single.pair. Yes please!

How to Knit a Sweater for your iPhone is a post with full directions at Colorado Mom. Start with a sweater for your phone and then move on to knitting a sweater for your dog, and maybe by the time you’re finished you are a) ready for matching sweaters for the family or b) totally done with the knitting thing.

A Simple Recipe to Make Crumble Topped Fruit Cobbler at Untrained Housewife truly is such an easy recipe that you can even make it with your kids. Or heck, have your kids make it for you, or hubby, if you don’t have the kids. Yumminess that doesn’t cost much, doesn’t take long, and surely makes you enjoy life. One side note though: I’d replace the canned fruit with fresh ones, apples and pears are right on season right now.

Food for Fall Linky at Lil Kid Things continues with the food for fall, because I know the cobbler made you hungry for more.

5 Favorite Soup Recipes is a brilliant guest post by Jennifer Leal at Skimbaco Food for those cold fall days when you just want some hot soup. She makes mean chicken enchilada soup pictured above – check out 4 other soup recipes from her!

Fall, the best time to take pictures at Picaboo blog is a great reminder to snap some fall time photos. There truly isn’t anything like autumn colors, enjoy it while it lasts!

Trend Spotting: Orange You Excited for Spring at The Luxury Spot already looks towards the next spring, straight from fashion week. Good news; if you now buy orange clothing for fall, the color will be in when the spring comes along too.

Yes, we skipped a few Link Love weeks… Sorry! It mainly is due that I have been busy living life to the fullest and spending time with the kids on their summer break. Plus my computer is painfully slow and working is pain – good news is that I’m getting a new MacBook Pro sometime next week. This week’s links are all yummy recipes and it may or may not be because I was just very hungry when I started thinking of today’s theme.. Either way – hope you enjoy the recipe links!

Peanut Butter Pie for Mikey and Jennifer Perillo by Shaina at the Food for my Family looks beautiful, but what’s more beautiful is the thought behind it. A food blogger Jennifer Perillo’s husband passed away and she asked others to bake a peanut butter pie for the loved ones in our lives. Don’t postpone making every day special. Bake the pie right now.

Chicken, Mushroom & Spinach Manicotti : A Leftover Favorite by Jennifer at Savoring The Thyme sounds so yummy. For some reason I haven’t cooked manicotti for years, must change that soon and try this recipe!

Finnish Healthy Tuna Salad Recipe is so good that I didn’t even get to take good photos before eating it! Get the recipe of this no mayo tuna salad at Skimbaco Food.

Grilled Corn Salad at the Two Peas and Their Pod sounds like the perfect summer salad. We always grill too many corn husks and this would be a great way to use all of the corn.

Fajita Burger with peppers and guacamole by Katie at Good Life Eats sounds like the perfect mixture of fajitas and hamburgers, and I will make sure to give it a try before the BBQ season is over. In fact, I’m glad that the heat wave in New York is over and now it’s actually the best BBQ season just starting.

Yum Alert: White Balsamic & Mint Fruit Salad at The Luxury Spot sounds so yummy – the white balsamic vinegar and mint take a regular fruit salad to a new level!

Fruit On The Bottom Tapioca at Child Mode is another fruity dessert idea, and I think kids would like this one even better.

How is your New Year’s resolution of eating healthier or shredding weight going..? I still can’t resist dessert every day, but I’m working on it.

Oddly enough we have indulged on eating out more than normally this month, yet I have been able to fit in my smallest jeans just fine, even with the Holidays behind us. I haven’t had time to visit the gym that I joined a few months ago (I will on Sunday, I promise), but I have tried eating healthier and we’ve had several soup days this month. And thanks to all this snow – I have been skiing and found muscles in my body that didn’t remember they existed (they are all sore now). One thing that I have been better is actually not skipping a meal, and I’m talking about breakfast, and it really does prevent me from afternoon hunger attack and eating too much dinner. I guess my problem really isn’t not knowing what’s healthy, but actually living healthy and doing what I know is right.

I wanted to get some real advice how to make eating healthy work for our busy lives and nutritionist-approved tips for eating right and Maggie Moon MS, RD, Corporate Nutritionist for FreshDirect who writes for Today’s Dietitian came to the rescue. She has a round-up of practical, real-life strategies that work but she also reminds that the only true expert in you and your family is you, so take these tips and see which ones will fit in your lifestyle.

1. Be a Food Snob

When it comes to indulgences, be a food snob! This trick means that you still get to eat your most favorite decadent foods, but it’ll also keep you away from the more mundane plates of cookies that make the office rounds, for example.

2. Eat breakfast

Eat breakfast, no matter what. Our bodies run better when we jumpstart metabolism in the mornings with a well-balanced breakfast. Plus, we know that people who lose and keep weight off tend to be breakfast-eaters! Making time for a balanced meal is nice, but nobody’s perfect. I think it’s key to get into the habit of eating breakfast at all, even if it’s a bite of last night’s dinner or half a granola bar every once in awhile (nobody’s perfect every day).

3.Stock up on healthy foods

Stay stocked up on the good stuff: Easy access is everything. Keeping healthy foods around is practically a no-brainer! If it’s easy and available, you’ll be more likely to choose healthier foods. In addition to keeping fresh foods in the refrigerator, there are plenty of canned, frozen, and dry goods that are easy to keep on hand for a rainy day (this is especially useful when the good old “but we have no food in the house, we have to order out” syndrome). Good picsk: frozen veggies, lower sodium canned soups/broths, whole grain crackers, no-sugar-added tomato sauces, almond milk, boxed 100% juices, and more.

4. Pantry Makeover

Be OK with throwing away unhealthful foods – the cost to your health isn’t worth keeping it. Just remember once you toss it, don’t buy it again either.

5. Be Realistic

Decide what you can realistically give up, and work with what you can’t. If you love breakfast sandwiches from the greasy-spoon shop around the corner and have it delivered every morning, you might feel guilty about both the sandwich and the daily delivery. Instead of stocking your fridge full of healthier stuff to make your own each morning (a not impossible, but somewhat lofty goal if you’re not used to it), you admit that the time and convenience are not worth giving up. Your solution: go ahead and keep ordering your breakfast everyday, just pick a lighter one!

6. Smarter dinner

Start meals by filling your plate with Veggies. Choose fun, colorful vegetables to add to your diet. Enjoy a warm soup at least once or twice a week during the winter as an easy way to enjoy the fiber-rich legumes you know you should be eating.

7. Smart snacking

Keep a bowl of fruit on your dining room table to have easy access to a fresh grab-and-go snack. Stash some nuts in the office and in your bag to always have a whole-food snack to turn to. Whenever possible, choose water over soda or sugary drinks to avoid drinking your calories.

This recipe is by Maria Lichty, Skimbaco’s new Healthy Lifestyle & Vegetarian Food Expert. She will be writing for the upcoming Skimbaco Food site. Please join us to welcome her!

Last week our counter was covered with fresh peaches and plums. Our friend’s tree and our tree ripened at the same time. We did our best to keep up, but every time I walked back into the kitchen, the counter was still overflowing with fruit. I didn’t want summer’s bounty to go to waste, so I whipped up a peach and plum cobbler.

I love how simple this cobbler is to make. I plopped the cobbler topping over the fruit mixture and let the oven do the rest of the work. The house smelled wonderful while this rustic cobbler was bubbling in the oven. The fruit filling is sweet, with a hint of tartness from the plums. I like to serve the cobbler with a dollop of whipped cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream to make the dessert even more special.

If you have fruit that needs to be used, make this peach and plum cobbler. This dessert is a great way to enjoy the final days of summer.

Peach and Plum Cobbler

For the fruit:

4 cups fruit (2-3 large peaches and 4-6 plums, peeled, pitted, and sliced)
½ cup light brown sugar
2 Tbsp corn starch
Lemon zest
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

For the cobbler topping:

1 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
½ tsp. cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
¼ cup sugar
1/4 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
Cinnamon and sugar-to sprinkle on before baking

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray a 2-quart casserole dish with cooking spray and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, combine the peaches, plums, brown sugar, cornstarch, lemon zest, and cinnamon.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, and sugar together. Cut the butter in with a fork or pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
4. In a glass measuring cup, mix the buttermilk, vanilla, and egg together. Pour over the dry ingredients and stir just until moistened. The dough will be sticky.
5. Pour the fruit mixture into the prepared casserole dish. Drop batter on top of the fruit. Sprinkle cobbler with cinnamon and sugar. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until golden brown and bubbling.

Serves 6. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream. (optional)

Written by Maria Lichty. Maria Lichty is Skimbaco’s Healthy Lifestyle & Vegetarian Food Expert. Maria is the co-creator of Two Peas and Their Pod, a successful food and recipe website. Maria and her husband, Josh, are known as the “cooking couple.” Maria is also passionate about health and wellness and has a degree in health promotion. Maria also enjoys traveling, exercising, reading, and spending time with her adorable nieces and nephew. Maria will be writing for upcoming Skimbaco Food.

July is the National Ice Cream Month, designated by president Ronald Reagan in 1984, and the third Sunday of the month, today, is the National Ice Cream Day.

Some ice cream related news you might not know…

Ben & Jerry’s has some cool ice cream news, their newest flavors include Boston Cream Pie, Dulce Delish, Maple Blondie, Milk & Cookies, MudPie, Peanut Brittle and oldie, but such a goodie that they decided to bring it back: the Key Lime Pie limited edition is again available.

Baskin Robbins on the other hand leaves you in the cold this summer. They are (weirdly) celebrating the ice cream day by retiring five of its ice cream flavors. After today you will not able to get Apple Pie a La Mode, Caramel Praline Cheesecake, Campfire S’mores, Superfudge Truffle, and lastly French Vanilla (I’d say double weird to retire such a flavor).

Breyers is hosting Wheel of Delights, instant win & sweepstakes at their website and you can win delightful prizes like day at the spa, maid for a day, free Smooth & Dreamy Ice Cream and many others, including the Sweepstakes Grand Prize – $10,000 and a day with celebrity trainer, Kathy Kaehler.

One of my favorite ice cream promotions this summer has been the @SnickersIceCrm – just by tweeting back I received some free coupons to get Snickers ice cream for the entire family.

If one of your summer ice cream favorites is ice cream with Hershey’s chocolate syrup, please check out Summer Celebrations website for great ideas from some of my favorite bloggers, like Amy from MomSpark how to bring those two summer stables together, and how to enjoy Hershey’s syrup in ways that you didn’t even think of!

And totally important tidbit to know about me: my favorite ice cream is Pistachio. What is yours?

Full disclosure: Hershey is one of my clients, and I received free Snickers Ice Cream coupons, but my opinions are always my own.

I eat pretty healthy in general, but what gets me is the snacks… I love coffee (latte with lots of milk and sugar), cookies, chocolate, potato chips… You know, the extra food that you want to eat just for fun. I wanted to share two perfect & smart snacks with you that just recently found me.

ZONE PERFECT

I buy snack bars for my kids every day, and for some reason I never found a bar that I would feel that was for me. Not until Zone Perfect stepped into my life, perfectly by accident. As one of Walmart’s Elevenmoms my trip to SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, was sponsored by one of Walmart’s vendors, and my sponsor was Zone Perfect. As they approached me, I wanted to make sure this was a brand that I was comfortable with, and the product was something that I would recommend. I bought all of the different flavors from my local Walmart (which carried only three different ones) and tested the bars and they got my “approval”.

At the conference I was given more of the Zone Perfect bars, in fact quite a few boxes of them, and I carried a huge Zone Perfect bag with me and I shared a lot of the snack bars with other SXSW-goers and they were a big hit. However, I still had a lot left after the conference, the time flew by and I wasn’t able to pass all of the sample sized bars that I had gotten, so I brought them home. And now I’m totally addicted! Now instead of biscotti or cookie with my latte I grab a healthier snack, the Zone Perfect bar.

SMART FOOD

I was recently invited to LA to visit Frito-Lay and they told me about their new Smart Food snacks coming out in April, and we got to test the new products and even bring some home. The SmartFood is guilt free snacks that are good, healthy, low cal but high in fiber and calcium, basically a lot what you want, low on what you don’t want. And with one word: delicious. SmartFood flavored fiber-popcorn comes in three yummy flavors and be sure to look out for them in your local store in a week or so. Perfect snack for those movie nights. And the bags are so small that you can literally sneak some in to the movie theater with you inside your purse.

There are things money can buy, then there is MasterCard, and then there are Mommy Blogger Perks.

I know I have mentioned several times, that my oldest daughter’s dream is to become a TV chef when she grows up. Thanks to one of my all time favorite PR people, I was invited on set to see the Food Network’s TV Chef Robin Miller shooting a Ragu recipe video. It happened to be on my daughter’s birthday and she was also invited. Think what a birthday gift for her – to see a real TV chef on set!

As you can imagine, Ragu tomato sauce will be a product that I will remember for life now. When companies take an extra step to do something as nice as this for my family, it makes me a fan for life. I am so thankful for the opportunity to have Isabella to see a real Food Network TV set and a chef in action, it was such a fun day for her. She was little nervous asking questions from Robin Miller, see the clip below!

We have been using Ragu tomato sauce as a quick spaghetti sauce mix for years and we have tried the Ragu’s new varieties of Old World Style sauces Sweet Tomato Basil Pasta Sauce and Margherita Pasta Sauce. I love basil, so the first one is a no-brainer for us for those days that I don’t have time to cook marinara for the whole day. Check out the tips how to eat well for less, including tips from Stacy DeBroff of MomCentral.com, and try out the easy recipes created by Robin Miller and the rest of the Ragu team.

RAGU GIVEAWAY

I am so excited to host a giveaway of 6 months’ supply of Ragu tomato sauce! Yes – you can win Ragu tomato sauce for your family for six whole months. In addition you will get a copy of Robin Miller’s newest book Robin to the Rescue: Quick & Simple Recipes for Delicious Home Cooking.

ENTER THE RAGU GIVEAWAY – EACH WAY = ONE ENTRY

1. Check out the Ragu recipes and leave a comment which one you would like to try, and leave a way for me to contact you.
2. Subscribe to my feed to keep in the loop. Leave a comment if you did.
3. Stumble, Kirtsy or Digg this post and leave comment if you did.
4. Blog about this 6 month supply of Ragu giveaway and leave a link.
5. Tweet it using hashtag #skimbaco and @katjapresnal and a link back

I made it easy for you, just copy and paste:

Win 6 Months’ worth Ragu tomato sauce at http://twurl.nl/tztvv8 by @katjapresnal #skimbaco Please RT!

RULES:
Deadline for comments/above: April 15th midnight EST. US only. Winner will be announced on April 16nd. Thanks to RAGU for this giveaway!

New Year’s Eve Popcorn $24.99

If you are looking for a special snack for your New Year’s Eve party, check out The Popcorn Factory’s special New Year’s Selections.

We received some Popcorn Factory popcorn for Christmas, and oh boy, I am addicted to this sweet, crunchy and absolutely amazing popcorn. We had our family movie night last night and we just couldn’t stop eating the delicious flavors of The Popcorn Factory popcorn. The tin we received had three different types of popcorn, all-natural butter, robust cheese and secret-recipe caramel corn, and even the butter popcorn was the best butter popcorn I’ve ever had.

To be honest I’ve never before thought of popcorn as a gourmet food or a gourmet food gift, but The Popcorn Factory changed my mind entirely, and I think sending some popcorn as a gift is an excellent idea, and I felt so special to receive it. The popcorn was packed will in a pretty tin (I will save it and re-use it, it’s so pretty!), and came perfectly crunchy, just like it’s supposed to.

Or get the deal and get some on sale like the Snowman Tin was $29.99, now only $11.99.

It may be too early to think of Super Bowl (February 1st, 2009), but when you do mark it to your calendar, make sure to mark Popcorn Factory as you snack provider as well. The Sport Tin selection is large and make sure to order your teams popcorn tin on time for Super Bowl and other sports parties you will be hosting.

Subscribe