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Privacy Policy / Your California Privacy Rights
Revised and posted as of March 4, 2013

Prime Publishing, LLC ("Company," "we" or "us") reserves the right to revise this Privacy Policy at any time simply by posting such revision, so we encourage you to review it periodically. In order to track any changes to this Privacy Policy, we will include a historical reference at the top of this document.

This Privacy Policy will tell you, among other things:

Your California privacy rights.
How we collect information and what information we collect.
How we may use information.
How we may share information.
Your choices regarding the sharing of information.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT/YOUR AGREEMENT
Company websites are not intended for use by individuals under the age of 18 or those who are not legal residents of the United States. By using our website or submitting information to us, you consent to the Company's use and sharing of the information collected or submitted as described in this Privacy Policy. If you are not 18 years of age or older and a valid resident of the United States or you do not agree with the terms of this Privacy Policy, do not provide us with any information or use any of the products or services offered or provided on Company websites or through Company technology.

YOUR CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS
Beginning January 1, 2005 under California's "Shine the Light" law, California residents who provide personal information in obtaining products or services for personal, family or household use are entitled to either: (1) a list detailing the categories of information shared and the entities to which such information was provided; or (2) to be notified of a mechanism by which a consumer may opt-out of having their information shared with third parties. We have elected the second option. To opt-out of having your information shared with third parties please write to us.

HOW DO WE COLLECT INFORMATION AND WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?
We collect and combine personally identifiable information ("PII") and non-personally identifiable information ("Non-PII") through various sources, including those discussed below. For your reference, PII is data collected with an intention to specifically identify, contact or locate a person, including but not limited to name, address, telephone number, or e-mail address. Conversely, Non-PII is data that is not used to specifically identify, contact or locate an individual, including but not limited to zip code, gender, age, or IP address.

Distribution Partners
Website operators that license our ad serving technology pass information to us so that we may serve advertisements to you. The information passed may include, but is not limited to, your IP address, e-mail address, name, mailing address, telephone number, date of birth, and gender.

Offer Forms
We also collect information about you when you complete a survey or offer form on one of our websites or web pages. This information may include, but is not limited to: your e-mail address, name, mailing address, telephone number, date of birth, gender, and payment information; information about your background, interests, health, education, career goals, and shopping preferences; and any other personal information or unique preference information you provide to us or our advertisers.

Website Registration Forms
We collect information about you when you register on one of our websites. This registration information may include, but is not limited to your:
e-mail address
full name
mailing address
telephone number
date of birth
gender

Publisher Partners
When you complete a registration or offer form that is hosted by one of our website publisher partners on our behalf, the website publisher partner may submit all or a portion of the information that you submitted on the form to the Company. This information may include, but is not limited to: your IP address, e-mail address, name, mailing address, telephone number, date of birth, gender, and payment information; information about your background, interests, health, education, career goals, and shopping preferences; and any other information you provide to our website publisher partner.

Marketing Partners
We may receive information about you, including but not limited to your IP address, e-mail address, first name, last name, mailing address, and telephone number, from third party marketing partners that provide us with consumer data to manage on their behalf.

Automatic Information/Digital Identifiers
We may automatically receive and store certain types of information about you through the data sources listed above.

You may be familiar with the term "cookies," which are unique alphanumeric identifiers that store information on your computer. A cookie is placed on your computer when your web browser accesses our website. We use cookies for tracking transactions and the user characteristics explained in detail throughout this Privacy Policy. If you choose, there are utilities available for purchase from independent software providers to install on your computer as well as tools/preferences you can choose through most web browsers to make website visits anonymous. Of course, cookies let you have a more satisfying website experience, so we recommend that you leave them turned on.

We also collect information through our web server applications. This information includes your Internet Protocol or "IP" address, date/time stamp, browser type, and referring URL.

Additionally, we may use pixel tracking technology to track the completion of transactions with us or our advertisers, the source information for those transactions, and your IP address, date/time stamp, browser type, and referring URL.

Government Forms
The Company may be required to create, collect, maintain, and submit certain information required by the government, such as IRS Forms W-9 and 1099. This information, which may include your taxpayer identification number, will not be used, shared, transferred, or sold for marketing purposes.

HOW DO WE USE THIS INFORMATION?
We may use the collected PII and Non-PII for any legally permissible purpose in our sole discretion, including but not limited to those explained below.

Ad Serving
We may serve advertisements to you based, in part, on your IP address, the demographic and geographic information you submitted to the Company during the website registration process, and other socio-economic information, psychographic information, Internet behavior (i.e., browsing, search, shopping, purchase, and ad response behavior), and lifestyle information about you that we obtain from affiliated entities and from third parties.

We allow third-party companies to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit our Web site. These companies may use non-personally identifiable information (e.g., click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you. These companies typically use a cookie or third party web beacon to collect this information. To learn more about this behavioral advertising practice or to opt-out of this type of advertising, you can visit www.networkadvertising.org.

Pre-select/Pre-fill Offers
Our website technology may pre-select certain offers for you to view based on the demographic and geographic information you submitted to the Company during the website registration process. Additionally, this technology may pre-fill some or all of the offers' data fields with the information you submitted during the website registration process in order to prevent you from having to re-enter this information. We may not show all of the pre-filled data fields to you.

Upsell
We utilize customized post transactional or "upsell" technology to help advertisers generate sales, while providing you with a series of great offers we think may be of interest to you. The way it works is simple: once you purchase a product or service from one of our reward advertisers, you will be offered additional products or services that we think may be of interest to you. If you elect to purchase products or services from an advertiser in the post transactional channel, we will pass the information that you provided during the initial transaction to the subsequent advertiser, including but not limited to your credit card information. This information pass is done to enhance and simplify your purchasing experience. Your information will only be passed to an advertiser in the post transactional channel after you have elected to purchase their product or service. By electing to purchase their product or service you consent to the passing of your data to the third party advertiser in question.

Customer Service and Fulfillment
We may use your information to operate the website promotion, service your account and to fulfill rewards earned through Company websites. We may also use your information to verify your identity or claimed account status and, where we consider appropriate, investigate your compliance with the terms and conditions of the website promotion or any advertiser offer. We do retain customer service correspondence.

Credit Card Preauthorization
By submitting your credit card information to us or to one of our advertisers, you are authorizing the Company or its agent to periodically verify that your credit card account is valid and has credit available by charging, and thereafter crediting, a small sum to the card.

Marketing
We may use your information in our online (e.g., e-mail marketing) and offline (e.g., telemarketing, cell phone text messaging, skip tracing, and direct mail) marketing programs. If you would like to be removed from these programs please write to us.

HOW DO WE SHARE INFORMATION?
We may share the collected PII and Non-PII for any legally permissible purpose in our sole discretion, including but not limited to those explained below.

Within the Company
We may share information we collect with affiliated companies, including our parent company and other subsidiaries of our parent company, for use in their ad serving and marketing programs. This Privacy Policy does not apply to affiliated companies and their collection, use and sharing of information.

Vendors
We may share your information with various third party vendors that are not part of the Company, including but not limited to vendors that provide us with technology to deploy commercial e-mail, vendors that sell the products or services for which you have qualified through one of our websites, and shipping companies that we utilize to ship products to you.

Advertisers
When you participate in an offer by completing a form, we will transfer the information you submitted on the form to the applicable advertiser.

When you answer "yes" or "no" to a marketing or survey question, some or all of the information that you submitted during the website registration process will be transferred to advertisers that we believe may be of interest to you without providing you with another opportunity to review the information.

When you select "yes" next to an offer, we will transfer some or all of the information that you submitted during the website registration process to the applicable advertiser without providing you with another opportunity to review the information.

Ad Serving Companies
We may use third party ad networks or ad serving companies to serve advertisements on our websites. We pass information about you to these companies so that they can deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of interest to you. The information passed to these companies may include, but is not limited to, your IP address, e-mail address, name, mailing address, telephone number, date of birth, gender, and any other information you provide to us. Web pages that are served by these companies will state that they are "powered by" or "ads by" the applicable company and will contain a link to that company's privacy policy.

Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our site.Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to our users based on their visit to our sites and other sites on the Internet.Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.

Marketing Partners
We may share, license or sell your information to third parties for various marketing purposes, including their online (e.g., e-mail marketing) and offline (e.g., telemarketing, cell phone text messaging, skip tracing, and direct mail) marketing programs. If you would like to be removed from these programs write to us.

Data Enhancement/Appending/Validation
We may use third party service providers to enhance our database with additional elements, including but not limited to age ranges present in your household, whether you own or rent a home, the length of time you have lived at your residence, whether you are a mail order buyer or responder, household income, and gender. Further, we may use third party service providers to append telephone numbers to other data points we have in our database. We also may use third party service providers to validate the data we have in our database.

Additionally, we may share, license or sell your information to third parties for use in their data validation, enhancement, information verification services, and, to the extent permitted by law, individual reference or look-up services.

Third Party Cookies

Notwithstanding anything else in this policy, we or a data provider we have engaged may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser to enable you to receive customized ads or content.   These cookies contain no personally identifiable information.  The cookies may reflect de-identified demographic or other data linked to data you voluntarily have submitted to us, e.g., your email address, that we may share with a data provider solely in hashed, non-human readable form. To opt-out of these cookies, please go to http://www.aboutads.info/choices.

Governmental Agencies or Other Companies
We may share your information with law enforcement officials or governmental agencies: (1) in response to their request; (2) when permitted or required by law; or (3) to establish our compliance with applicable laws, rules, regulations, or guidelines.

We may store and share your information with third parties for suppression or opt-out purposes.

We also may share your information with third parties when: (1) trying to protect against or prevent actual or potential fraud or unauthorized transactions; (2) investigating fraud that has already taken place; (3) enforcing or applying existing terms and conditions and/or other agreements; (4) protecting the rights, property or safety of our websites, our users or others; or (5) responding to subpoenas, court orders or legal process, or to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims.

In all cases, this information is not provided to these entities or persons for marketing purposes.

Right to Transfer
Should the Company choose to sell or transfer business assets, it is possible that the information we possess may be transferred as part of that transaction. The Company may decide to retain a copy of the information post sale or transfer.

COMPANY CUSTOMER CHOICES

Marketing Communications and Unsubscribe Information
By completing and submitting a Company registration form, you are consenting to receive marketing communications from the Company and its third party marketing partners. If, after you have shared your information with the Company, you decide that you do not want to receive marketing communications or newsletters from the Company and its third party marketing partners, you can discontinue the communications by clicking here and filling out our form. If you have registered or submitted information under more than one e-mail account, you must submit separate unsubscribe requests for each account.

Request for More Information
As it relates to marketing communications or any other questions you might have about our Privacy Policy, please write to us at Prime Publishing, LLC, 3400 Dundee Road, Suite 220, Northbrook, IL 60062.

WHAT HAPPENS IF I HIT A LINK TO ANOTHER SITE FROM A COMPANY WEBSITE?
Our websites may offer links to other websites. Other websites have their own terms of use and privacy and security policies. If you choose to visit one of these sites, you should review the policies that govern that particular site.

APPLICATION OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY
This Privacy Policy applies to all information collected by or submitted to the Company. Other affiliated entities of the Company may obtain information independently from transactions and experiences with you or from other sources. This Privacy Policy does not pertain to that information.

WHAT IS THE POLICY WITH RESPECT TO COMMUNICATING WITH CHILDREN?
We recognize the unique privacy concerns regarding children. We are committed to carefully protecting privacy where children are involved no matter the point of contact. In particular, our intention is to fully comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA"). Per COPPA guidelines, we do not knowingly collect PII from children under the age of 13. If a parent or guardian is made aware that a child under the age of 13 has provided us with PII through any point of contact, click here to contact us and we will delete the information about the child referenced from our files.

SECURITY
There is no such thing as complete security on the Internet or otherwise. The Company uses various security techniques on our websites to help protect against the loss, misuse or modification of information we've collected from you. When you access your personal information or transmit information to us, that information is stored on servers that we have taken steps to protect from unauthorized access or intrusion. While we strive to protect your information, the Company cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us. You acknowledge and assume this risk when communicating with the Company, its partners and affiliates.

LIMITATION OF LIABILITY
YOU UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT ANY DISPUTE OVER PRIVACY IS SUBJECT TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY, AS WELL AS THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS WEBSITE (INCLUDING LIMITATIONS ON DAMAGES). YOU AGREE THAT THE COMPANY'S LIABILITY FOR ANY BREACH OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY SHALL BE LIMITED TO THE VALUE OF THE TRANSACTIONS OR SERVICES PROVIDED TO YOU BY THE COMPANY TO THE EXTENT SUCH CLAIM IS NOT OTHERWISE BARRED BY OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS.

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View the original article here

Weekend Things

by Averie Sunshine on June 15, 2013

Time for an installment of Weekend Things:

1. There’s a Los Angeles-based business that sells only pedal-churned ice cream. They’re dishing out frozen goodies that are not only made from organic ingredients, but are also processed entirely by human power.

“…it only takes about 3-4 miles of pedaling (aboard an old Schwinn bike mounted on rollers) to freeze a 5-gallon batch of Mexican chocolate ice cream, salted caramel non-dairy vegan dessert, or strawberry-basil sorbet. If you’re going at a decent clip, that’ll take about 15 minutes.”

photo source

They should try my ice cream cream, No-Ice-Cream-Maker Funfetti Cake Batter Golden Oreo Ice Cream

No ice cream maker needed, it’s a no-cook recipe, make it in 10 minutes, and only two main ingredients are required: heavy cream and sweetened condensed milk.

It’s dangerously easy and the best ice cream I’ve ever tasted.

2. I’ve been doing recipe development for Pillsbury and a new post of mine just went live on their site, Strawberry Jam Sweet Rolls with Vanilla Cream Cheese Glaze

3. They’re the shortcut version using pre-made dough of these Strawberry Sweet Rolls with Vanilla Cream Cheese Glaze

4. This Vanilla Bean-Infused Simple Syrup looks like something I could use in just about everything from iced coffee to muffins to coffee cake

“Cane sugar and water infused with pure Madagascar Bourbon and Tahitian vanilla bean seeds, and vanilla extract.”

5. I just got my monthly iHerb order. Their prices are, hands down, the cheapest on my daily probiotics, the nutritional yeast I sprinkle on everything from popcorn to salads to kale chips.

I get all my vitamins and supplements, bulk cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, liquid vanilla stevia drops, bulk white stevia powder, medicinal fancy-grade honey, chia seeds, and so many other things I use every day there.

With free shipping and a discount on top of already rock bottom prices, I always feel like I hit the jackpot.

Enter code AVE630 at checkout to save $5 bucks and go shopping.

6. Polished metal cuff – Punctuated with sparkling Swarovski crystals and bright turquoise cabochons, $465 from Shopbop

I’ve always loved turquoise. Both the stone and the color. And with Swarovski crystals, I wouldn’t say no.

7. Cook’s Illustrated tested popular brands of grocery store black tea. They confined the tests to black tea, or English Breakfast tea, and what follows are the winners and losers.

More Results

8. Daiquiris aren’t just on the “specialty cocktail” page at chain restaurants. Done right, they’re a mix of light rum, lime, and sugar. The Hemingway Special was Ernest Hemingway’s favorite daiquiri. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.

More ideas in Saveur’s Papa’s Favorite Poison

photo credit Michael Kraus

9. The Best and Worst Nuts for Your Health – “A look at the pros and cons of different nuts, as well as the best and worst products on supermarket shelves today. Of course, you can get too much of these good things: Nuts are high in fat and calories, so while a handful can hold you over until dinner, a few more handfuls can ruin your appetite altogether. And although nuts are a healthy choice by themselves, they’ll quickly become detrimental to any diet when paired with sugary or salty toppings or mixes.”

Best nuts for your diet:  Almonds, Cashews, Pistachios

Worst nuts for your diet:  Macadamia Nuts, Pecans

Best nuts for your heart:  Walnuts

Best nuts for disease prevention:  Almonds

Best nuts for your brain:  Peanuts

More Results

10. I’m glad that peanuts are the best nuts for my brain. I eat way more than my fair share in the form of loose peanuts or ground into homemade peanut butter

Here are 35 Favorite Peanut Butter Recipes

And my Cookbook, Peanut Butter Comfort, has 100+ peanut butter recipes

I recommend putting Peanut Butter Honey Buttermilk Cake with Chocolate-Peanut Butter Streusel on your agenda. It’s good for your brain.

Thanks for the entries in the 25 Restaurant Copycat Recipes and CopyKat Cookbook Giveaway and in the $500 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway

What are your Weekend Things?

Favorite nuts? Tea drinker or favorite tea? Fave Daiquiri? Favorite place to save money on your everyday staples and supplements?

If you’ve made anything, done, seen, or bought anything fabulous recently, feel free to link it up in the comments.

View the original article here

Things Aren’t Always What They Seem to Be: Sticky Glazed Asian Ham

As I was driving home from teaching class one of the past Tuesday nights of one of the past months since last September, my mind wandered as I zoned in and out, listening to my favorite part of my Tuesday night teaching gig—Tuesday Night Takeover with Karamea, her songlist is “the jam” as the kids say these days.

Per usual, my thoughts drifted to and fro about blogging. Not necessarily my blog, or even food blogs, but blogs in general.

And I had an epiphanie. Or a comparison, rather, about what blogs are like.

Some of you may be single, looking for that new special somebody. What does a girl or guy have to do these days to meet somebody new?

Date someone from work? Not always the best idea. If things go south you either need to find a new job or walk past one another with eyes averted as you secretly spy on the flirting going on with the new temp.

At a bar? The classic hook up, but unless you’re under 25, what you remember as a cute and flirty scene quickly devolves to desperation.

Which has led many singles to online dating sites. Match, e-Harmony, etc., we’ve all heard encouraging stories of relationships that have blossomed from screen time to snuggle time.

But first there’s that suffering vetting process. Screening through candidates and their life stories of roses and unicorns. Why yes of course he’s 6’3” with a chiseled jaw, a great job and no baggage, why wouldn’t he be single? Look at that perfectly poised photo and read those disarmingly witty texts he sends. And then you meet in real life, only to discover what really lies at the belly of the beast isn’t nearly as engaging or real as his onscreen persona.

And that’s where I found the comparison. Blogs are a lot like dating sites.

We bloggers try to make our sites pretty, stylish and as our biggest hope: informative. We create scenarios of amazing dinner parties, fantastic vacations and nearly impossible to recreate projects that could possibly contain just a touch of embellishment thrown in. Reading about your neighbor’s rather ritualistic, real-life days certainly wouldn’t be as fascinating or inspiring to the outside world. We all put our best foot forward, where sometimes things look effortless but in reality, things aren’t always as they seem. We all have our groundhog days.

This was my house as I was creating this recipe for ham. It was a Sunday, I had bought the ham the Saturday before. As in the 7 days before. I had boiled it the day before since I thought we could have it for dinner on Saturday night, but knowing I had to take photos for the blog, I ran out of time—food blogger code for light to take photos in—so wrapped it up and saved it for Sunday. Did we even eat dinner that night? I don’t remember. But when Sunday rolled around I knew it was now or never and I had better get it cooking or my prized ham would be dog food bound.

The kitchen was a wreck, this photo doesn’t show the half of it. Hell, the house itself was a disaster with painting going on in the bathroom, our bedroom, the hall, and now he had snaked into the kitchen. My man was on a terror with lazer like focus and I was not going to be one to complain.

I had three recipes to multi-task and finish that day so I could have fodder for the week. Drop cloths cuddled with garlic peelings, dogs scattered underfoot as I dropped the pile of jalapeno seeds on the floor and quickly shooed them away so none of ended up in the doggie E.R. The glaze overflowed onto the stovetop. Honey and brown sugar glaze. Enough said. And of course Smudge was dancing in and out of the kitchen, declaring loudly how huuuuungry she was and could she please lick the bowl of the Mini Lemon Bundt Cakes?

So by the time the ham came out of the oven, I made way and cleared a 2 foot space on my countertop and quickly got off some photos as the clock ticked toward sunset. I had a bite of the ham, I had too since I cut into it, right? It was really, really good. I then made the mistake of boasting exactly that, out loud rather than keeping it to myself, and then it was all over with.

The vultures descended. And that’s when we all declared this a great, great ham.

And that’s what we had for Sunday dinner that night. Glazed Asian Sticky Ham. Right then, right there. No sides. No plates. It was somehow just right and not at all smoke and mirrors or unicorns and roses. It was just real life.

This was a fresh ham I had been searching for high and low and finally, finally found at our indoor farmer’s market, procured from a local meat company. I’ve been holding onto this recipe like a sailor holds onto his lovely lady before he ships his way from shore. I first saw this recipe on an episode of Cooking Channel’s Simply Baked with Lorraine Pascal. Oh how I love her. They don’t run it very often but thanks to OnDemand, the reruns show up periodically as I scramble to hit save for eternity.

Lorraine says to use a fresh ham. I bet you’re thinking all hams are fresh. Well my friend, you’d be wrong. At least in my sense of fresh. Most hams are composite parts that are formed together, stuffed with water and precooked. This ham had several parts, but was tied with a string net that held all of its smoked goodness together.

This may not be the “right” time to showcase a ham recipe since it’s past Easter and Christmas is thankfully a strong arm’s distance away, but since this is real life, and this is when I found my ham, this is when I’m sharing it. If you end up trying this recipe, I think you’ll understand.

A few recipe notes:

I did make this recipe once before with a regular ham. It didn’t hold a candle to this version. Really, if you can, find a butcher and get a fresh ham.

The recipe makes quite a bit of glaze, but don’t waste it all on the basting of the ham. Save some for dipping, it’s the best part. And do watch the glaze as it’s coming to a boil. You don’t need to scrub your stovetop too since I already took care of that chore for you.

The ham I bought was a smoked ham which really complimented the Asian flavors. Highly recommend.

Ingredients

1 fresh ham, about 5 1/2 lbs., smoked if you like 1 knob of fresh ginger, about 2 tablespoons, finely grated 1/2 orange, zested and juice reserved 1 red jalapeño pepper, seeded and thinly sliced Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepperInstructions

If using a fresh ham, soak it in cold water overnight to remove the excess salt from brining and smoking or cook the ham in a large stockpot of water for 30 minutes over medium heat. Remove from the pot and discard the salted liquid. Place the ham in a large, clean stockpot and cover completely with water. Add the peppercorns, bay leaves, ginger, star anise, and half the cloves and bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to a simmer. Cook for 25 minutes per 1 pound of ham. About a half hour before ham is done cooking, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Mix the ingredients for the glaze in a small pan and bring to a simmer over medium heat until sugar has dissolved then reduce to simmer and cook for 20-25 minutes until reduced and thickened. Remove the ham from the water and pat dry with paper towels and remove net if it has one. Use a sharp small knife to score the meat diagonally, then change direction and score the other way to form diamonds. Stick the remaining cloves into the holes where the lines cross. Pour the glaze evenly over the meat reserving what you don't use for dipping sauce. Place the ham in the oven and cook for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the top begins to caramelize. Remove from the oven, tent for 10 minutes and then slice an dserve. http://www.foodiecrush.com/2013/04/things-arent-always-what-they-seem-to-be-sticky-glazed-asian-ham/

I’m heading to San Diego with a group of other food bloggers to attend The Big Traveling Potluck this weekend. Follow the #BTP1 hashtag on Twitter to keep up with the happenings and eating that is sure to be done.

Thanks for reading and please keep in touch by subscribing to FoodieCrush and follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest. This site includes affiliate shopping links of which I receive a small percentage of sales to allow me to create new and special content like this for my readers, so thank you for your support. All opinions are my own.

Tagged as: dinner, entree, ham, recipe

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About Rings Things

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Privacy Policy / Your California Privacy Rights
Revised and posted as of March 4, 2013

Prime Publishing, LLC ("Company," "we" or "us") reserves the right to revise this Privacy Policy at any time simply by posting such revision, so we encourage you to review it periodically. In order to track any changes to this Privacy Policy, we will include a historical reference at the top of this document.

This Privacy Policy will tell you, among other things:

Your California privacy rights.
How we collect information and what information we collect.
How we may use information.
How we may share information.
Your choices regarding the sharing of information.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT/YOUR AGREEMENT
Company websites are not intended for use by individuals under the age of 18 or those who are not legal residents of the United States. By using our website or submitting information to us, you consent to the Company's use and sharing of the information collected or submitted as described in this Privacy Policy. If you are not 18 years of age or older and a valid resident of the United States or you do not agree with the terms of this Privacy Policy, do not provide us with any information or use any of the products or services offered or provided on Company websites or through Company technology.

YOUR CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS
Beginning January 1, 2005 under California's "Shine the Light" law, California residents who provide personal information in obtaining products or services for personal, family or household use are entitled to either: (1) a list detailing the categories of information shared and the entities to which such information was provided; or (2) to be notified of a mechanism by which a consumer may opt-out of having their information shared with third parties. We have elected the second option. To opt-out of having your information shared with third parties please write to us.

HOW DO WE COLLECT INFORMATION AND WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?
We collect and combine personally identifiable information ("PII") and non-personally identifiable information ("Non-PII") through various sources, including those discussed below. For your reference, PII is data collected with an intention to specifically identify, contact or locate a person, including but not limited to name, address, telephone number, or e-mail address. Conversely, Non-PII is data that is not used to specifically identify, contact or locate an individual, including but not limited to zip code, gender, age, or IP address.

Distribution Partners
Website operators that license our ad serving technology pass information to us so that we may serve advertisements to you. The information passed may include, but is not limited to, your IP address, e-mail address, name, mailing address, telephone number, date of birth, and gender.

Offer Forms
We also collect information about you when you complete a survey or offer form on one of our websites or web pages. This information may include, but is not limited to: your e-mail address, name, mailing address, telephone number, date of birth, gender, and payment information; information about your background, interests, health, education, career goals, and shopping preferences; and any other personal information or unique preference information you provide to us or our advertisers.

Website Registration Forms
We collect information about you when you register on one of our websites. This registration information may include, but is not limited to your:
e-mail address
full name
mailing address
telephone number
date of birth
gender

Publisher Partners
When you complete a registration or offer form that is hosted by one of our website publisher partners on our behalf, the website publisher partner may submit all or a portion of the information that you submitted on the form to the Company. This information may include, but is not limited to: your IP address, e-mail address, name, mailing address, telephone number, date of birth, gender, and payment information; information about your background, interests, health, education, career goals, and shopping preferences; and any other information you provide to our website publisher partner.

Marketing Partners
We may receive information about you, including but not limited to your IP address, e-mail address, first name, last name, mailing address, and telephone number, from third party marketing partners that provide us with consumer data to manage on their behalf.

Automatic Information/Digital Identifiers
We may automatically receive and store certain types of information about you through the data sources listed above.

You may be familiar with the term "cookies," which are unique alphanumeric identifiers that store information on your computer. A cookie is placed on your computer when your web browser accesses our website. We use cookies for tracking transactions and the user characteristics explained in detail throughout this Privacy Policy. If you choose, there are utilities available for purchase from independent software providers to install on your computer as well as tools/preferences you can choose through most web browsers to make website visits anonymous. Of course, cookies let you have a more satisfying website experience, so we recommend that you leave them turned on.

We also collect information through our web server applications. This information includes your Internet Protocol or "IP" address, date/time stamp, browser type, and referring URL.

Additionally, we may use pixel tracking technology to track the completion of transactions with us or our advertisers, the source information for those transactions, and your IP address, date/time stamp, browser type, and referring URL.

Government Forms
The Company may be required to create, collect, maintain, and submit certain information required by the government, such as IRS Forms W-9 and 1099. This information, which may include your taxpayer identification number, will not be used, shared, transferred, or sold for marketing purposes.

HOW DO WE USE THIS INFORMATION?
We may use the collected PII and Non-PII for any legally permissible purpose in our sole discretion, including but not limited to those explained below.

Ad Serving
We may serve advertisements to you based, in part, on your IP address, the demographic and geographic information you submitted to the Company during the website registration process, and other socio-economic information, psychographic information, Internet behavior (i.e., browsing, search, shopping, purchase, and ad response behavior), and lifestyle information about you that we obtain from affiliated entities and from third parties.

We allow third-party companies to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit our Web site. These companies may use non-personally identifiable information (e.g., click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you. These companies typically use a cookie or third party web beacon to collect this information. To learn more about this behavioral advertising practice or to opt-out of this type of advertising, you can visit www.networkadvertising.org.

Pre-select/Pre-fill Offers
Our website technology may pre-select certain offers for you to view based on the demographic and geographic information you submitted to the Company during the website registration process. Additionally, this technology may pre-fill some or all of the offers' data fields with the information you submitted during the website registration process in order to prevent you from having to re-enter this information. We may not show all of the pre-filled data fields to you.

Upsell
We utilize customized post transactional or "upsell" technology to help advertisers generate sales, while providing you with a series of great offers we think may be of interest to you. The way it works is simple: once you purchase a product or service from one of our reward advertisers, you will be offered additional products or services that we think may be of interest to you. If you elect to purchase products or services from an advertiser in the post transactional channel, we will pass the information that you provided during the initial transaction to the subsequent advertiser, including but not limited to your credit card information. This information pass is done to enhance and simplify your purchasing experience. Your information will only be passed to an advertiser in the post transactional channel after you have elected to purchase their product or service. By electing to purchase their product or service you consent to the passing of your data to the third party advertiser in question.

Customer Service and Fulfillment
We may use your information to operate the website promotion, service your account and to fulfill rewards earned through Company websites. We may also use your information to verify your identity or claimed account status and, where we consider appropriate, investigate your compliance with the terms and conditions of the website promotion or any advertiser offer. We do retain customer service correspondence.

Credit Card Preauthorization
By submitting your credit card information to us or to one of our advertisers, you are authorizing the Company or its agent to periodically verify that your credit card account is valid and has credit available by charging, and thereafter crediting, a small sum to the card.

Marketing
We may use your information in our online (e.g., e-mail marketing) and offline (e.g., telemarketing, cell phone text messaging, skip tracing, and direct mail) marketing programs. If you would like to be removed from these programs please write to us.

HOW DO WE SHARE INFORMATION?
We may share the collected PII and Non-PII for any legally permissible purpose in our sole discretion, including but not limited to those explained below.

Within the Company
We may share information we collect with affiliated companies, including our parent company and other subsidiaries of our parent company, for use in their ad serving and marketing programs. This Privacy Policy does not apply to affiliated companies and their collection, use and sharing of information.

Vendors
We may share your information with various third party vendors that are not part of the Company, including but not limited to vendors that provide us with technology to deploy commercial e-mail, vendors that sell the products or services for which you have qualified through one of our websites, and shipping companies that we utilize to ship products to you.

Advertisers
When you participate in an offer by completing a form, we will transfer the information you submitted on the form to the applicable advertiser.

When you answer "yes" or "no" to a marketing or survey question, some or all of the information that you submitted during the website registration process will be transferred to advertisers that we believe may be of interest to you without providing you with another opportunity to review the information.

When you select "yes" next to an offer, we will transfer some or all of the information that you submitted during the website registration process to the applicable advertiser without providing you with another opportunity to review the information.

Ad Serving Companies
We may use third party ad networks or ad serving companies to serve advertisements on our websites. We pass information about you to these companies so that they can deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of interest to you. The information passed to these companies may include, but is not limited to, your IP address, e-mail address, name, mailing address, telephone number, date of birth, gender, and any other information you provide to us. Web pages that are served by these companies will state that they are "powered by" or "ads by" the applicable company and will contain a link to that company's privacy policy.

Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our site.Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to our users based on their visit to our sites and other sites on the Internet.Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.

Marketing Partners
We may share, license or sell your information to third parties for various marketing purposes, including their online (e.g., e-mail marketing) and offline (e.g., telemarketing, cell phone text messaging, skip tracing, and direct mail) marketing programs. If you would like to be removed from these programs write to us.

Data Enhancement/Appending/Validation
We may use third party service providers to enhance our database with additional elements, including but not limited to age ranges present in your household, whether you own or rent a home, the length of time you have lived at your residence, whether you are a mail order buyer or responder, household income, and gender. Further, we may use third party service providers to append telephone numbers to other data points we have in our database. We also may use third party service providers to validate the data we have in our database.

Additionally, we may share, license or sell your information to third parties for use in their data validation, enhancement, information verification services, and, to the extent permitted by law, individual reference or look-up services.

Third Party Cookies

Notwithstanding anything else in this policy, we or a data provider we have engaged may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser to enable you to receive customized ads or content.   These cookies contain no personally identifiable information.  The cookies may reflect de-identified demographic or other data linked to data you voluntarily have submitted to us, e.g., your email address, that we may share with a data provider solely in hashed, non-human readable form. To opt-out of these cookies, please go to http://www.aboutads.info/choices.

Governmental Agencies or Other Companies
We may share your information with law enforcement officials or governmental agencies: (1) in response to their request; (2) when permitted or required by law; or (3) to establish our compliance with applicable laws, rules, regulations, or guidelines.

We may store and share your information with third parties for suppression or opt-out purposes.

We also may share your information with third parties when: (1) trying to protect against or prevent actual or potential fraud or unauthorized transactions; (2) investigating fraud that has already taken place; (3) enforcing or applying existing terms and conditions and/or other agreements; (4) protecting the rights, property or safety of our websites, our users or others; or (5) responding to subpoenas, court orders or legal process, or to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims.

In all cases, this information is not provided to these entities or persons for marketing purposes.

Right to Transfer
Should the Company choose to sell or transfer business assets, it is possible that the information we possess may be transferred as part of that transaction. The Company may decide to retain a copy of the information post sale or transfer.

COMPANY CUSTOMER CHOICES

Marketing Communications and Unsubscribe Information
By completing and submitting a Company registration form, you are consenting to receive marketing communications from the Company and its third party marketing partners. If, after you have shared your information with the Company, you decide that you do not want to receive marketing communications or newsletters from the Company and its third party marketing partners, you can discontinue the communications by clicking here and filling out our form. If you have registered or submitted information under more than one e-mail account, you must submit separate unsubscribe requests for each account.

Request for More Information
As it relates to marketing communications or any other questions you might have about our Privacy Policy, please write to us at Prime Publishing, LLC, 3400 Dundee Road, Suite 220, Northbrook, IL 60062.

WHAT HAPPENS IF I HIT A LINK TO ANOTHER SITE FROM A COMPANY WEBSITE?
Our websites may offer links to other websites. Other websites have their own terms of use and privacy and security policies. If you choose to visit one of these sites, you should review the policies that govern that particular site.

APPLICATION OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY
This Privacy Policy applies to all information collected by or submitted to the Company. Other affiliated entities of the Company may obtain information independently from transactions and experiences with you or from other sources. This Privacy Policy does not pertain to that information.

WHAT IS THE POLICY WITH RESPECT TO COMMUNICATING WITH CHILDREN?
We recognize the unique privacy concerns regarding children. We are committed to carefully protecting privacy where children are involved no matter the point of contact. In particular, our intention is to fully comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA"). Per COPPA guidelines, we do not knowingly collect PII from children under the age of 13. If a parent or guardian is made aware that a child under the age of 13 has provided us with PII through any point of contact, click here to contact us and we will delete the information about the child referenced from our files.

SECURITY
There is no such thing as complete security on the Internet or otherwise. The Company uses various security techniques on our websites to help protect against the loss, misuse or modification of information we've collected from you. When you access your personal information or transmit information to us, that information is stored on servers that we have taken steps to protect from unauthorized access or intrusion. While we strive to protect your information, the Company cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us. You acknowledge and assume this risk when communicating with the Company, its partners and affiliates.

LIMITATION OF LIABILITY
YOU UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT ANY DISPUTE OVER PRIVACY IS SUBJECT TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY, AS WELL AS THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS WEBSITE (INCLUDING LIMITATIONS ON DAMAGES). YOU AGREE THAT THE COMPANY'S LIABILITY FOR ANY BREACH OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY SHALL BE LIMITED TO THE VALUE OF THE TRANSACTIONS OR SERVICES PROVIDED TO YOU BY THE COMPANY TO THE EXTENT SUCH CLAIM IS NOT OTHERWISE BARRED BY OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS.

[ Close Privacy Policy ]

View the original article here

Weekend Things

by Averie Sunshine on May 11, 2013

Time for an installment of Weekend Things:

1. I got a blog makeover! I cannot tell you how thrilled I am about my site’s new look and the functionality.

One of the things I’m most excited about is that I now have visual recipe indexing. Meaning there’s a photo accompanying each recipe, and the recipes are categorized better and by type.

Go to the top right hand corner of the screen, where you’ll see Browse Recipes and a drop down menu, where you can click on the category you want.

For example, if you click on cookies, you’ll be brought to this page, where you can see every single cookie I’ve ever posted and click on what you want. How cool is that.

Not every single category is listed in the drop down menu in an effort to keep things more streamlined, but the major ones are there.

If you’d like to search for things a little more obscure, say, avocado, you can type avocado into the search bar.

Or, use the drop down menu again. The last item that says Recipe Index on the drop down brings you to the Recipe Index page, which looks like this. From there, you can browse by ingredient.

It’s not perfect because I have 4 years of recipes, and was horrible about tagging them. And in the past month, I’ve been working behind the scenes trying to tag and categorize my recipes.

As time goes by and I notice things that could be tagged better, or that I missed, I will continue to tag and categorize as best I can.

If you are looking for a recipe and can’t find it by using the drop down menu, the search bar, or the recipe index page, email me and I can help you find it. I just posted last week that I have 300+ recipes on Foodgawker alone, and even I can get lost. There are also old posts from when I was on Blogspot that don’t have accompanying images that show up, but cest la vie.

All photos now have a hoovering Pinterest button in the top left-hand corner of the image for easier pinning. I know I appreciate this on blogs I visit so that I can pin the image I want to, and for selfish reasons, so that I can pin the recipe as a reminder to myself that I want to make it.

The other thing that has changed is that there is no more loveveggiesandyoga anywhere in my html or in any of the post titles or links. Anything that exists on other sites and refers to me as LV&Y or links to my site using LV&Y, such as other blogs or Pinterest, is now forwarded to averiecooks.

Goodbye old site, you served me well, but I’ve moved on. When I first started blogging 4 years ago, I loved veggies and yoga, and I still do; I just don’t choose to write blog posts about them and haven’t for the past few years.

I have anxiously been awaiting this makeover and launch for nearly one year.

None of this would have been possible without the help of Lindsay Landis of Purr Design. She’s also the blogger behind Love and Olive Oil

And she’s written two books in the past 18 months, The Cookie Dough Lover’s Cookbook and Breakfast for Dinner

If you are at all thinking of a blog makeover, Lindsay is amazing. She’s patient as a saint, creative, a visionary, and at times, a mind-reader. Her waiting list is on the longer side, but she’s well worth the wait. I cannot tell you how much I admire her work, and how thrilled I am with it.

Needless to say, my situation wasn’t just a straight makeover because of the URL changes. Every other designer I had previously worked with or interviewed, didn’t want to touch it with a 10-foot pole. Lindsay jumped right in, and handled it all like the true and extremely talented professional she is. Lindsay is your girl if you need a bigger time makeover.

2. I’m a contributing Blogger, Recipe Developer, and Photographer on Pillsbury, a “Pillsbury Maker”

I grew up in Minnesota, home of Pillsbury, before moving to San Diego and it’s quite an honor with a touch of nostalgia for me to be on the Pillsbury site.

I made Pretzel S’mores Chocolate Cookie Bars

Get the Recipe

3. They’re similar to the Salted Caramel Pretzel Blondies, which I made after the Smore’s Cookie Bars, because I was loving the pretzel and salty-and-sweet vibe so much.

Marshmallows and a chocolate cookie bar base were swapped for salted caramel and a blondie bar base.

4. San Francisco 500 Square Feet Apartment Tour – Dad, mom, and two small kids living in 500 square feet and tt’s amazing what they’ve done with it and how uncluttered and functional it is.

For anyone with kids, you know how kid stuff multiplies. And for anyone with a food blog, or who’s a cook, or just who’s lived life and isn’t 22 anymore living in your first apartment, you know that kitchen stuff multiplies; it’s bulky, and hogs space. Between kid and kitchen stuff, I could fill 500 square feet easily.

5. We live in a 1200 square feet urban condo and it feels extremely cramped at times; other times not as much.

No yard, no garage, no basement, and no attic like the houses I grew up with make San Diego much different than rural Minnesota.

6. 10 Ways to Make Better Brownies – Including some I had not heard, like the number 9, “Chill them before baking. After spreading the batter in a pan, refrigerate it for at least an hour or up to overnight. The end result will be brownies with extra-crisp edges and a moist, fudge-y center.”

I have two recipes for brownies, and swear by both of them. They’re both one-bowl, whisk-together recipes that are as fast a a boxed mix and produce consistently stellar, ultra-fudgy brownies.

Fudgy Nutella Brownies with Cream Cheese Frosting - This brownie base uses melted chocolate and I like to swirl in Nutella but the brownies are fabulous with or without Nutella

And The Ultimate Fudgy Caramel Brownies

7. I went to Big Potluck a couple weeks ago and am still thinking about how much fun it was.

8. I was named one of the Top 10 Desserts and Sweets Bloggers on Pinterest- “…We compiled the list based on Cision’s proprietary research, with results limited to bloggers who dedicate significant coverage to sweets.”

I’ve been given quite a few honors and awards over the years, but being recognized as a ‘blogger who dedicates significant coverage to sweets’  makes all of my sweet teeth very happy.

9. Eating All Organic Food On a Food Stamp Budget – According to the author, yes, you can feed a family of three all-organic food for the month. The author stayed within her monthly food budget of $526. She offers tips and suggestions what she does.

10. Buttery Sweet Dough Emulsion – “Buttery Sweet Dough Flavor is extra-buttery, with hints of vanilla and citrus; add a few drops of this flavoring to your favorite sweet bread recipe, and your family and friends will be clamoring for the name of the bakery you visited.”

If it could make everything smell like Overnight Buttermilk Soft and Fluffy Cinnamon Rolls I would be in heaven.

11. I got a Mother’s Day Care package yesterday from Sur La Table. They’re an amazing source for everything you need for your kitchen, and for things you don’t even know you need. I’m in heaven when I wander into my local store. They sent me a Le Creuset Teakettle

 And a Cuisinart 7-Cup Food Processor in Metallic Red

Needless to say, this kicked off my Mother’s Day Weekend in a fabulous way. I can’t wait to put the food processor to use with a batch of my favorite peanut butter, Honey Roasted Butterscotch White Chocolate Peanut Butter (GF)

What are your Weekend Things?

Could you live in a 500 square foot apartment with your spouse/partner and child? For all of you with kids, remember that baby stuff and kid stuff multiplies in the closet.

Could you eat organic (or do you care to) and feed your family on $500 a month? I know plenty of single, childless people who spend that on themselves in two weeks.

If you’ve made anything, done, seen, or bought anything fabulous recently, feel free to link it up in the comments.

Have a wonderful Mother’s Day Weekend and I hope all the moms have a special day that’s exactly the way you would choose.

Stay tuned for an amazing giveaway. You won’t want to miss it!

View the original article here

Weekend Things

by Averie Sunshine on May 11, 2013

Time for an installment of Weekend Things:

1. I got a blog makeover! I cannot tell you how thrilled I am about my site’s new look and the functionality.

One of the things I’m most excited about is that I now have visual recipe indexing. Meaning there’s a photo accompanying each recipe, and the recipes are categorized better and by type.

Go to the top right hand corner of the screen, where you’ll see Browse Recipes and a drop down menu, where you can click on the category you want.

For example, if you click on cookies, you’ll be brought to this page, where you can see every single cookie I’ve ever posted and click on what you want. How cool is that.

Not every single category is listed in the drop down menu in an effort to keep things more streamlined, but the major ones are there.

If you’d like to search for things a little more obscure, say, avocado, you can type avocado into the search bar.

Or, use the drop down menu again. The last item that says Recipe Index on the drop down brings you to the Recipe Index page, which looks like this. From there, you can browse by ingredient.

It’s not perfect because I have 4 years of recipes, and was horrible about tagging them. And in the past month, I’ve been working behind the scenes trying to tag and categorize my recipes.

As time goes by and I notice things that could be tagged better, or that I missed, I will continue to tag and categorize as best I can.

If you are looking for a recipe and can’t find it by using the drop down menu, the search bar, or the recipe index page, email me and I can help you find it. I just posted last week that I have 300+ recipes on Foodgawker alone, and even I can get lost. There are also old posts from when I was on Blogspot that don’t have accompanying images that show up, but cest la vie.

All photos now have a hoovering Pinterest button in the top left-hand corner of the image for easier pinning. I know I appreciate this on blogs I visit so that I can pin the image I want to, and for selfish reasons, so that I can pin the recipe as a reminder to myself that I want to make it.

The other thing that has changed is that there is no more loveveggiesandyoga anywhere in my html or in any of the post titles or links. Anything that exists on other sites and refers to me as LV&Y or links to my site using LV&Y, such as other blogs or Pinterest, is now forwarded to averiecooks.

Goodbye old site, you served me well, but I’ve moved on. When I first started blogging 4 years ago, I loved veggies and yoga, and I still do; I just don’t choose to write blog posts about them and haven’t for the past few years.

I have anxiously been awaiting this makeover and launch for nearly one year.

None of this would have been possible without the help of Lindsay Landis of Purr Design. She’s also the blogger behind Love and Olive Oil

And she’s written two books in the past 18 months, The Cookie Dough Lover’s Cookbook and Breakfast for Dinner

If you are at all thinking of a blog makeover, Lindsay is amazing. She’s patient as a saint, creative, a visionary, and at times, a mind-reader. Her waiting list is on the longer side, but she’s well worth the wait. I cannot tell you how much I admire her work, and how thrilled I am with it.

Needless to say, my situation wasn’t just a straight makeover because of the URL changes. Every other designer I had previously worked with or interviewed, didn’t want to touch it with a 10-foot pole. Lindsay jumped right in, and handled it all like the true and extremely talented professional she is. Lindsay is your girl if you need a bigger time makeover.

2. I’m a contributing Blogger, Recipe Developer, and Photographer on Pillsbury, a “Pillsbury Maker”

I grew up in Minnesota, home of Pillsbury, before moving to San Diego and it’s quite an honor with a touch of nostalgia for me to be on the Pillsbury site.

I made Pretzel S’mores Chocolate Cookie Bars

Get the Recipe

3. They’re similar to the Salted Caramel Pretzel Blondies, which I made after the Smore’s Cookie Bars, because I was loving the pretzel and salty-and-sweet vibe so much.

Marshmallows and a chocolate cookie bar base were swapped for salted caramel and a blondie bar base.

4. San Francisco 500 Square Feet Apartment Tour – Dad, mom, and two small kids living in 500 square feet and tt’s amazing what they’ve done with it and how uncluttered and functional it is.

For anyone with kids, you know how kid stuff multiplies. And for anyone with a food blog, or who’s a cook, or just who’s lived life and isn’t 22 anymore living in your first apartment, you know that kitchen stuff multiplies; it’s bulky, and hogs space. Between kid and kitchen stuff, I could fill 500 square feet easily.

5. We live in a 1200 square feet urban condo and it feels extremely cramped at times; other times not as much.

No yard, no garage, no basement, and no attic like the houses I grew up with make San Diego much different than rural Minnesota.

6. 10 Ways to Make Better Brownies – Including some I had not heard, like the number 9, “Chill them before baking. After spreading the batter in a pan, refrigerate it for at least an hour or up to overnight. The end result will be brownies with extra-crisp edges and a moist, fudge-y center.”

I have two recipes for brownies, and swear by both of them. They’re both one-bowl, whisk-together recipes that are as fast a a boxed mix and produce consistently stellar, ultra-fudgy brownies.

Fudgy Nutella Brownies with Cream Cheese Frosting - This brownie base uses melted chocolate and I like to swirl in Nutella but the brownies are fabulous with or without Nutella

And The Ultimate Fudgy Caramel Brownies

7. I went to Big Potluck a couple weeks ago and am still thinking about how much fun it was.

8. I was named one of the Top 10 Desserts and Sweets Bloggers on Pinterest- “…We compiled the list based on Cision’s proprietary research, with results limited to bloggers who dedicate significant coverage to sweets.”

I’ve been given quite a few honors and awards over the years, but being recognized as a ‘blogger who dedicates significant coverage to sweets’  makes all of my sweet teeth very happy.

9. Eating All Organic Food On a Food Stamp Budget – According to the author, yes, you can feed a family of three all-organic food for the month. The author stayed within her monthly food budget of $526. She offers tips and suggestions what she does.

10. Buttery Sweet Dough Emulsion – “Buttery Sweet Dough Flavor is extra-buttery, with hints of vanilla and citrus; add a few drops of this flavoring to your favorite sweet bread recipe, and your family and friends will be clamoring for the name of the bakery you visited.”

If it could make everything smell like Overnight Buttermilk Soft and Fluffy Cinnamon Rolls I would be in heaven.

11. I got a Mother’s Day Care package yesterday from Sur La Table. They’re an amazing source for everything you need for your kitchen, and for things you don’t even know you need. I’m in heaven when I wander into my local store. They sent me a Le Creuset Teakettle

 And a Cuisinart 7-Cup Food Processor in Metallic Red

Needless to say, this kicked off my Mother’s Day Weekend in a fabulous way. I can’t wait to put the food processor to use with a batch of my favorite peanut butter, Honey Roasted Butterscotch White Chocolate Peanut Butter (GF)

What are your Weekend Things?

Could you live in a 500 square foot apartment with your spouse/partner and child? For all of you with kids, remember that baby stuff and kid stuff multiplies in the closet.

Could you eat organic (or do you care to) and feed your family on $500 a month? I know plenty of single, childless people who spend that on themselves in two weeks.

If you’ve made anything, done, seen, or bought anything fabulous recently, feel free to link it up in the comments.

Have a wonderful Mother’s Day Weekend and I hope all the moms have a special day that’s exactly the way you would choose.

Stay tuned for an amazing giveaway. You won’t want to miss it!

View the original article here