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Back to School Product Guide: Lunch Products Part 1

Posted by Bobbie Gould on August 10, 2010
in Food and Treats, Product Guides 2010

backtoschoollunchproducts

1.) Living Green’s-Lunchopolis Over 3.5 Billion pounds of lunch box garbage is generated every year: juice boxes, water bottles, aluminum foil, and plastic bags. The REUSABLE LUNCHOPOLIS solves the problem! It’s dish washer safe, microwave safe, and CPSIA tested safe. Comes in three colors: pink, blue and brown. Each Lunchopolis contains a 15 oz bottle and 4 reusable containers with colors coordinated with box piping. Lead-free, insulated lunchbox, four matching food containers, and matching drink bottle. It comes in 4 colors. ($29.95)

Lunchopolis_pic

2.) Living Green’s (The link to this lunch bag is under the left sidebar under Back to School Lunch Kit) – Rayon and Bamboo Lunch Bag Kit this cool kit is all eco-friendly and is made from Rayon and Bamboo. It is the perfect lunch kit for your student. ($22.49)

Rayon and bamboo lunch bag kit

Please note: LivingGreenNow.biz is still under construction, so we are waiting on pricing. We thought they had some interesting products to share with our readers, so thank you for your patience!

3.) Terra Cycle- Round Drink Pouch Lunchbox This traditional lunch box is made with a twist, because it’s made from upcycled drink pouches. This insulated dual compartment lunch box allows you to keep your food and drink separated so your drink pouch stays cool and refreshing, while your food stays crisp and fresh. * Specific wrapper is subject to variability.

terracyclelunchbox

Please Note: Here is the link to the Rectangular Drink Pouch Lunchbox and pricing. Since the Round Drink Pouch Lunchbox is new the pricing may not be the same.

4.) Terra Cycle- Starburst® Insulated Cooler a brown-bag lunch will never be so sweet when you carry around this traditional insulated lunch box because it’s made from Starburst® candy wrappers. By purchasing this lunchbox you help divert wrapper waste from a landfill.

terracycle2

Please Note: We are waiting on pricing of this product. Thank you for your patience!

5.) Mabel’s Labels- These cool labels withstand the dishwasher, microwave, UV Rays and hard wearing children. And you can out them on more than lunch boxes. You can put them on cups, bottles, backpacks…you name it. Various prices and styles.

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pencillabels

6.) Amway-Intelligence for Your Life™ Steel Cut Oat Bar These yummy bars taste really good. They are a crunch bar with a hint of cherry and yogurt on the bottom! Steel-cut oatmeal is one of the best cholesterol-lowering foods and is an excellent source of natural fiber. Perfect to keep a athletic child going for school. Yum! We have a review coming soon of these bars. ($19.80 for a 12 pack)

oatbars

Look for part 2 and 3 this afternoon!

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Back to School Product Guide

Posted by html404 on August 5, 2010
in Eco Friendly Products, Education, Fashion, Food and Treats

backtoschoolproductguide2010

Even though we homeschool, back to school sales are on our minds too. After all we need school supplies just like everyone else. We are looking forward to taking advantage of the IL tax break starting August 6th, I think.

Thanks to a HARO query, we have many wonderful products to share with you over the week or two starting on Monday! Bear with us as we try to post as many of them as possible. We received close to 100 pitches, however, not all of them will be featured. We are trying to narrow them down to our favorites and ones that we think best fit our Back to School Product Guide.

Here are the categories we will be covering:

School Supplies

backtoschoolschoolsupplies

Fashion

backtoschoolfashion

Lunches

backtoschoollunchproducts

Eco Friendly Products

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Technology/Electronics

backtoschooltechnologyandelectronics

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Miracle Treat Day at DQ August 5th

Posted by html404 on August 3, 2010
in Food and Treats

Treat yourself and kids in need Thursday, Aug. 5! Take a look at this email that I received from DQ:

Miracle Treat Day

Do you believe in miracles? Well we do, because next Thursday, August 5 is Miracle Treat Day at DQ®. On this day, you’ll have the chance to make miracles happen for sick and injured children in your area. All you have to do is buy a Blizzard® treat on Thursday, August 5 at a participating DQ location and $1 or more from each Blizzard treat sale will be contributed to your local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital. It’s that easy. And think about the impact you, a Blizzard Fan Club member, can make. If each fan club member simply bought one Blizzard treat on Miracle Treat Day then we would raise over $2 million for kids in need. Pretty amazing, huh? Since 1984, DQ has raised over $81 million for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, let’s make this year a record-breaking year! Buy a Blizzard treat on Thursday, August 5 and make miracles happen.

Find participating DQs.

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Tribe Hummus Review

Posted by html404 on July 31, 2010
in All Natural Products, Food and Treats

I received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While I consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, my review is my honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

Tribe_Classics_Classic

I received Tribe All Natural Hummus to review and having never tried hummus before was interested to see how it tasted. So when contacted by the PR person and sent my free hummus coupons, I decided to try the Tribe Classic and was pleasantly surprised at it’s taste! It had a nice smooth taste to it and all my children LOVED it! Even my 2 year old. It was delicious! We have gotten Tribe’s Hummus two more times since when I received it to review. It is wonderful with all natural chips. We love this hummus! Thanks Tribe!

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Wanchai Ferry Entree Review

Posted by html404 on July 31, 2010
in Food and Treats

Disclosure: This dinner event was sponsored by MyBlogSpark and I was provided with the dinner, gift card, product and information through MyBlogSpark. My thoughts and opinions are my own. The decision to even write this post was completely voluntary.

As I stated in my MyBlogSpark dinner post, I wanted to write a separate review of Wanchai Ferry entrees, so I am finally writing getting to it! Remember they pulled a PR stunt on us and revealed in our fortune cookie that our entrees were frozen dinners! The thing is they were simply delicious. Truly, we never suspected anything was amiss.

Sweet and Sour Chicken
July 22 at Ben Pao 054

Beef and Broccoli
July 22 at Ben Pao 055

We tried the Sweet & Sour Chicken, as well as the Beef & Broccoli. The vegetables in each of these entrees were crunchy and tasted very good. There were peppers, water chestnuts, carrots, corn, peas and broccoli. My husband isn’t here to run down the list, so I may have forgotten one or two veggies. The meat was tender and very yummy to our hungry taste buds. We loved the sauces too that each entree was saturated in. The only negative thing, as I mentioned in my Ben Pao post, was that my husband felt there wasn’t quite enough rice served with the entrees. From my understanding, the rice is included with the Wenchai Ferry entree.

We are looking forward to using our free entree coupons to try the rest of the entrees or the ones we already tried since the children have not tried either of them!

Again, we thank MyBlogSpark, Ben Pao and Wanchai Ferry for such a great dinner!

http://www.wanchaiferry.com/

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Ben Pao Restaurant Review – Chicago

Posted by html404 on July 23, 2010
in Blog Stuff, Food and Treats

Amazingly, last night I found myself in the city of Chicago for the second time in two weeks for a blogging event. I am a member of several blogging networks, but both events this month was a first for each of these two networks – TheMotherhood.com and MyBlogSpark.com. Last night my husband was my companion and we enjoyed a rare night out without the children, as we dropped them off at grandma’s house on our way into the city. Here is the dinner event that we went to:

MyBlogSpark Dinner

Thursday, July 22, 2010
7:00 p.m.

Ben Pao
52 West Illinois St.
Chicago, IL 60654

My husband is not a huge fan of Chinese food, however, he was game to be treated to a free dinner! Once again even though we gave ourselves an extra 20 minutes, it was not enough for Chicago traffic. Look what we met up with as soon as we were on the expressway:

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Clear lane, until we got to the toll booth:

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And all the way into Chicago this is what we saw:

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July 22 at Ben Pao 030

I love the Chicago skyline and wished I had a camera with the capability of taking a wide lense shot to capture the whole skyline that we saw from the 294. My camera just doesn’t do it justice:

July 22 at Ben Pao 032

Downtown Chicago:

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July 22 at Ben Pao 035

It was amazing to see how busy the streets were even on a summer evening. Yes, I do believe that was my first trip into the city on a summer evening in the whole 16 years I have lived here. We have usually gone during the day or when picking up a friend at the train station during winter evenings.

We left a few minutes before six o’clock and did not hit downtown until about 7:30pm! I ended up calling the restaurant to inform them that we were caught in traffic, not realizing that MyBlogSpark had reserved the whole restaurant for this special event. Once we arrived at our destination parking was atrocious and my husband was very hungry, so he spent about 15 minutes looking for spot before opting to take advantage of the $10 valet parking that was being offered in front of Ben Pao. Otherwise parking areas were $14! What are parking fees like in other cities?

The Ben Pao:

July 22 at Ben Pao 036

I didn’t get a picture of the whole outside of the building, unfortunately.

We really enjoyed the service at Ben Pao and the food. The only thing we did not try were the Crab Rangoon since neither of us eat seafood.

The following photos are of our four course meal. Don’t get too hungry looking at the pictures!

First Course: Hot and Sour Soup served very hot! Very tasty, but we aren’t sure what was in it besides the green onions! It was like a beef broth with chucks of some sort of meat. Check out the soup spoon in the second photo, neither of us had seen a spoon like that before:

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July 22 at Ben Pao 038

Second Course: Appetizers that consisted of Chicken Lettuce Wraps, Golden Crisp Vegetable Spring Rolls, Crab Rangoon and Chicken Potstickers.

Chicken Lettuce Wraps, which the chicken, noodles (?) and sauce were put in the lettuce and folded or like a taco or burrito to eat:

July 22 at Ben Pao 043

July 22 at Ben Pao 051

The rest of the appetizers:

July 22 at Ben Pao 048

The sauces – mustard, chicken, ginger and I cannot remember the fourth…knew I should have written it down!

July 22 at Ben Pao 050

July 22 at Ben Pao 049

Third Course: Sweet & Sour Chicken and Beef & Broccoli served with rice. Robert was so hungry that he thought that there wasn’t quite enough rice – and he doesn’t even like that much rice under normal circumstances. This dinner wasn’t normal since his belly was hungry at 5:00pm! Poor guy. He was well fed and satisfied at the end of the meal though!

July 22 at Ben Pao 053

July 22 at Ben Pao 054

July 22 at Ben Pao 055

Fourth Course – Dessert: Lemon-Ginger Cheesecake and Chocolate Spring Roll

Lemon-Ginger Cake Cheesecake was very yummy!

July 22 at Ben Pao 056

Chocolate Spring Roll were also very yummy! Robert thought the chocolate tasted funny/different, but I thought it tasted like melted heated chocolate and when it was dipped in the peanut sauce…hmmmm…..delicious! I figured maybe Robert’s Passion Fruit Lime soda was affecting his taste buds because he is a chocolate connoisseur usually.

July 22 at Ben Pao 057

Non-Alcoholic Drinks: Homemade Ginger Ale (pictured first) and Passion Fruit with Lime that was served with carbonated water so it was like a soda. Both were very good.

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July 22 at Ben Pao 047

MyBlogSpark had something special lined up at the end of the meal with our fortune cookies.

July 22 at Ben Pao 058

Inside our fortune read:

Wanchai Ferry: Surprise! The entree you sampled this evening was a frozen dinner from Wanchai Ferry!

Our server/waitress had to tell us because we had not opened our fortune cookies, as we were going to take them home to show the children! We were very surprised by the switch, but since this review has become so long, you’ll have to come back to read a separate review of the Wanchai Ferry entrees!

on the back it said:

We’d like to thank Ben Pao for helping us pull off the switch.

Everything was served piping hot. The service was excellent and of course my company was divine! I think we’d go back, it’s just the distance that becomes a factor for us since we are not in downtown Chicago very often. However, we were given a couple of coupons to use by the end of the year, so who knows perhaps we’ll make it down just for a night out again. We’d highly recommend Ben Pao.

Thanks to both MyBlogSpark, Ben Pao and Wanchai Ferry for the opportunity and privilege you afforded us last night!

July 22 at Ben Pao 063

Lighting in the restaurant was dark, sorry!

July 22 at Ben Pao 061

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S’mores Smiles! :-)

Posted by html404 on July 22, 2010
in Contests, Food and Treats

This post was written because I am entering a contest for a S’mores prize pack as a member of the Mom Bloggers Club.

Smoresproductscopy

You know growing up I usually had S’mores during a campout or when our family was camping. My husband isn’t fond of camping so we don’t camp, but we do enjoy INdoor campouts with the children camping out downstairs under our diningroom table or livingroom. They all love it! It has become a September/October family tradition. We roast hotdogs and marshmallows over the burner of our stove. Some years we even cut roasting sticks, other years we use long handled barbecue forks – all under our watchful eye.

For writing this post, I may just win a Hershey’s and Kraft S’mores prize pack complete with Hershey®’s Milk Chocolate bars, Honey Maid® Graham Crackers, Kraft Jet-Puffed® Marshmallows and a special S’mores skewers kit! That would get us ahead in planning this year’s INdoor campout, wouldn’t it?
Visit
www.SmoresSmiles.com for more opportunities to win prizes from Kraft.

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Paula Deen, KRAFT Give Away $40,000 in Prizes for “Real Women of Philadelphia” Recipe Contest

Posted by html404 on July 19, 2010
in Contests, Food and Treats

More exciting news from our great PR folks and Paula Deen and Kraft! Starting July 19, Real Women of Philadelphia begins a new opportunity for both men AND women- a new recipe contest with $40,000 in prizes to be won. At the end of each week, 5 recipes will be chosen, and each recipe will be awarded a $500 cash prize- that’s $500 per day of the contest!

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All you have to do is submit your favorite recipes made with Philadelphia Cream Cheese, according to the recipe category and theme for that particular week.

And like I mentioned, this contest is open to both men AND women!

PAULA DEEN, KRAFT GIVE AWAY $40,000 IN PRIZES FOR “REAL WOMEN OF PHILADELPHIA” RECIPE CONTEST
Enter for a chance to win July 19 –November 7

Grab your mixing bowls and oven mitts!

Paula Deen and PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese are teaming up to give away a total of $40,000 as part of the “Real Women of Philadelphia” recipe contest. Men and women nationwide can enter for a chance to win $500 and the opportunity to contribute to the Real Women of Philadelphia cookbook by submitting their favorite recipes made with PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese. Each week there will be a new recipe category and theme requirement for entries. One recipe will be chosen daily Monday – Friday from July 19 through November 7 for a total of 80 winners.

To enter, register at the Real Women of Philadelphia website at www.realwomenofphiladelphia.com.

Additional contest information, recipe themes and requirements is available at: http://www.realwomenofphiladelphia.com/recipecontest-rules

The contest is part of the Real Women of Philadelphia community which launched in March 2010. Members have created their own site profiles, uploaded pictures, written articles and self-produced over 5,000 entertaining short videos showcasing how they use PHILLY in their favorite dishes. The site has received more than 590,000 unique visitors and the cream cheese-based recipe videos have received millions of views across various media channels and the RWOP site.

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Winners of “Real Women of Philadelphia”

Posted by html404 on July 1, 2010
in Contests, Food and Treats

Did any of you watch “Real Women of Philadelphia” last night? I admit I didn’t, but would like to catch any videos they might have. I was working, what can I say?

If you missed the live streaming event, then here are the winners:

The winners of the online cooking competition and talent search, “Real Women of Philadelphia,” were announced last night during a live ceremony hosted by Paula Deen at the Lucas Theatre for the Arts in Savannah, GA. With an existing digital RWOP community of more than 220,000 cheering them on, Mandy Heaston, Caryn Ross, Sheila Cutchlow and KC Quaretti Lee were crowned “The Real Women of Philadelphia.”

Paula Deen

The Real Women of Philadelphia categories included: appetizers, side dishes, entrees and desserts. All contestant dishes were judged by Paula and her friends. The four winners are as follows:

Mandy Heaston, Seattle, WA
Side Dish
Asparagus & Parmesan Cream Pastry

Caryn Ross, Norman, OK
Appetizer
Sassy Tailgate Sandwiches

Sheila Cutchlow, Washington, DC
Entree
Joy Bundles & Rice

KC Quaretti-Lee, Venice, FL
Dessert
French Apple Cake

Each winner received a talent contract worth $25,000 and the opportunity to host their own weekly online cooking show on www.PaulaDeen.com/RealWomen. The winners will also have the chance to contribute to a cookbook featuring the community’s favorite cream cheese recipes.

“Congratulations to our ‘Real Women of Philadelphia.’ We’ve been absolutely overwhelmed by the response, engagement and authenticity of the community,” said Adam Butler, Brand Manager Philadelphia Cream Cheese. We love the creativity and passion that’s being shared between these women and look forward to bringing more fun and new challenges in the future.”

Since the program’s launch in March 2010, the Real Women of Philadelphia community has seen significant growth, and has hosted more than 590,000 unique visitors to the site. The Real Women of Philadelphia have created their own site profiles, uploaded pictures, written articles, and self-produced more than 5,000 entertaining, emotional and creative short videos showcasing how they use Philly in their favorite dishes – whether it’s their secret ingredient for smooth mashed potatoes or the perfect creamy pasta sauce. To date, these compelling cream cheese-based recipe videos have received a total of approximately 19 million views across various media channels and the RWOP site.

Visit www.PaulaDeen.com/RealWomen to find out more about the Real Women of Philadelphia community and find and share Philadelphia Cream Cheese recipes and tips with other real-life cooks.

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Tune-In Alert – Watch Paula Deen Crown the “Real Women of Philadelphia”

Posted by html404 on June 30, 2010
in Contests, Food and Treats

**TUNE-IN ALERT**TUNE-IN ALERT**

PAULA DEEN CROWNS THE “REAL WOMEN OF PHILADELPHIA”
Wednesday, June 30 – 8 p.m. EDT, Savannah GA
Streamed LIVE at http://www.realwomenofphiladelphia.com/rwoplive

Paula Deen

WHO: Southern cooking queen, Paula Deen and Kraft Philadelphia Cream Cheese will stage a LIVE EVENT to determine the four winners of the “Real Women of Philadelphia” online cooking competition.

WHAT: Paula Deen is hosting a down-home cook off in her hometown of Savannah, GA where she has teamed up with Philadelphia Cream Cheese for the “Real Women of Philadelphia,” an online quest to find four fantastic female home cooks. Each will win a talent contract worth $25,000 and work with the community to create a cookbook featuring all of their favorite recipes made with PHILLY.

WHEN: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 ; 8 p.m. EDT

WHERE: Lucas Theatre for the Arts, Savannah, GA
LIVESTREAMED HERE: http://www.realwomenofphiladelphia.com/rwoplive

BACKGROUND: Thousands of women have come out, many for the first time, to create videos and share their recipes online thanks to the encouragement they received from both Paula Deen as well as the community as a whole. Four finalists were chosen from the following categories: Side Dish, Appetizer, Entrée and Dessert. More information on the competition is available at: http://www.realwomenofphiladelphia.com/