Okay, I am looking for some advice. Adam and I eat everything. As a matter of fact I don’t like to eat the same meals over and over. Which is why I have a cookbook collection of over 200 books and I get at least three new magazines a month. I try to cook something different every night. Well, I did until recently. It is also one of the many reasons I married Adam. He’ll eat anything (except mushrooms). When Zoey was born over three years ago I vowed I wouldn’t make her special meals or coddle her. I declared that she would eat when and what we eat. What the hell happened?

She won’t eat anything wet or mushy. She only wants crunchy foods. She won’t eat pizza, Mac ‘n Cheese, mashed potatoes, spaghetti or pasta, hamburgers or hot dogs. She won’t eat lunch meat and American cheese. I just don’t get it! SHE WON’T EAT ICE CREAM PEOPLE! I have offered her everything under the sun and there is very little she will eat. I can convince her to try it but that’s it. She does eat fruit and tons of them. She eats. Chicken, shrimp, fish but they are usually of the fried variety. She loves string cheese and mozzarella cheese but American cheese is “too mushy”. She loves cashews, peanuts and especially sunflower seeds. I guess that is protein. I just want her to eat more things. I give her fruitable juices and v-8 mixed with apple juice to supplement her vegetables but that’s not enough.

So as cheesy as this is, this Thanksgiving weekend (sometime) we are taking her to Golden Corral. I am hoping to offer for her to make her plate and see what she gravitates towards. Then I can encourage her to try things and track if we find any new favorites. I pray this works. This kid is lacking some nutrition it seems like.

I am happy to say that you can get Cooking with Brandy on the go.  I am now on Facebook, Twitter and Linked In.  We also have an RSS feed set up.  Please join me online or on  your mobile device for fun tips, tricks, recipes and reviews.  And talk it up a bit. I love to hear what all of you are up to in the culinary world.  Thanks for all your support. 

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Have you had to buy chip bag clips and thought to yourself, “Why am I paying $10.99 for three or four clips?” Well, I have great news you can get 22 various sizes of chips clips for a whopping $4.99! “How?” you say. Well, earlier this year my wonderful stepfather, Gary took Adam and I to a store we hadn’t heard of before, Harbor Freight Tools USA. I am sure most of you know of this store and think I’m in the dark ages, but needless to say, we spent over 90 minutes touching everything in the the place and leaving with tons of wonderful finds.  My favorite of course was the above mentioned clips listed as the 22 Piece Spring Clamp Set.  I bought them to hold up decorations at Zoey’s birthday party and now use them to hold various things in place, primarily as chip bag clip holders. Gary uses the clips a lot while fixing up his ‘59 Oldsmobile Super 88. He says he used them to hold the roof headliner up after gluing the edges to make sure it would dry in place. When he and my mom were on their way to Dothan last month to meet us for the Peanut Festival, they mentioned they were stopping off at Harbor Freight Tools USA on the way. Without missing a beat, I said “Can you grab two more of those chip clip things for Beth and Carol?” Now we are all happy mommy’s with not a stale chips, pretzel or bag of cereal in the house. Thank you HFT USA for The Best Chip Bag Clips Ever!

Note: Harbor Freight doesn’t have online shopping but they do have their inventory online and locations to stores near you.

My husband, Adam, designed a great logo called I Like Pi.  He has it posted on CafePress and we have ordered a shirt, magnets and a coffee mug and they turned out great. 

http://www.cafepress.com/ilikepi 

He chose a variety of items to add the logo to and they have done very well so far. I posted some photos of the most popular items below. For the last few years, Math teachers have purchased groups of the I Like Pi shirts for various math competitions.  I think that is so cool.  Great Job Adam!

I encourage you to post your cool designs there, you never know who will buy something. I plan on designing some items to post there so I can earn funds for my niece’s medical bills http://hopeformckenna.blogspot.com/

When you go to the grocery store and venture to the bread isle to grab your favorite slice, do you ever wonder when it was actually made and packaged.  I found out recently that the twist tie on the package is the time stamp for the bread’s freshness.  Bread is made and delivered 6 days a week, Monday through Saturday.  Each day of the week is assigned a color coded twisty tie for the end of the loaf.  The colors are alphabetically sorted through the days of the week. The bread in your grocer should have the freshness marked as follows:

Monday – Blue

Tuesday – Green

Wednesday – Orange

Thursday – Red

Friday – White

Saturday – Yellow

Now, if you decide to purchase these presliced breads, make sure you give them a light squeeze.   If the bread bounces back, then it is probably fresh.  When purchasing whole loaves, try cutting a chunk from one end and then obtaining your slices from the middle of the loaf, returning the end you cut back to the loaf before storing it.  Also, be sure that the packaging that the bakery placed the loaf in doesn’t have small holes. If so, you may want to transfer the unused bread to a storage bag.