My first post for 2009 & another article published!

I believe it's good juju to start my 2009 blogging with some awesome news on my part. I'm once again thrilled and over-the-moon that another article of mine has been published in the Jan/Feb '09 issue of Travelife! Yay! Toot-toot! :) (It was also this same time last year when my first ever article was published in the same magazine. )

It's a 6-page story I wrote about the road trip I took from San Francisco up to Vancouver, BC in the middle of last year along with some of the photos I took along the way. I plan to blog about that later (when I finally get cracking on the backlog of posts, a backlog that seems to have taken on a life of its own and is growing by the day!), but the article pretty much tells it all.

This issue is packed with lots of other exciting and entertaining travel tales about St. Petersburg, Kenya, and cooking lessons in Calabria, Italy among many others. So grab a copy when you can and let the writers take you away with them!

It's really such a thrill to see my name on print and to be able to share the things that make me happy. So I'm grateful once again to Terrie and Liza for giving me the chance to do so. :)

Happy Halloween !

nataliedee.com

I'm off to Kuala Lumpur tonight with some friends and will be there until Sunday morning. Just a short and quick weekend adventure with the girls. :) I'm really looking forward to all the amazing Malay, Chinese and Indian food waiting for us! I've been to KL once before, but it was for work and I didn't have much time do anything else. But I do remember loving every non-fastfood meal I had there.

I promise to be back with stories and photos and I dare promise to post about it immediately. Seriously. Hopefully this will kick-start my posting into gear! :) I know it will!

I hope you all have a fun and freaky Halloween weekend! :) To those of you hitting the road, have fun but be safe!

My word cloud

Create your own word cloud here! :)

A super special delivery

When my sweet friend D offered to send me a sample basket of her organic produce, I expected, well , just a small sampling. Instead, I woke up to the super generous and colorful bounty you see in the photo above (there's a lot more in the basket you don't see: more potatoes, onions, kalamansi , another head of broccoli, another head of cauliflower, a zucchini and more tomatoes)! Don't they look gorgeous? It made me wish instantly that I didn't have to leave for work that day. I wanted to stay home and admire my lovely present and make delicious things with them. In an ideal world, that's how that special day would have played out, with the time to blog about each and every one of the dishes.

But in reality, I barely had time to arrange the veggies and shoot this photo before I grabbed some breakfast and dressed for work. Since that day though, we've enjoyed the freshness and all-natural goodness of these vegetables in simple dishes such as tortang talong, spanish omelettes, cauliflower au gratin, eggplant parmesan, steamed broccoli in oyster sauce, and tortilla de patata. The super crisp lettuce & juicy tomatoes I take with me to work for a nice lunch salad along with various other toppings, and all the carrots have already gone into the juicer with either oranges, grapefruit, celery and/or cucumber, melon, mango etc. (boy, do I love my fresh juice!!) :)

I'm really enjoying this stash! So much so that I've asked D to put me in her 'system', with an every-other-week order. I'm really loving how accessible all these locally-grown organic fruits (she'll be adding mangoes, papaya and bananas to the next batch:) ) and veggies are becoming, giving busy people like myself the opportunity to support local farmers.

I've also placed an order with another local organic farmer to try, the same one Joey ordered from and who was introduced to us by our dear friend, Katrina. (Thanks, Kat!:)) He delivered his produce this morning, looking just like Joey's in her photo, along with a dozen organic eggs, 2 papayas and one mabolo fruit. :) I can't wait to try everything!

Thank you, dear sweet D, for such a lovely and healthy present! :)

Boom-de-ah-da!

This has to be the best commercial ever made. I love it! And I love sharing the stuff I love, so here it is for those of you who haven't seen it yet. :)




Our world really is just awesome! :)