Blueberry Yogurt Popsicles

Homemade Popsicles are all the rage in food circles this year. They blow those plastic tubes of neon colored sugar water Popsicles I grew up with out of the water!

I officially declare 2011 The Summer of the Popsicle. It's a nice follow up to 2010 The Summer of the S'more.

My family discovered frozen fruit bars last summer. I felt better about serving a snack that is fruit and juice. It became spendy because a box never lasted more than a few days after I brought it home from the store.

Lo and behold, the winter holidays dropped a family gift of a set of  BPA free plastic Popsicle molds from the Soft Landing (hi Alicia!) our chimney. Thanks, Santa me!

Last week Mother Nature turned off the cold and turned up the heat to full blast. Ahhhh, a nice homemade frozen fruit bar would be refreshing in this weather.

Green Extreme Couponing – Update

What I do is more like Green Normal Couponing because I don’t clear store shelves of mustard or want to create the world’s biggest stockpile. I don’t buy a newspaper, let alone 6, or swipe coupon inserts from foreclosed homes or dumpsters. I stick to the coupons I get in the Tuesday mailer and the 2 coupon limit I can print from my computer from the major coupon or manufacturer sites. That’s it.

I don’t spend hours searching the Internet for deals either. I check We Use Coupons maybe once a week when I’m doing my regular Web surfing.  The We Use Coupons forums have deals organized by store name and a section for organic and natural products. They post the coupon and sale match ups every week. Often they post unadvertised sales and price drops that I would normally miss. Thanks coupon people!

So how am I doing?

This is an example of my coupon purchases for the month of  April 2011.

Neither of these photos is of a weekly shopping trip. 

I Ate My Way Around the Asian Festival

You don’t expect Columbus to be such a multicultural city since we are smack dab in the middle of Farm Country. However, we have a very large international population because of Ohio State University and the nearby Honda assembly plant. Our Asian grocery stores are just as a good or better than the Asian grocery stores I visit in Chinatown in New York City.

All of that becomes to one big wonderful weekend of food, culture, and performances at the Columbus Asian Festival.

I eat a lot of Asian style food. I was heavily influenced by a trip to Japan and Hong Kong and started learning and experimenting as soon as I got home. It’s healthy (depending upon the ingredients of course), fairly inexpensive because it’s generally a little of this and a little of that as opposed to the American meal of big hunk of meat, big pile of starch and maybe some vegetables. I also like that most Asian food is quick. I likes me a quick meal.

I always appreciate the cultural exhibits. Blitzkrieg liked the Japanese tea house in the children’s area the best.

Photo courtesy of my other blog Condo Blues