Well, the holidays are over--again!  There’s so much excitement leading up to them, and then they fly by so quickly.  It’s kind of a bummer--I love the holidays.   But onward and forward, there’s a whole new year ahead of us, so let’s make it a great one!

I was contacted right before the holidays by Bill Geronimo at Eat Smart Products.  He wanted to know if I’d like to test drive one of their kitchen scales and give it a review.   Since I had a horrible scale to begin with, I very graciously said “Hell,  yes!”  Or something like that.  Let me say right here that I am not being paid for my review, but did receive the scale at no charge.  Ok?  Ok.

I’ve always wanted a really good kitchen scale that would measure accurately, but didn’t want to pay a fortune for it, either.  Eat Smart Products enters the picture, and--you guessed it!  Accurate, easy to use scales at extremely reasonable prices.   Bill sent me the EatSmart Precision Pro - Multifunction Digital Kitchen Scale w/ Extra Large LCD and 11 Lb. Capacity:

It is just that--precision, multifunction, with an extra large display--and the 11 lb capacity comes in very handy!  It’s very easy to use, and comes with an instruction book--plus a book that helps you calculate calories in tons of foods.  Turn the scale to “grams” mode, place a plate on it and tare to zero, multiply the weight of the food by the “Calorie Factors” listed in the book, and there you go--that’s how many calories are in the food you just weighed.  How great is that?  There are 16 pages of foods listed for you to calculate.   You can also choose from white, red, silver, black/chrome or white/chrome for your scale.  One more thing?  It doesn’t take up a lot of room, so it’s great even for those of you with tiny kitchens.  I’m looking at you, Heather…

It’s got a very stable base, and don’t  let the light weight of the scale itself fool you--it’s a hard worker!  It takes regular batteries, switches from English to metric, and can weigh in ounces, pounds, grams, and kilograms.  We’ve been weighing all kinds of things.  For some reason, the kids think it’s very cool to weigh stuff. 

With so many people having made New Year’s Resolutions, and trying to start the new year off by eating healthier, this is a great way to be sure you’re eating well and not overdoing it on portion sizes. 

So would I recommend the EatSmart Precision Pro?  Just like I said earlier, hell yes!  A huge thank you going out to Bill and EatSmartProducts.com for the complimentary scale and the chance to review it!

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Project #1:

Project 365

What is it?  It’s simply taking a photo a day for 365 days.  It’s been going on for a few years, but it’s my first year doing  it.  There are some Flickr groups you can join to add your photos to.  Or you can start a simple photo blog to record your year in photos.  I have been uploading mine to a set on Flickr, and to a photo gallery here on my blog.   So far, it’s a lot of fun--and it’ll be great to look back at the end of the year and remember what I was thinking or doing on a particular day.  What a great diary! 

It’s not too late to start, if any of you are interested. 

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Project #2:

My new favorite cookbook: Vegan Yum Yum.  It’s packed with recipes.  Packed!  A gorgeous photo of every recipe, too.  I was looking at it the other day thinking “How am I ever going to make everything in this book?”   (You can see a bit more about the book here.)

Right then, I decided I’d make at least one recipe per week from it.  I’m not going to try to jam it all into one year--that’s silly.  One recipe a week.  If I miss one, no sweat.  If a main ingredient is seasonal and not available at the time, I’ll go to the next one and then return to that recipe when it’s more feasible. 

I put the word out on twitter and Facebook, and have a small group of minions to go through the book with me. 

Would anyone else care to join?  Just let me know--either in a comment here, or email me using the contact form here on the blog. 

There are only two rules:

1)  You must get a copy of Vegan Yum Yum.  It’s very reasonably priced at Amazon.

2)  No recipes will be posted on our blogs.  If anyone wants one of the recipes, they’ll need to buy the book or find the recipe elsewhere.  It’s not my intention to post someone’s cookbook online, recipe by recipe. 

I’m thinking a good start date would be Monday, February 1st.  So let me know of you’d care to join--it’s a great way to get some healthy recipes into your diet, and also--if you’ve never eaten vegan foods, you may find out it’s not so mysterious.  And it can be delicious!