Month: July 2018

Take a sneak peek into the beginnings of your favorite influencers with LikeToKnow.It

Ever wondered how your favorite IG mavens got their start? The print offshoot of the app-based shopping service that makes the Instagram pics of many Instagram influencers instantly shoppable, LikeToKnow.it: Stories from the Influencer Next Door, delves into how these IG stars got their start.

Photo by Daria Litvinova on Unsplash

Collated and curated by editors of LikeToKnow.it, the stories contain interesting narratives of how these influencers were able to turn their passions – which range from fashion, beauty, food, interior design and homemaking – into thriving online businesses. Common themes among their stories that their fans can learn from are:

Passion for their area of interest.  These enterprising folks are tuned in to their passion, building expertise and credibility in their respective fields, and are motivated to share their favorites to the world.

Support from family and friends.  Building an online presence, especially on one’s own, is never easy, but with help and encouragement from their loved ones, they were able to pursue their dreams.

Great financial and personal rewards.  Having built their following and established their expertise, they are able to enjoy financial freedom.  Some are earning enough to support their families that their spouses quit their jobs to help them with their online business.  Others share their feeling of gratification at being paid to do what they love while spending more time with loved ones.

Photo by Igot Miske on Unsplash

Featured influencers include fashion mavens Molly Sims (@mollybsims) and Courtney Kerr (@KERRently), lifestyle gurus Liz Joy (@purejoyhome) and Kelly Larkin (@kellyinthecity), food and nutrition bloggers July Bauer Roth (@paleomg) and Tori Wesszer (@fraichenutrition), among others.

Photo by Chikeun Park on Unsplash

The stories, accompanied by gorgeous shots of influencers doing and sharing what they love best, will give readers a tantalizing inspiration to get started on bringing their own dreams to life. Note, though, these Q&A-type narratives are by no means comprehensive and do skip most of the early struggles and sacrifices that most businesses go through.

LikeToKnow.it: Stories from the Influencer Next Door, published by Greenleaf Book Group, will be released on September 18, 2018 and is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com!

Thanks to NetGalley and Greenleaf Book Group for the advanced reader copy.

This post contains affiliate links.

Photo Credits: Ewan Robertson, Daria Litvinova, Igor Miske and Chikeun Park on Unsplash

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Book gives tips on how to help kids appreciate healthy food

With all the fast food, microwaveables and sugar-laden fare easily available in malls and grocery stores, kids these days might be missing out on both the nutrients and flavors that healthy food brings. Earlier generations benefited from home-cooked meals and the time devoted by homemakers to acquiring fresh ingredients but today’s busy lifestyle sees families turning more towards food that is more convenient than truly nutritious.

In Taste Buds: The Magic and Fun of Sensible Food, author Nicolette Francey Asselin shares food-based wisdom gathered from her childhood memories and her medical practice. This booklet is the fourth installment in a series of health books released by Getwell.org. Among her notable pieces of advice are:

Avoid using dessert as a reward. This implies that the meal already laid on the table is not the best.

Keep meals simple. Time- and effort-intensive dishes for weekday meals are neither practical nor sustainable given today’s busy lifestyle.

Involve the kids. Getting them to participate in meal preparation – such as chopping vegetables or fetching tools or ingredients – will help them develop an appreciation for the effort that goes into getting a good meal on the table.

Asselin also included a few simple recipes of healthy dishes that she grew up with such as roasted vegetables, ratatouille, a basic vinaigrette for salads and muesli, among others, as well as instructions on how to pickle or ferment foodstuffs at home.

This is a short book and I think she could have expounded more on some sections such as how to balance meat, poultry, seafood and produce in the weekly menu or how to enjoy healthy food outside the home through quick and easy meal preparation strategies.

That said, this book can provide an adequate impetus to start cooking and eating healthier.

Taste Buds: The Magic and Fun of Sensible Food, published by CorpWell Publishing, is available in Kindle format on Amazon.com.

Thanks to NetGalley and CorpWell Publishing for the copy of the ebook provided in exchange for an honest review.

This post contains affiliate links.

 

Want to start cooking fresh and healthy? There’s no need to leave home to shop for ingredients.  With Honestbee, just order your groceries online and you’ll get them delivered right at your doorstep at your preferred time. Use this referral link and get Php500 off for a minimum spend of Php2,500.  You can download the Honestbee app on iTunes or Google Play.

If you’re in the US and an Amazon Prime member, sign up for a free trial of Amazon Fresh to get your groceries delivered to you.

Love books and reading? Try Kindle Unlimited on Amazon and read from thousands of ebooks available in the Kindle Unlimited catalog. of Get your first month FREE.

No Kindle device? Download the Kindle App ebook reader for FREE to read your favorite books anytime and anywhere.

No time to read? Listen to your favorite books instead while you drive, run, shop, and more.  Try Audible for free for 30 days and get two free audiobooks.

Country songstress Martina McBride shares recipes close to her heart in upcoming cookbook, Martina’s Kitchen Mix

In her cookbook to be released this fall, Martina’s Kitchen Mix: My Recipe Playlist for Real Life, country superstar Martina McBride shares her passion other than singing: cooking meals for her family and friends to enjoy.

McBride’s recipes reveal her predilection for entertaining and family gatherings centered around good food and great stories.

Having grown up in a Kansas farm, McBride is no stranger to the kitchen; even at an early age, she began helping her mother in preparing meals with fresh-from-the-field ingredients. Over the years, her travels as a country music singer has exposed her to more gastronomic influences, particularly the use of organic foods and healthy diets, which she has applied to her home cooking.

I like the book’s mixture of recipes and family insider stories, particularly the tweaks that McBride does on the recipes which she labeled “Adlibs.” The book is by no means a strict stick-to-the-recipe cookbook – even the author improvises from time to time! It really does welcome the reader to McBride’s kitchen and some aspects of her life. Plus, the food styling on the gorgeous photos that accompany some of the recipes are really superb.

Some of the ingredients may be expensive or hard-to-find here in the Philippines, but home cooks can draw inspiration from the recipes for their own culinary masterpieces.

Martina’s Kitchen Mix: My Recipe Playlist for Real Life, published by Oxmoor House will be released on October 30, 2018. It is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com.

Thanks to NetGalley and Oxmoor House for the advanced copy of the ebook in exchange for an honest review.

This post contains affiliate links.

Check our Martina McBride’s other cookbook:

Love books and reading? Try Kindle Unlimited on Amazon and read from thousands of ebooks available in the Kindle Unlimited catalog. of Get your first month FREE.

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Poignant recollections of the Holocaust in My Real Name Is Hanna by Tara Lynn Masih

In 1941, a family of Jews live comfortably in northern Ukraine town of Kwasova, integrated with neighbors of other faiths. The eldest girl, Hanna Slivka, has just turned fourteen when the Germans invaded then Soviet-occupied Ukraine, determined to rid the shtetl of Jews. She, together with her family and other Jewish friends, were forced into hiding, first in the forests that surround their town, and second in underground caves believed to harbor evil spirits.

Inspired by real events that occured during the Holocaust, the story in My Real Name is Hanna is a retelling of Hanna’s childhood to her daughter. Being a recollection of memories of one of the most terrifying real-life events in history, it has a poignant tone that imbue the narrative with emotion and tension. The narrative is further interspersed with both Ukrainian and Jewish folklore – the making of Easter pysanky eggs, using wax to scry for one’s future husband, and the giving of birthday gifts to ward off evil for the year – making the story even more personal and grounded in that location and within their community.

In her debut novel, Tara Lynn Masih chronicles the intensifying hardships of Hanna’s family in particular and the Jews in general. It starts with restrictions on the food they can buy, the businesses they can engage in, until later, Jews are seized and made to travel north to the work camps. Some Jewish Romaninan prisoners, as revealed by the family’s informants, were made to cross a deep river and were either drowned or shot in the back when they made it to the banks, all while classical music is being played on the Gestapo’s gramophone.

Masih’s novel couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time: today, there are voices spewing words of hate about other groups of people, and the appeal to intellect and rationality has given way to emotional outbursts over real and imagined slights.  The author explains that given her young adult audience, she did leave out “some of the more nightmarish events.”  But what she did leave in are heart-wrenching enough.

Even more heart-wrenching are the actions of the people who helped Hanna’s family despite great personal danger: from the neighbor who gives them crosses to place on their door to hide their Jewishness during a raid, to the people who served as their contact to the outside world while they were in hiding.

As the novel ends, the family survived but to get their visas and be on their way to freedom in a new country, they needed to change their names.  This is why the retelling to her daughter begins and ends with her real name, and with it, the acceptance of what has happened before and since.

Masih’s story is brilliantly told with a relatable and sympathetic narrator.  The events described are grounded in history, and all the more horrifying because of it.

My Real Name is Hanna, published by Mandel Vilar Press, will be released on September 15, 2018. It is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com.

Thanks to NetGalley and Mandel Vilar Press for the advanced read.

This post contains affiliate links.

Love books and reading? Try Kindle Unlimited on Amazon and read from thousands of books available in the Kindle Unlimited catalog. Get your first month FREE.

No Kindle device? Download the Kindle App for FREE to read your favorite books anytime and anywhere.

No time to read? Listen to your favorite books instead while you drive, run, shop, and more.  Try Audible for free for 30 days and get two free audiobooks.

Recipe: Thai Peanut Sauce

I admit: I did have my doubts about the Smoke & Fire Peanut Butter that Fix & Fogg sent me to try out. I was intrigued at the concept of a smokey and spicy peanut butter ever since I heard about it; I just didn’t know what to do with this variant.

Fix & Fogg is a maker of small batch peanut butter based in Wellington, New Zealand. Its peanut butter variants have just become available in the Philippines, stocked in retail outlets like All Day Supermarkets, Cartel Deli, Earth Origins Marketplace and Power Plant Market, as well as distributed online via websites such as Beauty MNL, Gerald.PH and the Green Grocer.

While I have recently grown to appreciate some spicy food, thanks in large part to my passion for Korean dishes, I usually shy away from these as my palate gravitates more towards sweet and/or salty food.

Fortunately, my daughter, #ExhibitA, was feeling adventurous and volunteered to cook dinner while incorporating this peanut butter into the recipe. So, last Friday night, after a long day at the office, I came home to a culinary masterpiece courtesy of my darling baby girl.

She basically pan-fried a half-kilo of porkchops seasoned with salt and pepper in olive oil. Then, she set about making a Thai peanut sauce based on a recipe from Epicurious, adjusted due to availability of ingredients and to taste.

Fix and Fogg

Ingredients:

Procedure:

  • With the motor running, drop the ginger and garlic clove into your blender. Blend until the ingredients are finely chopped.
  • Add the peanut butter, soy sauce, lemon juice, sugar and water, then blend until smooth. Add in more water by tablespoonfuls to thin the mixture.

This recipe yields 2 cups of the peanut sauce, equivalent to 8 servings, with approximately 47 calories per serving.

You can make this sauce ahead of time. Place in a container with a lid then chill. It will keep for 3 days. Bring to room temperature before serving.

It went well with the pork chops, adding a citrusy zing and a spicy bite to the viand. The sauce may also be used as a salad dressing or as an accompaniment to lettuce wrapped minced chicken.

Want to try this recipe today? There’s no need to leave home to shop for ingredients.  With Honestbee, just order your groceries online and you’ll get them delivered right at your doorstep at your preferred time. Use this referral link and get Php500 off for a minimum spend of Php2,500.  You can download the Honestbee app on iTunes or Google Play.

If you’re in the US and an Amazon Prime member, sign up for a free trial of Amazon Fresh to get your groceries delivered to you.

Disclosure: Fix & Fogg provided product samples for me to review.  Reactions and opinions about the product are my own.

Recipe: Oatmeal Peanut Butter Breakfast Balls

It is a cliche already but breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It fires up your metabolism and gets you going for the rest of the day.

However, in the rush of morning chores and preparations to leave for work or school, family members seldom have the time to prepare and eat breakfast. Fortunately, I came across some recipes for Oatmeal Peanut Butter Breakfast Balls on Pinterest that seem easy to prepare in advance over the weekend and just take out and serve for a quick breakfast before leaving the house.

Another lucky break for me is getting a Super Crunchy Peanut Butter among the sampler jars that Fix & Fogg sent for me to try out.

Fix & Fogg is a maker of small batch peanut butter based in Wellington, New Zealand. Its peanut butter variants have just become available in the Philippines, stocked in retail outlets like All Day Supermarkets, Cartel Deli, Earth Origins Marketplace and Power Plant Market, as well as distributed online via websites such as Beauty MNL, Gerald.PH and the Green Grocer.

I tweaked the original recipe: substituting instant for rolled oats, replacing walnuts with some chopped cashew nuts that I bought from Antipolo, using semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of the regular ones and taking out raisins (because I’m not too wild about them).

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup instant oats
  • 1/3 cup honey
  • 1/2 cup Fix & Fogg Super Crunchy Peanut Butter
  • 1/2 cup chopped cashew nuts
  • 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

Procedure:

  1. Mix all ingredients together in a large mixing bowl.
  2. Using a small ice cream scoop, scoop up the mixture to form domes. (I had to firmly pat down the mixture into the scoop to get some properly shaped domes. If the mixture is not tightly packed, it will easily crumble once you take it off the scoop.)
  3. Freeze for an hour or until the balls are firm.
  4. Store in airtight resealable bags inside the chiller.
  5. Take out the balls you plan to have for breakfast a few minutes before serving (like while you’re still making your coffee).

Recipe yields 22 breakfast balls. Each ball has approximately 87 calories.

My little boy tried one and he immediately wanted another!

Want to try this recipe today? There’s no need to leave home to shop for ingredients.  With Honestbee, just order your groceries online and you’ll get them delivered right at your doorstep at your preferred time. Use this referral link and get Php500 off for a minimum spend of Php2,500.  You can download the Honestbee app on iTunes or Google Play.

If you’re in the US and an Amazon Prime member, sign up for a free trial of Amazon Fresh to get your groceries delivered to you.

Disclosure: Fix & Fogg provided product samples for me to review.  Reactions and opinions about the product are my own.