If you are a busy mom like me, you definitely need EmailsforYou in your life.  This is an online service that helps you do customizable web based meal planning.  They will help you with recipes, shopping lists, wine pairings (I seriously needed this), techniques, and just overall ideas to help you!  You can get all of this for one year for $36!  Now, if you use the code COOKIN-23, I can save you an additional $8!  You will not find all of this elsewhere for this low of a price!  Think of it this way — this is just the cost of a dinner at a restaurant.  Cut that out, and you’ve got meal planning made easy for a whole year!  My personal favorite part of this site is that it will scale the recipes down for you (you can go as low as 2 people).  I personally hate having a recipe and standing there trying to figure out the math to cut it down (it has been a long time since I have had to divide fractions).  Now, since I have such great readers, I am able to give away 3 ten year memberships to their site!

How to Enter:  I need to know is your favorite recipe to make.  The recipes should be:

• makeable in 30 -40 minutes,
• using products and ingredients that you would normally have around the house,
• something you have made (no downloads from websites).

Your recipe also needs to fit under one of the categories listed here.

Besides the free memberships, the winners will have their recipes published both on the Emailsforyou blog and their site.  You will be given credit for the recipes on the sites too. I will also be mentioning the winners on a post on here with credit to you for a great recipe.  The judges for this contest will be me, EmealsForYou, Elizabeth from MomCooks.net, and Val from Fun, Crafts, and Recipes.

I’ll be running this contest until Dec. 15th at 8:00pm CST, so good luck.  I am looking forward to some new ideas to be making this holiday season!

For those of you who don’t know, I love chocolate.  I often like to post about chocolate.  I recently found out that chocolate is actually good for me.  Did you know . . . .

6 squares of dark organic chocolate taken at one time with a glass of red wine monthly helps with anti wrinkle assistance or

4 squares of organic milk chocolate 4-5 times a week helps with osteoporosis or

4 squares of dark organic chocolate helps with memory loss?

To quote the site:

The Chocolate Therapist also includes a brief history of chocolate, instructions on “how to eat chocolate properly,” chocolate recipes, an appendix with information on the glycemic index and weight loss, websites on where to find healthy chocolate, sugar-free chocolate, Gelt chocolate, international chocolates and much more. By the time you’ve finished reading, you’ll be happier, healthier and eating chocolate guilt free every day.

Now, this makes the perfect Christmas gift for any chocolate lover you know (including yourself), because not only do you get The Chocolate Therapist Book, but you get the chocolate too (and the chocolate is excellent)!  Who can resist that?  I love the next time someone asks why I am eating chocolate, I can show them the studies showing how good it is for me and hopefully whip out some of the chocolate trivia I have learned (like did you know that the higher quality of chocolate, the louder it snaps when you break it?).

Many of us have already seen the previews for the movie Blindness. If not, let me give you a short synopsis.  Blindness is based on a novel written by Jose Saramago. It is about how humanity acts when an epidemic happens. In this story, the epidemic is blindness. All those who are infected are quarantined into a mental asylum.  It is about how society can go a little wacky on itself in stressful times and how people truly do end up prevailing for the better of everyone.

There is a site dedicated to this film and its themes called i am blind.   It is all user generated content and has a very busy forum around the concepts discussed in this film.  They talk about what life would really be like if this happened.  However, they also have an excellent photostream of the last thing you would want to see if you would happen to go blind.  I am including this for my readers since the picture above is the only food picture on their photostream!

Image by chotda via Flickr

Now, there has to be a few more excellent food photos that definitely need to be included on there!  I’d like to see some cakes, ice cream, and even some chocolate.  Plus, if you think about, imagine how much better your food would taste.  There has been studies down about how if you lose one sense, they other ones get better.  I am sure the recipes on this blog would taste that much better!

What are some of the last things you would like to see if you were to go blind?

I’m lucky that my kids are still little, so they have no choice that we have family dinners almost every night.  However, I know many families that family dinners have fallen to the wayside to the activities of their children.  I love that Libby’s has teamed to together with Sara Evans to get families to eat together again in a program called Get Back To The Table.  This site is awesome to help you get your family back into doing family dinners.

Don’t know what to make for supper tonight (This is me every night - lol)?  Libby’s has a CANvenient Recipe Database you can check out and find some great dinner recipes.  There are also coupons, mealtime strategies, the 5 reasons you should be having dinner together tonight, and even a Q&A with Sara Evans.  Did you know that between her and her husband they have nine kids!!!

Make sure you also check out the Get Back To The Table site also because they are running an awesome contest.  You can win dinner backstage with Sara Evans!  All you need to do is tell them how you get your family around the kitchen table!  (And if you have some good tips and hints, make sure you let me know too!)

I love when I find a product that we can use on several items and in recipes.  Country Bob’s All Purpose Sauce is one of those products.  Not only can you use it in recipes such at meatloaf (more on that later), but you can use it on steak, hamburgers, pork, and chicken.  Personally, I am a ketchup person, but I may have found my ketchup replacement.

My husband made their meatloaf recipe the first night we had this.  I don’t normally care for meatloaf at all, so I wasn’t thrilled to be trying this sauce on something like that.  However, I was impressed.  The meatloaf was not dry, and it was awesome.  Not once did I feel the need to dip it in ketchup.  My kids even asked for seconds!  My husband wanted to know if there were more recipes we could try!  It is just as good on steaks and hamburgers too.

Country Bob has several other products you can try also:  BBQ Sauce, Seasoning Salt, and Spice All Purpose Sauce.  If they are as good as the All Purpose Sauce, then these are winners too!  Now, their product is good, but how about their site?  I love that too.  It is super easy to navigate.  You can easily find recipes to try and retail locations close to your house besides a ton of other stuff.  I found several local grocery stores by me that carry this besides the one I normally go to.  If you check out their online store, all of their products have free shipping!  If you are looking for a present, they have a cookbook and gift pack that would work out great!

Now, because I liked this product so much, I asked if I would be able to give a couple of my readers a chance to try this.  Of course, they said yes!  So Country Bob’s will be sending 2 lucky readers 2 bottles of their All Purpose Sauce.  What do you have to do to win this?

1.  Leave a comment on this post.  Check out Country Bob’s site and tell me what recipe you would like to try.  One comment please and let me know everything you did on that comment.  If you don’t list a feature, you are not eligible to win.
2. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
3. Vote for this post on other social media sites. One extra entry for each social media site you vote for this on.  (I’ll be adding some links to make this especially easy for you to vote — Digg, Propeller, Reddit, Mixx, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Entreview)
4.  Twitter about this contest.  Please leave me your Twitter name in your comment.

For 5 additional entries,

1.  Blog about this on your blog.  Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
2.  Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3.  Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed

This contest will run from now till August 27th at 8 PM CST.  It is for US residents only.  Good luck!