durhamonthecheap

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Book Review: The Survivor by DiAnn Mills

I came across this book of all places on Booksneeze.com, which usually caters to books with a Christian theme. The summary for this book made it appear an odd choice for such a website.

The author DiAnn Mills is one of the founding board members of the American Christian Fiction Writers and I think her works show that Christian books can be just as entertaining and gripping as books by any other author. Because this book is both action-filled and a real gripping mystery story that keeps you turning the page, wanting to find out whether the heroine can be saved.

available on amazon.com here

The summary can be briefly stated as Kariss, our heroine, meets the survivor of a brutal childhood attack, who is finally ready to tell her story to Kariss. As Kariss begins to jot down the traumatic events of long ago, she becomes deeper and deeper entangled into a mystery of her own that ends up posing mortal danger to her. Too bad that Kariss had previously broken up with FBI agent Santiago Harris. But as Kariss gets closer to the danger, Santiaga, called Tigo for short, comes into the story again and the author does a very good job of interweaving the story line with the personal struggles of the protagonists. Even the biggest heroes are not without fault and so we learn about parenting, lies, infidelity as Tigo tries to save Kariss from the evil that seems to haunt her now.

I like the way that DiAnn Mills add Christian themes to the storyline without ever becoming a preacher. While she clearly tries to paint examples of Christians that overcome struggles and turn out to be better people in the end, she also tells a very good thriller that just happens to involve people, whose religion is an important part of their character.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary book through booksneeze.com in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed in this blog are solely my own and have not been influenced by booksneeze or any third party.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

New Orleans in the Triangle - semi-homemade Beignets

One of my favorite spots in New Orleans is Cafe du Monde. While anyone that loves coffee will enjoy New Orleans, what sets Cafe du Monde apart from the rest of the outdoor cafes in New Orleans are their phenomenal beignets.

Thanks to the name recognition of the Cafe du Monde brand, the beignet mix is available in local grocery stores, such as Kroger, and allows everyone to experience the beignets right at home. This weekend, I felt like enjoying some beignets and coffee rather than cake or other pastries. Beignets are light, not as greasy as donuts. With their light sprinkle of powdered sugar, a couple of beignets together with a nice cup of coffee and cream is the perfect way to relax while reading the newspaper or doing the crossword puzzle.

Here is the website of the Original Cafe Du Monde in the French Quarter of new Orleans. Here you can order your beignet mix, if you do not find it in the local grocery stores. While even the best homemade beignets can not bring New Orleans to your home, they still go very well with a nice cup of coffee and a light, tasty snack! By the way, for those readers familiar with the Cafe Du Monde Beignets, yes mine are round not square, but I did not have a square form to cut the dough with.

So if you are looking for a quick snack, grab some of the Beignet mix from your grocery store. The preparation is very easy. Add some water to the mix, roll the dough out thinly on a flowered surface and cut out beignet size pieces (either square or round). Then drop the dough into an inch of hot oil and the beignets should become puffy and pop up from the oil in about 8 to 10 seconds. Turn them around to ensure that the beignets are golden brown on both sides. Take them out of oil onto a wire rack for cooling and sprinkle the beignets with some powdered sugar right before serving with a good cup of coffee. Enjoy!

My new favorite bag: Francesco Biasia

One of my weaknesses are handbags. I do not buy a lot of them and usually buy one every three or five years, but I do like nice quality handbags that can last me many years.

This is a bag from a new Italian designer, at least new to me, Francesco Biasia. His main website is still in Italian, so I hate to link to it because I cannot make real sense of it the content, but it does have nice images of handbags.

So enjoy some images from his current collections here. I got this handbag online and of course used a coupon to make it affordable. I had done plenty of surveys to earn a $100 off coupon to an online discount site that made this nice leather handbag actually quite affordable. I love the color and the leather is so soft; it feels wonderful when carrying the handbag. The handbag is very spacious; it can fit a 15inch laptop and still does not look like one of the boring laptop bags.

Here you can get a better view of the size of the bag. The handles are quite comfortable, but I usually wear it on my shoulder and the nice, broad strap makes the bag, even fully loaded with laptop and files, comfortable and the strap never cuts into the shoulder.

What is not seen on the images is the inside of the bag. The material inside is made in contrasting color with a very light, pale pink, almost blush colored. There is large zipped pocket and two smaller pockets for keys and smartphone. In addition, the bag can be closed with a zipper to secure all the contents.

Overall, I am very happy with this bag and the price was in the end very nice. It may not be designer name like Coach or Dooney and Bourke, but in terms of quality, Italian elather handbags are hard to beat. In addition, this design is very unique and the bag is extremely comfortable and useful for taking to work everyday.

Cheap, but good eats: Spaghetti with ham, eggs and cheese

This week, Aldi had pasta on sale earlier this year. Their Reggano Linguine or Fettuccine at 16 oz was only $0.99. I love pasta because it is such a versatile ingredient and can always be used for a quick dinner that can filling, but light.

Today, I fixed one of our favorite dishes. A light version of Spaghetti Carbonara. I cooked the linguine. Then in a large pan used some buttery spread to create a nice, liquid base. You can use real butter or one of the reduced fat spreads, depending on how low fat you want to go. Once the spread is melted, add the cooked pasta. I like to now add a generous amount of freshly ground black pepper to add some flavor.

Then I used some of the ham lunchmeat that Aldi has regularly stocked. It comes in the 16oz package and is less than $4.00. I sliced it into the thin strips that I added to the pasta. Then I scrambled one egg, added the egg right before serving and cooked the mixture enough to just scramble the egg lightly in the pasta. I never add the egg too early because it tends to get very dry and I feel that leaving the scrambled egg a little bit soft creates a better egg flavor.

Adding the pasta mix to each bowl, I add some shredded cheese and Maggi, which is an MSG-containing meat extract and very popular in Germany. Instead of Maggi, you can try adding some soy sauce for some additional flavor.

In the end, you have a filling, but light dinner and at a bargain price! I usually serve some fresh fruit salad or canned fruit, such as peaches, with the meal.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Product Review: Goodies Co. Chocolate Lovers Box

I WON!! I WON!!! - No kidding, I actually won something and it is a very nice prize. Goodies.co had on their Facebook a contest, in which they solicited pictures of "Better Together". They were interested in what their subscribes thought would be natural pairings, such as peanut butter and appeals or carrots and dip. I submitted an image that I had taken some ago, which showed a plate of dark chocolate with banana slices and red currants.

So my prize arrived today, a Goodies.co Chocolate Lovers box, which was also sold as the Valentine's Day Special. The box contained a collection of wonderful items:

Flourless Bliss - Chocolate Souffle Mix
Alter Eco - Dark Coconut Toffee Chocolate
Alter Eco - Dark Mint Chocolate
Alter Eco - Dark Twist Chocolate
Brownie Brittle - Chocolate Chip
Bobby Sue's Nuts - It's Raining Chocolate
Mayesa - Cacao Mint

copyright Durhamonthecheap - this will feed my sweet tooth for some time!

As you can see, the box contains a wonderful variety of chocolate-flavored or -containing items. I am particularly excited about the three bars of Alter Eco chocolate. A bar from that company was in my first ever Goodies Co. box and I absolutely loved the dark chocolate made by Alter Eco. I have also had the chocolate souffle and loved that as well. The other three items are totally new and so I will be carefully sampling them and reporting back on my blog about the items. Chocolate covered nuts are alway good and chocolate brittle is an item that I am already wondering why I did not think of that before. The chocolate drink comes in the perfect size to take to lunch at work, so this will likely get used this week. I think with all the wonderful items in the box I may have to watch out that I am not going to suffer from chocolate overload due to me overindulging on the win!

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Harris Teeter: Double your coupons up to and including $2 - review of Campbells Go soup Coconut Curry!

I sometimes blog about my shopping trip, but super doubles at Harris Teeter makes this difficult because I end up with so many good deals.

This week is super doubles week again at HT and on Saturday my shopping ended up with two huge shopping bags and a gallon of milk. Regarding the milk, one thing I really appreciate about Harris Teeter recently is the regular sales on milk. For me the milk was an eVic special, valid on Saturday only, but at less than $3 a gallon, this was a bargain that I combined with my weekly shopping on super doubles week.

I had plenty of coupons worth $2 and also used several that were worth $1. I noticed that super doubles will only be doubled up to the price of the item that your purchase; Harris Teeter does not provide overage anymore. This may be specific to the store on the intersection of Hwy54/55 in S. Durham. I will go to another Harris Teeter and verify this. I would be interested in hearing whether Harris Teeter in other areas still produce overage during super doubles weeks.

One of the nice things about super doubles week is the fact that you can use the big savings to go on some product discovery. I did just that with the Campbells Go soups. I had heard some bzz around these soups on the internet and decided to give it a try. In part I was attracted to the soup because they have a variety entitled Coconut Curry. I love Curry and I love Coconut, so I of course purchased that variety. All the flavors are listed here. The benefit of these soups and I guess the origin of the name "Go" comes from the convenience of these soups. They come in microwaveable bags. You simply make a small tear into the bag, microwave them for a couple of minutes and pour the soup into two bowls; there are two servings per bag. The salt content is quite high, but I figured sticking to the serving size, adding some boiled rice to make the soup a filling meal, I could handle the higher than usual salt content.

The flavor was good, quite spicy and you could taste both the curry and the coconut. Overall, I liked the soup and the preparation is hard to beat in terms of convenience. What made this Go soup such a good deal was the fact that you could download a digital coupon from Harris Teeter for $2 off two Go soups (priced locally around $3), combine that with an available catalina coupon from the cash register to save another $1.50 and stack it finally with a $1off Facebook coupon available here. This makes the Go soups practically free and ideal to try out for the first time during the super doubles week at Harris Teeter.

So go to Harris Teeter, enjoy super doubles and maybe make your own product discovery!

Product review: Kroger Greek and Carbsmart Yogurts

As part of bzzagent, I received a giftcard and some coupons to try out new Kroger yogurts that are intended to be healthy and a cost conscious alternative to other brandname products. I have been a long-time user of Kroger storebrand products, such as Private Selection, and so I was more than willing to try a budget friendly alternative in yogurts since yogurts tend to be quite expensive in the USA compared to other countries, such as Germany or France.

In this post I will review the Carbmaster Kroger yogurt in the flavor of spiced pear. As you can see from the flavor selection, Carbmaster also comes in some more novel flavors. I had previously tried spiced pear yogurt in Europe and really like the flavor. I was happy to see that it was available in the Kroger Carbmaster series.

The yogurt tasted excellent and I was happy to see that the yogurt, despite being a store-brand and quite affordably priced (on sale for 40 cents) contains good sized chunks of fruit.The yogurt has a creamy texture, was smooth and the fruit flavor was good. I was surprised by how creamy the yogurt was. It seemed to me more on the liquid, soft side compared to what I remember the usual Kroger store brand yogurt is like. I really like it and I am happy that it seems to come in more flavors, such as pomegranate, that may be introduced to appeal to shoppers with a more healthy lifestyle.

The yogurt is truly low in carbs, containing only 1% total carbohydrate (and also no fiber). Not sure that I am happy about the low fiber since I was worried that it would not be a filling snack, if eaten between meals. But the yogurt did serve as a good in between meals snack that was also low in calories, with only 60 calories.
Overall, I am happy that Kroger with its budget friendly store-brand is expanding into the more health conscious lines. At 40 cents a snack, this is a very affordable alternative to carrot sticks and dip.

Disclaimer: I received a giftcard to be used towards purchasing Kroger Carbsmart Yogurt courtesy of bzzagent. The opinions expressed in this blog are solely my own and have not been influenced by Kroger, bzzagent or any third party.