Friday Happy Hour #1

Welcome to Friday Happy Hour!  Check out all of the interesting things Kelly and Tamara found this week.  Grab a glass of your favorite beverage, enjoy and cheers!

• This study came out recently and got a lot of attention.  It seemed like every news group carried this, in print, on tv and on the internet.  Really, egg yolks are as bad as smoking?  Come on, give me a break.  If you read about the study, it is pretty much a joke but it does make for a nice headline for mainstream media.  The study is based on retrospective questionnaires without corrections for variables such as age, lifestyle, stress, etc.  Mark Sisson over at Mark's Daily Apple has a great rebuttal article. Hartke also has a great rebuttal article for you to check out!  I will stick with my farm fresh eggs…the whites and the yolks, thank you very much!

• Healthy fast food?  An oxymoron?  This article mentions 8 different healthy fast food restaurants.  Pretty cool concepts here.  I have no idea how clean their food really is, but hopefully these walk the walk, not just talk the talk!  While I love to eat homemade food, we all have a need for a quick meal to go sometimes.  And funny that a founder of one of the restaurants was the former president of McDs.  Unfortunately, the only one of these we have in the Chicago area is Native Foods, which I have yet to try.    Have you eaten at any of these?  How are they?
• Has anyone tried any online menu planning/recipe keeping system?  I struggle with keeping my recipes organized.  I have post it notes marking recipes in cookbooks, a binder with printed out recipes from the internet, and a notebook with random recipes and notes.  I feel I can never find anything!  I have read about this site on a few blogs now and it seems to get rave reviews.  Anyone using it?  It seems like it'd be great.  Hmmm…maybe I will give it a try some day.

• This recipe for Magic Bars.  Does anyone else love Magic Bars as much as I do?  Cookie crust, gooey middle, with coconut, nuts, and chocolate chips on top – YUM!  I have been trying to find a good recipe without sweetened condensed milk as an ingredient.  I found this recipe the other day, made them, and FINALLY a magic bar as good as I hoped it would be.

• Did you know that Hyatt Hotels is going to offer an organic menu for kids?  Alice Waters, world class chef and pioneer of the organic/sustainable food philosophy, has teamed up with Hyatt to form the children's menu and to have a small 3 course meal offering featuring organic, local cuisine.  I love her philosphy that “All children deserve to eat real food – fresh, seasonal, organic, and delicious.”  Something to think about when you make your next hotel reservation for a trip!  Good job, Hyatt!
• Someone I love dearly posted this on Pinterest.  I almost cried at how terrible the advice is.  Terrible!!