This Mama Cooks! On a Diet

The coupons are in the mail

Congratulations to the winners of my Smart People Drink Milk and Milk is Brain Food contests.

My apologies not getting the word out quicker to my readers. I'm in the middle of Spring Break and preparing for the two blogging workshops I'm giving at the Northern Colorado Writer's Conference on Friday and Saturday.

Here's the lucky people who got the coupons for a FREE sample half-gallon of Horizon Organic's new DHA Omega-3 milk:

• Aimee B.
• Summer at Wired for Noise
• Lisa of Workout Mommy

And if you didn't win, you can get some cents off coupons at the Horizon Organic website. I got a $1 off a half-gallon of the DHA milk and some coupons for their yogurts.

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The "Smart People Drink Milk" contest

Recently I posted a product review of Horizon Organic's new DHA Omega-3 milk. Docosahexaenoic Acid, or DHA, is a type of Omega-3 fatty acid that has been studied for its role in heart, brain and eye health.

As part of Brain Awareness Week/Month I'm giving away 3 Horizon Organic coupons good for any ONE FREE Horizon's product up to $4.99 (excluding gallon milk and 16 oz. butter) in value.

To Enter:

1. Leave your name, email address, and blog address (if you have one) in the comments below.
2. You must be willing to send me your full name and address so I can mail you the coupon. I will not share your personal info with the public. However, if you do have a blog, I will link back to it when I announce the winners.
3. You have until midnight MT on March 27, 2008 to enter.
4. This contest is limited to the continental U.S.
5. I'm also offering having this contest at My Readable Feast. Feel free to enter there as well. One entry on each of my blogs is allowed.
6. The coupon cannot be used in CO, MA, MO or ND, so don't enter if you live in those states.
7. I will announce the winners on March 28, 2008 and mail out the coupons via USPS by the following week.

Thanks for getting your search on with Lijit

Congratulations to the following bloggers for entering my contest and installing a Lijit search widget on their blogs. I saw pink boxes and green ones - it was very cool how everyone did there own thing with Lijit.

Here are the winners:

• Holly at June Cleaver Nirvana
• Betsy from The Homeschool Way
• Lisa from Iowa Avenue
• Tiffany at My Style-ish Wedding Destination
• Emily of Chere Aimie
• Caryn of Rockin' Mama
• Rachel of Coconut & Lime
• and John at The Restless Mouse (who already had the widget installed but I'm sending him a Lijit t-shirt just for spreading the word about my contest)

Thanks all for entering!

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Too Lijit to quit - a contest for bloggers

O.K. all you bloggers gather around because I'm having a contest and giving away 32 prizes to publicize the Lijit Search Wijit, a wonderful blog search tool that gives your readers the opportunity to actively search through your posts, bookmarks, and blogroll so they receive the most relevant search results from a source they trust - YOU.

Why am I holding this at a food and diet blog? Well if you're like Kalyn at Kayln's Kitchen or Elise at Simply Recipes, you have an index of your recipes. Or if your like me you don't (oops - bad food blogger!) and have no way of finding your recipes. Thanks to Lijit, when I need to find that recipe for eggless chocolate cake, I type it into the Lijit Search Wijit and a search page comes up with my answer. Not only that, but once a week via email, Lijit sends me detailed search statistics of what my readers are interested in. (I can also go to their site and get stats any time I want.)

The Contest Rules

It's easy to enter:

1. Go to the Lijit site, sign up and install the widget on your blog.
2. Come back here and leave a comment letting me know it's up by leaving your name, email address and your website URL. If it's not in a sidebar, let me know exactly where it is on your blog, too.
3. You have until Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at midnight MT to enter.
4. You can install the widget on as many blogs as you own - one entry per blog. So if you own five blogs and install the widget on all of them, you'll have five entries in the contest. Please leave one comment listing all the blogs (and their URLs).
5. You can win more than one prize. (See below for a list of prizes.) For example, if you put the widget on four of your blogs, you have four entries into the contest. If I pick two of those entries, you win two prizes.
6. I will pick the entries randomly out of a hat (well, a bag) to determine who wins.
7. Winners will be announced on Friday, March 7, 2008. I will then mail out the prizes the following week via U.S. Mail.

But there are rules:

1. Do not enter if you don't want to give me your full name and mailing address. I will not share your personal info with the public. Instead, I will just link to your blog when I announce the winners.
2. You don't have to be a food or diet blogger. I don't care what your blog's subject matter is as long as it meets the ACCEPTABLE USE AND CONDUCT rules at Lijit. (See section 3.1 for specifics.) So no porn, no spam, no racist crap, etc.
3. I will be checking everyone's blog to make sure it's installed. Also, I will be checking with Lijit to confim that you signed up as part of this contest. To make sure that you sign up correctly, click here or any of the other Lijit links in this post.
4. If you already have the Lijit widget on your blog, you can't enter the contest.
5. No, you can't request what prize you want. Sorry, but that'll make things way too complicated. Everything will be given out randomly. Heck, if you don't like what you got, give it to someone else or donate it to charity.
6. The contest is only open to bloggers in the continental U.S.
7. Email me at thewritespotblogs at gmail dot com if you have any questions.

(Full disclosure: I'm doing this contest to help out my friend, Jim Turner at One by One Media. After I volunteered, Lijit was nice enough to offer to send me an Amazon gift card for an undetermined amount depending on how many of you folks install the widget. I doubt this will cover my mailing expenses, but what the heck. Mama needs books, so sign up and enter!)

Have trouble getting the kids to fall asleep? Try these sleepy time snacks for the whole family!

Win $50 of Johnson's baby products by entering at my Get your toddler to sleep with a little help from Johnson's contest over at my blog, A Mama's Rant. The contest also contains tips on getting your toddler ready for a good night's sleep, including a warm bath, a massage, and a night time story.  Check it out!

You may want eat some sleep-inducing snacks before starting your night time routine. Here are some ideas.

Sleepy Time Foods

Foods containing tryptophan get the body to make serotonin, which slows nerve activity and encourages drowsiness. Milk, yogurt, soy, figs, almonds, bananas, and turkey are all good sources. Carbohydrates can increase the effect by stimulating insulin production to remove other amino acids, leaving tryptophan to do its work.

Wondertime's Sleeping Potions 

Wondertime magazine recommended these recipes as sleep inducing snacks for kids. I don't see why adults cannot try them out as well. If you're trying to lose weight, I recommend using non or low fat yogurt or cottage cheese and a multi-grain toast. And watch your intake of cookies! Just because you can't sleep doesn't mean you can overindulge in sweets.

Sleepy Sunflowers: Put a spoonful of cottage cheese on a round whole wheat cracker. Sprinkle with sunflower or sesame seeds.

Yogurt Drifts: Spoon a little vanilla or blueberry yogurt into a small paper cup, then sprinkle with wheat germ. Eat, or freeze for 1 to 1 1/2 hours for a frozen-pudding consistency.

Full Moon Cookies: Smoosh a slice or two of banana between 2 small oatmeal raisin cookies, and freeze for at least 1 hour. (Think ice cream sandwich.)

Midnight Figs: Purée 1 cup dried figs with 1/2 cup water and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract in a food processor. Spread on vanilla wafer cookies.

Twilight Toast Points: Spread blueberry preserves on whole wheat toast, then cut into bite-size pieces.

Win a Holiday Gift Basket of Children's Books at A Readable Feast

Little, Brown and Company have given me a basket of books to give away to one of my readers at my children's books blog, A Readable Feast.

Sorry, no children's cookbooks. But who cares? These books are plenty yummy on their own.

If you have children ages 0-6, there are some wonderful books including Toot & Puddle: Let It Snow and The Cranium Ultimate Book of Fantastic Fun & Games. Feel free to keep the books for yourself, or donate them to a teacher, library or your children's school.

You can read about the contest here. And how to enter here. If you have any questions, please email me at readablefeast@gmail.com.

The contest ends on December 12. Thanks and good luck!

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The iateapie.net "What's in your fridge?" contest

Tanya at iateapie.net is having a contest and giving away a Magic Bullet Blender and some Sundesa Blender Bottles. What do you need to do? Just post a picture of what's in your refrigerator, and write a description of the contents, especially the healthy foods and food products in it.

Then you need to email Tanya at tptphd@gmail.com and send her the link of your blog post. Or if you upload pictures to Flickr and use their notes feature, email her that link also. (You can learn about the contest here. You have until November 25, 2007 to enter.)

My picture

Top shelf

On the top shelf (from left to right) there's a sugar free Rockstar energy drink, two bowls of tomatoes that are left over from our garden, some no fat plain yogurt, then homemade tomato sauce on top of a container of pineapple (a bowl of my son, Nathan's, leftover spaghetti and noodles is in front of that). On top of the organic, free range eggs are leftover homemade pizza with wheat crust.

Winners of the United States of Arugula giveawy

First, my apologies for not posting the winners sooner. TypePad had a major power outage this afternoon and was down at least four hours.

Before that I couldn't even view my blogs - not because of TypePad, however. I had some hinky code on the sidebars of three of my blogs that kept crashing my computer and my laptop.

I managed to giveway half 6 of the 10 The United States of Arugula: The Sun Dried, Cold Pressed, Dark Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution. I guess all you foodies out there have already read it...sigh.

These lucky folks get a copy:

• Katie
• Jenny of Up the Hill Gang
• Kat of the Weight We Were
• Jennifer N.
• Karen of Mommy of Three

What? Your name have to begin with a K or a J to want a free book? How funny.

Late winners:

• Angel of Give Me Something to Sing About and Slayer in Training (whose real name begins with a K, too)
• Jim of the Chew on That Blog (oh gosh, another J)

http://mamarant.blogs.com/mamacooks/5_thingsways_advice_list/index.html

Win a copy of "The United States of Arugula"

The publishers of The United States of Arugula: The Sun Dried, Cold Pressed, Dark Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution have sent me 10 copies of the David Kamp's new paperback release to give away to my readers.

I originally reviewed The United States of Arugula back in October 2006 after a culinary excursion to Las Vegas:

Kamp writes about the cultural history of the gourmet food movement and the celebrity chef phenomenon from James Beard to Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck to Emeril.

The book documents the introduction of fine French cooking to U.S. shores as well as the rise of California Cuisine and the current organic and slow food movements. It also mentions the rise of fine dining in Las Vegas. It's a fascinating read and gives real insight to the various food movements and the people behind them.

If you like reading about famous chefs, and the history of food, you'll love Kamp's book. Best of all you can win it here at This Mama Cooks! On a Diet for free. (Heck if we dieters can't eat all that overindulgent food, we certainly can read about it.)

Here's how to enter:

1. Post about the contest on your blog and link back to this post. You have from today until Sunday, July 22, 2007 at midnight MT to do so.
2. Come back to This Mama Cooks! On a Diet and post the weblink (the link to the actual post) in the comments section below along with your email and blog address.
3. If you don't have a blog, not to worry. Just leave your name and email address in the comment section below.
4. I'll randomly pick the 10 winners and will contact them via email for their name and mailing address.
5. The winners will be announced on this blog by Tuesday, July 24. I will mail out the books via USPS Media Mail by Wednesday, July 26 if I receive your mailing info quickly. If not, it'll have to wait until Monday, July 30 when I get back from Blogher.
6. Please do not enter this contest if you are unwilling to email me your name and mailing address. I promise NOT to release your private info to the public.
7. This contest is open bloggers and readers in the continental U.S. only due to postage costs and previous hassles with customs. I love my Canadian readers. I just don't like your customs department keeping things for a couple of weeks. Sigh...

If you have any questions, email me. Click here for more about David Kamp and his book.

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EatingWell magazine's contest for healthy cookie recipes

While you may be making plans for a summertime vacation, in the EatingWell Test Kitchen they're getting ready for the holidays—and they need your favorite cookie recipes.

They're looking for delectable and healthy holiday cookie recipes for publication in their November/December 2007 issue. Take one of your favorites and give it a little makeover (see Healthy Cookie Guidelines below). They'll bake them up in their Test Kitchen and select one grand-prize winner and five runners-up.

Prizes: Each of the six finalists will receive The EatingWell Healthy in a Hurry Cookbook, EatingWell Serves Two Cookbook, a year’s subscription to EatingWell Magazine and an EatingWell apron.

The grand prize winner will also receive $500 cash!

Deadline: Submit your recipe by June 1, 2007 directly to the Test Kitchen using the simple online form. All recipes are automatically entered into the contest. Winners will be notified by September 15, 2007.