And What I Ate

From the NEPA Blogs mailbag:

Hi - I came across your blog and wanted to send you the link to my own!  Thanks for some of your reccos, I've added a couple new favorites to my reading rotation.

My blog is www.andwhatiate.com - it's mainly recipes, but also some personal posts and travel. I've gotten really into cooking over the last few years and this has been a pretty fun project. Plus, I get to track the Google Analytics and see where everyone is coming from (over 150 countries and all 7 continents!) which totally appeals to my inner nerd.

Let me know if you have questions - keep up the good work!

And What I Ate (http://www.andwhatiate.com/) is a food blog by self-described "foodie, yoga enthusiast, reader, writer, runner & music lover with just a little wanderlust" Westyn Lane, who describes the blog as "mainly (happily, but accidentally) gluten-free, and has an emphasis on healthy & local/organic cooking, " It's also full of photos of food and food prep (it turns out color coordination and accessorization is crucial in the making of blueberry pancakes!) If you enjoy good food, this is a blog you need to check out!

They're baaaa-aaaack!

This may be old news to some, but two guys who had taken time-outs from blogging are back.

Tom Borthwick took a sabbatical to run for school board and get married.  He's back to blogging semi-regularly at http://www.tomborthwick.com.  Tom's blog features topics about politics and writing.

Frank Knorek retired his personal blog approximately a year ago.  He's back again with a food review blog called "NEPA Culinary Review" which can be found at http://nepaculinaryreview.wordpress.com.  According to the about page, the NEPA Culinary Review blog is  your source for news and information surrounding the recipes, people, and places relating to good food and drink in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Take a moment and head over to their blogs and give a warm welcome back to the blogosphere.

Facebook Fresh

We've been adding several new subscribers to our Facebook Group over the past few weeks.  With new subscribers, comes fresh blood into the NEPA Blogosphere.  I'm sure I'm leaving out a few, but here are 3 new blogs that we weren't already linked to:

Rants From My Crazy Kitchen

http://rantsfrommycrazykitchen.com

From the About:  Hi! Welcome to Rants From My Crazy Kitchen! Here you will find all kinds of recipes, tips, rants on days when recipes I try don’t come out like I wanted and some reviews of recipes from cookbook and restaurants. Me? I’m Bernadette. My husband is Don and  I’m a stay at home mom currently to a beautiful almost 3-year-old girl, Amanda. Amanda doesn’t like to eat at all. I like good food but I know how to eat healthy, even if I don’t always. I hope you enjoy what you find here, and if you have any questions or comments (or complaints) you can contact me at bernadet@ptd.net.

Her Way At Crabtree Gardens

http://crabtreegardens.wordpress.com

From the About: "Hi! My name is Sandi Crabtree, I’m an avid gardener and owner of 2 businesses; Crabtree Gardens, LLC which is a five acre chemical-free naturalized cottage garden and Cottage at Crabtree Gardens Guest House which is my English inspired B&B located next to the gardens. 

I also hold a certificate in Garden and Interior Design from Inchbald School of Design. I’m a garden coach, club speaker, and also develop and teach workshops at Crabtree Gardens. I love the soil, nature, designing gardens and writing about them.

I live in Northeastern PA with my wonderful and supportive husband David. I’ve been gardening for over thirty years and hope to garden for at least 30 more, if my body will allow me too. I’m also finding pleasure in photographing nature in my gardens for my website and this blog."

Danielle Pasternak, Wedding Coordinator Blog

http://dpnak.com/blog/

From the About:  "...When I was a little girl, I would dress up my grandparent’s and have them play ‘wedding’. I remember clipping a white rag to my grandmother’s head, making her a bouquet out of napkins and lining an aisle with stuffed animals. I would make sure every detail was ‘just right’, hit play on my little purple cassette player and direct the entire wedding. Then, I would have them go back and do it all over again. By my count, my grandparents were not only married for more than 50 years, but at least 147 times."


All of these blogs have been added to the blog roll for your reading pleasure.  You should also consider joining our Facebook Group, if you haven't already.  You will be able to connect with several area bloggers in a relaxed online atmosphere!  

Happy Saturday :)

Onomahuna

I hope you brought your appetite to this blog post!  We have a blog by Jim Babinski called "Onomahuna" which is a visitors guide to lunch in Scranton, PA.  Onomahuna means good times, good food, good friends according to the About.

http://onomahuna.com
http://onomahuna.tumblr.com


Onomahuna promises to be a guide to the best ways to spend your meals wherever you are.  Right now, Jim is focusing his efforts on the Scranton area, but has plans to develop the concept further and potentially roll it out to other areas.  We can't wait to see where this project will end up next!

You can follow Onomahuna and Jim on twitter using the handles @onomahuna or @jimbabinski.

 I must say that the Colarusso's coal fired pizza pictures are making my tummy rumble! 

Enjoy!  Or shall I say, onomahuna!

~Michelle

It's a Keeper

From the NEPA Blogs mailbag:

My name is Christina Hitchcock and I'm a food blogger. On my site, It's a Keeper (http://www.everydaytastes.com), I'm blogging my way through my recipe pile (ala Julie and Julia style). I started with a pile of 300 + recipes that I've collected and decided to cook my way through them and report the results back to my readers.

I've been featured a number of times (see my I've been Featured page - http://www.everydaytastes.com/ive-been-featured/) in The Times Tribune, Happenings Magazine and on WNEP. Plus, my husband and I have 2 cookbooks.

Christina is from Madison Township. It's very exciting to know that someone like her is right here in Northeastern Pennsylvania! Be sure to check out her blog, and all the recipes that have gotten her stamp of approval, at It's a Keeper!


If you blog in Northeastern Pennsylvania, blog about Northeastern Pennsylvania, or used to live in Northeastern Pennsylvania and have a blog, please contact us at nepablogs@gmail.com so we can list you!

Flavor of the Med

A submission via e-mail:

Hello,
I own an online business based in Tobyhanna that has a blog online: http://flavorofmed.com/index.php/blog

At first I thought this might be...like, a company that made flavorings for medicine? But, no! The "Med" in "Flavor of the Med" is the Mediterranean, and it's a Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Online Grocery. Go through the entries and see if you don't find yourself wishing that Flavor of the Med had a bricks-and-mortar presence where you could visit and smell and taste the foods!  If you're a fan of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cooking and are looking for some recipe ideas or an online source of ingredients, stop by Flavor of the Med and have a look around!

Do you own a business in Northeastern Pennsylvania? Have you considered using a blog as part of your business model? It's a great way of connecting with current and future customers, and letting the world know about what you have to sell. If you're in NEPA and have a business blog, contact us at nepablogs@gmail.com and we'll list it here at NEPA Blogs!

Food, Wine and Culture

At nearly the very northwesternmost corner of Northeastern Pennsylvania is Troy, Pennsylvania, home to the blogger of the Food, Wine and Culture blog (http://foodwineandculture.wordpress.com/).  From her "About" page:

Welcome to my Food, Wine and Culture Blog! As with most things in life, my blog is influenced by the community that I grew up in and the communities that I have lived in. So far, that mostly includes the US Mid Atlantic region. I’ve been fortunate enough to have traveled to Italy, Calgary, Cape Breton, Aruba, California and so many more. And the foods, wine and culture of these locations have also left their mark – but in the end, I find the strongest influences continue to be those from the PA Northern Tier and NY Southern Tier.


A native of the PA Northern Tier, I left for college saying that I would not be back. But after four great years of college at the University of Maryland, and a number of years living and working in the Baltimore-DC area, the desire to be back in the Northern Tier found me home again.

For information on Food, Wine and Culture, not just in NEPA but also in Central PA, the Northern Tier, and even Upstate New York (particularly the Finger Lakes region), be sure to check out the Food, Wine and Culture blog!

Twigs Restaurant, Cafe & Radio

Twigs Restaurant & Cafe is located in the heart of historic downtown Tunkhannock. Despite the devastation that occurred during the recent flooding, Twigs is open for business. I recently found their website by listening to the Gem 104 radio station. Twigs has a blog that they use to discuss to menu items, recipes, wine pairings and promotions. Here's another interesting thing - they also have an Internet Radio station. I found this announced in passing from their Twitter account @TwigsCafe.

More about the restaurant:

Our Mission at Twigs Restaurant and Café is "to offer outstanding food expertly served in a comfortable atmosphere." Our chefs use only the freshest market ingredients and incorporate the finest foods from around the globe.

Twigs also offers catering on your premises complete with a private chef who will meet your every expectation. Twigs has other options for on site parties. Call us for all your catering needs and any help needed to pull off the perfect event.

Twigs Restaurant & Café
Open Daily 11am to 9pm (10pm Friday & Saturday)
1 East Tioga Street, Historic Route 6
Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania 18657
570-836-0433

I have only heard good reviews of this restaurant's food. I'd highly recommend checking it out if your travels ever take you where Rte 29 & 6 intersect.

Lastly, here's the directory to Twig's web presence:

Main Website: http://www.twigscafe.com
Twigs Cafe Blog: http://twigscafe.blogspot.com
Twigs Cafe Internet Radio Station: http://www.twigscaferadio.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/TwigsCafe

~Michelle

Endless Simmer

The Endless Simmer blog is essentially a "foodie" blog. There are several individual contributors to this culinary blog...similar to NEPA Blogs setup, except they are from all over the country. The connection to "NEPA" is that one of the contributors is a NEPA Native. Blogger Clayton Jacobs (@bellyrulesmind on Twitter) is of local swagger, from the About Page:

"Neither a writer nor a chef by profession, Clay Jacobs (Borracho) joins the ES team with passion and desire to explore new culinary experiences and basic grammar skills. Borracho is as likely to rave about Michelin 3-star cuisine as the pizza place down the street. When he cooks, the focus is on local product, bold flavors and comfort food, but his posts mix in discussions of technique, sports, pop culture and a dash of the inane. His Gridiron Grub series offers amped-up takes on typical football and tailgating foods to enjoy when watching the game, even if you are a Dallas Cowboys fan."

There's also a blogger listed as attending college in Central Pennsylvania....Madeline Shores. Here's her bio from the About Page:

"After living off cafeteria food, the strange products of her tiny kitchen, and Central Pennsylvania’s finest offerings while attending college, Madeline Shores (ML) hwas forced to enter the real world in 2009 to begin her fast and sexy life representing the future of America. With only the stamp of a snotty private school and a completely unmarketable degree, ML has returned to Philly to live off cheap beer and whatever food she can afford (see: gourmet instant ramen). In her free time, she can be seen traveling and acting as the mealtime paparazzi while spending time with friends, some of whom have dubbed her “the anytime eater.”

On Twitter: @MadelineSho

To view all of the contributors to the blog, visit: http://www.endlesssimmer.com

More about the blog:

We created Endless Simmer to satisfy our insatiable desire to think about food constantly. We’re basically somewhere between regular consumers of food pop culture and total snobs. We can just as easily enjoy offal or destroy a Dunkin Donuts (fake) egg and cheese croissant. We love to experiment in the kitchen, but we do frown on cheating. There’s nothing we love more than a good food pun.

Turn to Endless Simmer for all your food needs. We will share our cooking stories, favorite shows, restaurant reviews, travel tales and any other things we can think of that incorporate eating in any way.

Clearly, we just can’t keep our mouths shut.

--

For our sake, we hope that they don't, because we were drooling over several of the posts. However, the "Top 10 Things I Ate In College That I'll Never Eat Again" post was pretty damn hilarious. I am guilty of so many of those food crimes! However, I'm kind of shocked that ramen noodles were absent from the list. Maybe some of the authors are guilty of still eating them (as I am on occasion)....speaking of which. TIME FOR DINNER.

~M

Ice Cream Journal

What the french vanilla? How have we missed the Turkey Hill ice cream blog in our listings to date?

http://icecreamjournal.turkeyhill.com/

Turkey Hill's "Ice Cream Journal" has the inside scoop (get it?) about ice cream and the Turkey Hill Dairy. Who knew that there was so much to talk about regarding dairy products? Turkey Hill has an expert on the blog ("Ernie") that will answer any technical questions you may have about ice cream. You can also suggest new flavors or inquire about discontinued ones. They have an extensive Social Media platform and can be contacted on Facebook or Twitter. BTW, Each week they run a Twitter Trivia contest in which the winner receives coupons for their products. I won the contest once and received coupons for free ice tea and ice cream. And hey, who can beat free anything?

But don't take my word for it...from the blog's welcome message:

Welcome to the Ice Cream Journal! Here you'll find a collection of thoughts and stories about ice cream as well as a glimpse inside the ice cream making process at Turkey Hill Dairy. We'll also be updating our blog several times each week, so feel free to stop by often.

Yum! Be sure to enjoy a big indulgent scoop of this blog on us.

~M