Giveaway: Sour Patch Kids Candy and T-Shirts

For the most part, I prefer to write about local brands on here, but hey, I have a soft spot for Sour Patch Kids, and I bet some of you do, too. A rep reached out to me recently with some candy and shirts to give away in promotion of their current marketing campaign, Sour Patch Justice, and because Sour Patch Kids are delicious and the campaign actually made me chuckle, I readily accepted. Apparently Sour Patch Kids have been going around wreaking havoc on honest, hard-working people (and cats!), and a sleazy lawyer has been brought onboard to defend the Kids. Users can upload their own evidence of Sour Patch Kids' wrongdoings, and the lawyer will respond through the end of the month. Here's the official video to get your creative juices flowing:



Don't care about uploading your evidence? Just want to win some tasty, tasty candy? No problem. I've got some prizes to give to (a few of) you: three Fork it over, Boston! readers will each receive a snazzy Sour Patch Kids t-shirt and a bag of candy.

The winner will be picked randomly from all eligible entries, and you can earn entries in any/all of the following ways:

• Leave a comment on this post - tell me what you think of Sour Patch Kids. Have they wronged you? Do you eat them by the giant bagful? Have you made any weird recipes involving them? (One entry for leaving a comment. Two entries for leaving a comment that makes me giggle.)
• Tweet about this giveaway. Please include a link to this post and my Twitter username, @blumie, so I can keep track. (One entry.)
• Publicly post on Facebook about this giveaway. Please include a link to this post, and tag the Fork it over, Boston! Facebook page in your post so I can keep track. (One entry.)

Good luck! I'll draw a winner around 9pm on Wednesday evening, August 1, so get your entries in before then.

Giveaway: 'Bobby Flay's Throwdown!' Autographed Cookbook

UPDATE: This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to the winner, Jenny!

This coming weekend, I'll be attending the Sun BBQ Fest at Mohegan Sun, a three-day event featuring a rib-eating contest and other barbecue-related dining, demonstrations, and music. In celebration of the event, Mohegan Sun is giving away one autographed copy of Bobby Flay's Throwdown! to a Fork it over, Boston! reader.

The cookbook features more than 100 recipes from Flay's Throwdown! with Bobby Flay show on Food Network, in which he competes to see if he can create a better version of chef's signature dishes. The show has featured several Massachusetts chefs, all of whom defeated Flay:

• Jack and Rocko Collucci of Collucci Brothers' Diner in Hyannis (dish: meatloaf)
• Joanne Chang of Flour Bakery in Boston (dish: sticky buns)
• Marilyn and Sheila Brass, Cambridge-based cookbook authors (dish: pineapple upside-down cake)

Want the cookbook? I'll be doing a random drawing this Thursday morning, May 31, 2012; please get your entries in before 8am on Thursday. You can accumulate entries in any or all of the following ways:

1. Leave a comment on this post - anything relevant to grilling, BBQ, or Bobby Flay (limited to one entry)
2. Tweet about this giveaway: "I want to win a signed Bobby Flay cookbook from @MoheganSun and @blumie. Find out how! http://bit.ly/LCHlQV" You can change the wording around a bit if you'd like, but make sure to include @MoheganSun and @blumie and a link to this post. (unlimited entries - one per tweet - retweets don't count)
3. Post publicly from your Facebook profile and/or page. Please tag Mohegan Sun and Fork it over, Boston!, and include a link to this post. (unlimited entries - one per post)

Good luck! And stay tuned for my coverage of the Sun BBQ Fest!

UPDATE: This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to the winner, Jenny!

Disclosure: I am receiving free passes and a hotel room for the Sun BBQ Fest. I was not required to run this giveaway in order to attend the event.  

BFB "Homework" #1 and a Giveaway!

A couple weeks ago, I sent out the first BostonFoodBloggers.com newsletter. (You can view it here if you're not on the list; there's also a subscribe link near the upper left corner if you'd like to receive future newsletters right in your inbox. They'll be going out twice a month or less.) Each newsletter is going to have a "homework assignment" - a blogging prompt that'll hopefully get bloggers thinking outside of the box a bit. Completed assignments will be featured in the following newsletter and on BostonFoodBloggers.com. Since newsletter #2 is going out later today, I figured I should probably complete the assignment myself as well. The task: a restaurant review of 500 words or less with no photos, just descriptive language. For extra credit, words like "tasty" and "delicious" should be avoided.

My review follows, and details about a completely unrelated giveaway are below that!

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Coriander Bistro: A Multi-Use Name

My hometown of Sharon, Massachusetts lacks nice restaurants. I can count the non-fast food spots on one hand, or maybe two. No matter; my family virtually lived at Mandarin Taste anyways, so there was no need for options. A few years ago, there was much excitement about the opening of an upscale French restaurant, Coriander Bistro, right in the center of town. It did well, but not well enough. Now under new management, Coriander is still Coriander, but it serves Indian and Nepali food, owned by the same people as West Roxbury’s Himalayan Bistro. The name seems a bit more relevant now, as coriander is found in Indian food more often than French food.

When I was home for a quick visit last weekend, we decided to pull ourselves out of the Mandarin Taste routine and finally try Coriander, which has been receiving encouraging reviews. We arrived at noon for the lunch buffet, a mistake. Like most Indian restaurants that offer a buffet, Coriander completely dumbed down its menu, offering only the most stereotypically American-accessible dishes. The line of copper pots held chicken tikka masala, chicken tandoori, chicken biryani, vegetable pakora, and the other usual suspects. The only “daring” dish in the line-up was a goat curry. There were no Nepali dishes, which I found very disappointing.

Our favorite: chicken tandoori, tender and flavorful. The biryani was the blandest I’ve had, and the chicken tikka masala texture was off. The buffet accompaniments were solid: garlic naan, soft and warm and glistening with butter, plus a surprise order of dosa, crispy potato-stuffed crepes. I found the kheer (rice pudding) to be an acceptable sweet ending, but my dining companions barely touched the gazar ko haluwa (carrot cake) that they had taken.

The ambiance suggests more hand-me-downs from the previous owner than just the name. The straight-backed chairs and layers of white and pale green tablecloths suggest a banquet hall (or stuffy French bistro, perhaps) rather than a taste of India, but the Taj Mahal poster loudly reminds you where you are. Subtle wood carvings do accent the walls nicely.

My experience seems at odds with the reviews I’ve read, and I’ll refrain from making a real judgment until I’ve ordered from the full menu, which features a wide range of Indian dishes (from several regions of the country) and Nepali dishes. From this experience, though, I’d recommend skipping the buffet.

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And on a completely unrelated note, I have a $10 HSN Gift Card to give to a reader. The fine print: it's valid for HSNTV or hsn.com purchases, it can't be combined with other offers, and it expires soon - 4/30/2011. HSN provided this gift card to me as part of promotion for HSN Cooks Spring Weekend Event (presented by Bon Appetit), happening this weekend (March 26-27). HSN describes this weekend as the "ultimate kitchen and food shopping experience with celebrity chefs and culinary experts presenting high-quality kitchenware, time-saving appliances and tasty cuisine." (It is also aimed at "women who enjoy cooking." HSN, I'm sure it's true that your target demographic leans heavily toward women, but perhaps "people" would have been a better choice here. I know plenty of men who enjoy cooking, and maybe some of them are interested in the latest kitchen gadgets.) Anyway, featured chefs include Wolfgang Puck, Emeril Lagasse, Padma Lakshmi, Ken Hom, The Lee Bros., and Jacques "Mr. Chocolate" Torres.

Want the gift card? Here's how to enter; the first one is required and the others are optional:

1. (Required) Check out hsn.com and leave a comment here about what you'd like to buy.
2. Tweet about this giveaway (must include link). Leave a comment here to let me know that you've done so.
3. A little bit of BFB cross-promotion: sign up for the BostonFoodBloggers.com newsletter here:

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The giveaway ends this Friday (3/25/11) at noon.

Giveaway Winner, Upcoming Product Review, and More

Ugh, I don't like writing posts like this. In the near future, I think I'd like to take a step back from these product reviews and giveaways, and just get back into writing about food for the love of food. But due to prior obligations, here we go...

Giveaway Winner
The winner of the Wanchai Ferry/Macaroni Grill prize pack (via MyBlogSpark) is...

Molly P.! Congrats Molly! I'll send you an email shortly. Her favorite date night memory: "...homemade chili cheese fries and the Celtics, viewed in hi-def glory in our living room. We made the chili in a crock pot and had that hang out and get tastier as the day went on, and we made the fries in our deep fryer (best exchange of ugly Christmas clothes from Macy's EVER)."

What should I review?
CSN stores - where you can find everything from adjustable bar stools to diaper bags to cat trees - is giving me the chance to review another product of my choosing. (In the past, I reviewed a pasta machine, and I've got an ice cream maker sitting around waiting to be tried as well.) I'm at a loss for what to choose this time...a Dutch oven, maybe? (Joel snickers when I suggest a Dutch oven. I'll let you look that one up on Urban Dictionary yourself if you're unfamiliar with the slang definition.) If you could have any kitchen gadget or appliance, what would you want?

Upcoming Posts
I have a mega backlog of photos and partially written posts. I've been very busy with my alter-ego as a musician, so the food writing has taken a temporary backseat. (There's also the day job in there somewhere.) In the near future, you'll be seeing some cookbook and book reviews, a review of Foundry on Elm, a recap of a panel discussion on sustainable food-related businesses, a recap of a blogger brunch at Boston's only Australian restaurant, KO Catering & Pies, more cupcake questing (does it ever end?), and some other stuff. It's all coming soon, I promise! In the meantime, why not take a look at the giant post before this? It's long, but if you're into local food and/or economics, I think you may enjoy it.

Ok, more interesting stuff coming soon. Probably tomorrow. I promise. 

Date Night with Wanchai Ferry - Product Review and Giveaway

Awhile ago, I joined a blogger program called MyBlogSpark, and they recently sent me a "date night" prize pack consisting of boxed Dry Dinner Kits from Wanchai Ferry and Macaroni Grill, plus a $25 Visa gift card to round out the date night. Read on to find out how you can win your own date night prize pack.

After a hectic Thanksgiving week of many late nights catching up with family and old friends, we were ready for a stay-home-wearing-hoodies-on-Sunday-night type of date night, so the kits seemed like a nice low-stress option. These dinner kits contain almost everything you need for dinner; you just buy the chicken (or other meat or non-meat of your choosing) and any other additions you'd like to make, follow the directions, and voila! Dinner! (You'll also need water and vegetable oil.) The Wanchai Ferry Orange Chicken kit appealed to me more than the Creamy Basil Parmesan Chicken and Pasta, so that's what we used for dinner.

Spoiler alert: Date night also included Adult Chocolate Milk and alcoholic whipped cream. More on those after the main course!

The contents of the Wanchai Ferry dinner kit:

Orange sauce, rice, hot peppers, and seasoned cornstarch (not pictured)

We decided to add baby corn and more heat:

Those are ghost chili pepper flakes. Yep.

I like to keep stocked up on ghost chili supplies, which I order from this site. These flakes definitely added some heat, but it wasn't overwhelming.

We followed the super-easy instructions on the box, which helpfully includes some suggested variations.

The box promises that dinner will be ready in "about 30 minutes", and it was. We served it with a side salad:

Close-up:

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much. Dinner-in-a-box seemed a bit like cheating, and I doubted it would taste good...but it was actually pretty decent. I mean, it's really not much different from using a store-bought sauce, which I do all the time. It's certainly a few big steps above frozen dinner because we bought and cooked the chicken; it wasn't pre-cooked and included in the kit. The weakest link was probably the rice. It wasn't bad, but it had a minute rice texture; it didn't seem very high quality.

These boxes are helpful if you don't want to think too much about putting a meal together. Orange chicken? Ok, all we need is the chicken. And maybe some veggies. The sauce, seasoned cornstarch, rice, and hot peppers are ready to go. Pretty convenient.

We used half of the Visa gift card to buy a Gewürztraminer; we thought the sharpness of the wine would match nicely with the spiciness of the meal, and it did.

I also decided that it was finally time to break out the tea set my parents gave me for my birthday back in June. It's a Japanese cast iron set from Teavana.

We drank green tea from Tea Zone, a spectacular shop near Porter Square in Somerville. If you like tea, you should definitely go here.

Since it was date night, dessert was a must. We had some leftover apple empanadas that Joel's brother, Dan, had made for Thanksgiving. (When Dan's not busy as a musician, he's making empanadas with his girlfriend, Clara. Check out their website and recent feature on Mo Rocca's show on the Cooking Channel, food(ography).)

We spent the second half of the gift card on alcoholic whipped cream, which we served with the empanadas.

Delicious. And strong.

Finally, we curled up on the couch to watch Dexter, and we had an after dinner drink of Adult Chocolate Milk, which we would have topped with more whipped cream, but our can was a dud and we couldn't get anything else out of it. (It turns out that the liquor store sent back the whole case; it's not usually so hard to get out of the can.)

Adult chocolate milk with little bits of alcoholic whipped cream fail.

The chocolate milk is fantastic. It tastes sort of like chocolate Bailey's. The company's website doesn't list Massachusetts as a place where it's sold, but I bought mine at the liquor store in the Porter Square shopping plaza, and I've also seen it at the big store in Davis Square.

I'd say it was a pretty successful date night: good food, some time to relax, an assortment of alcoholic drinks and food, Dexter...fun times.

The Giveaway
Want to win the same prize pack and have your own date night? Leave a comment here about your favorite stay-at-home date night, either one that's already happened or one that you'd like to make happen. Enter by Friday, December 10th, at 7pm. I'll choose the winner by a random drawing. This prize is provided by Wanchai Ferry and Macaroni Grill through MyBlogSpark.

Disclosure: As noted above, I received this prize pack (two dinner kits and a Visa gift card) at no charge through Macaroni Grill and Wanchai Ferry via MyBlogSpark. The gift card covered a bottle of wine and a bottle of alcoholic whipped cream. I bought all other items (chicken, baby corn, ghost chili products, Adult Chocolate Milk) at regular price. Since I'm not backed by the budget of a publication, I do on occasion accept free food, product samples, and services. This is always noted in the blog post. When I receive free food, product samples, or services, I am under no obligation to write a positive review - or any review. Regardless of cost, everything written here represents my full and honest opinion.

The Food Matters Cookbook: A Review and a Giveaway

You've likely heard of Mark Bittman, author of a variety of award-winning cookbooks, including the grandiosely-named How To Cook Everything. (I don't own a copy, so I'll refrain from passing judgment on the validity of the title.) I was not actually very familiar with Bittman's work until recently, when a publicist at Simon & Schuster asked if I'd like to take a look at Bittman's new book and host a giveaway. Well, this is that giveaway! The instructions will be at the end of this post.

Impressions
The Food Matters Cookbook: 500 Revolutionary Recipes for Better Living is a hefty volume packed full of tips for eating like "food matters" - and as you may have guessed from the title, there are a lot of recipes. 500 of them. Revolutionary? I'm not so sure. I think Bittman just gets a kick out of hyperbole. His writing did convince me, though, that it would be both doable and desirable to shift the ratio of meat and veggies that I eat so that meat becomes a side dish rather than the centerpiece. This book appeals to me because Bittman comes across as an omnivore who knows he will never give up meat entirely, but for a variety of reasons, he works to shift his focus (and the readers') to vegetables. This is something that I can do, and I was surprised that many of the veggie-heavy recipes sounded good to me, a slowly reforming steak-and-potatoes kind of girl. 

Bittman's philosophy towards food is friendlier than, say, Michael Pollan's. No rules here; this isn't a "manual." Instead, it's a friendly, relaxed collection of suggestions for ways to treat our bodies and our planet better. Less animals, less processed foods, more plants. This goes well with the guideline I've always tried to follow: everything in moderation. If I want bacon, sure, I'm gonna have bacon, but it doesn't need to be the daily main course. (Ok, maybe once in awhile...)

The recipes are friendly as well, written in an easy-to-follow conversational tone with abundant suggestions for variations. In fact, I see these more as starting points with hints about how to improvise rather than full recipes. You could follow them as written easily enough, but I found myself using them as little brain triggers from which to develop a full menu.

There are no photographs of the food; I suppose for a book of 500 recipes, there isn't really room for photos. The lack of images disappointed me initially, but I actually think it's for the best. Bittman's secondary goal seems to be to leave the readers more self-sufficient and more confident in the kitchen and the market, and by not providing photos, he forces us to work harder to learn from the book and test our own abilities.

There are many cookbooks on my shelf that I go to for a few standard recipes and then forget about for months, but The Food Matters Cookbook - aside from having so many recipes - has lessons and hints that will always be useful. I'm looking forward to delving into it in greater detail.

Upcoming Events
Bittman will be speaking in Boston twice this month: this Wednesday, November 3rd, at the Museum of Science, and Monday, November 15th, at New Center for Arts and Culture. (Click those links for ticket information and more.)

The Giveaway!
Simon & Schuster is providing a copy of The Food Matters Cookbook to one lucky reader! You have until this Wednesday, November 3rd, at noon (EST) to enter.

(1) Get two entries into the giveaway by leaving a comment on this post about what the phrase "food matters" means to you. (Maximum two entries per person for commenting.)

(2) Get one entry into the giveaway by retweeting any of my Twitter updates regarding this giveaway. (I'm @blumie.) I'll update this post with a link to my tweet once I've posted the first one. (Maximum one entry per person for retweeting.)

So, you can get up to three entries. I'll announce the results on Twitter on Wednesday night after using a random number generator to pick the winner. Good luck!

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free copy of The Food Matters Cookbook by Simon & Schuster, and one reader will also be provided with a free copy. As I am not backed by the budget of a publication, I do occasionally accept free food and products for potential review. Acceptance of these samples and products do not obligate me to write a positive review or any review at all. When I do write, it is my full and honest opinion, regardless of the cost (or lack thereof) of the food or product.