Nibbles of Tidbits, a Food Blog

Happy Hour Week is approaching in Orange County.  It’ll take place April 12th through the 18th in 2009.  The restaurant line-up already looks great and more will be added before the kick-off.  Thanks OCFoodies.com for continually seeking to provide great food related deals for the locals! 

MORE INFO re Happy Hour Week: http://www.happyhourweek.com/

JOIN Orange County Foodies Network: http://www.ocfoodies.com/

Apparently my “Cheesecake Flavor” is Adam’s Peanut Butter Cup Fudge Ripple — An interesting combination that I wouldn’t generally pick, but it was fun taking The Cheesecake Factory’s ‘What Cheesecake Flavor Are You?’ Quiz.  I like the song on the site too.  Aside from the quiz, my favorite flavor has actually been White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle. 

My designated flavor describes me (and the Cheesecake) as “The incredible mix of qualities that makes you so appreciated is nothing short of miraculous, much like this Cheesecake.  A lot goes into this flavor… Just like you, it’s an awe-inspiring combination of ingredients not soon forgotten.”

Learn About “Your Flavor” HERE:
https://promos.thecheesecakefactory.com/

My Flavor INFO:
https://promos.thecheesecakefactory.com/eslice.php?code=P4-T14-Shelly

My 2nd Flavor INFO:
https://promos.thecheesecakefactory.com/eslice.php?code=P4-T11-Borrell

* The photograph is unrelated to The Cheesecake Factory.  It’s what Lake Arrowhead looked like a week ago driving down the mountain.  It’s beautiful, but makes me want to stay warm inside, and take this quiz. 🙂

Share Our Strength’s goal is to END childhood hunger in America.  That’s important!  Children shouldn’t have to live hungry.  When you’re hungry it’s hard to concentrate on anything else.  SOS raises money to feed ALL of America’s children.

One GREAT way to donate to Share Our Strength is to attend one of the “A Tasteful Pursuit” dinners, which will be taking place in a different city each month throughout the year.  Save up and buy a ticket.  It’s an evening with some of the country’s TOP CHEFS, amazing cuisine, and the opportunity to bid on fabulous auction items.  It’s a win-win.

Foodbuzz is sending (1 – 2) Featured Publisher Correspondents to report about each city.  I’ve submitted a proposal to (hopefully) be one of them.  Buzz me up on the bottom link below.  Also linked is Share Our Strength’s website and more about the A Tasteful Pursuit events taking place between January – November 2009.

Related Links:

http://www.strength.org/

http://www.strength.org/a_tasteful_pursuit/

http://www.foodbuzz.com/blogs/us/california/costa_mesa/744411-it-s-all-about-the-food-for-others–

“Food-ology, You Are How You Eat” offers great insight regarding YOUR eating habits.  Its founder really seems to be in tune with the correlation between the way people eat and what it reveals about their personalities.  The Food-ology website is well done, informative, fun and helpful.  I just took the posted Monthly Quiz, which appeared to accurately describe me — I’m not telling.  GIVE IT A TRY.

Apparently there’s much YOU can learn from how you prepare your food, how you eat it, shop for it, order it, and more.  So, not only are we “what” we eat, but now “how” we eat.  Knowing that, it’ll be helpful to learn what it says about us.  Insight is good, isn’t it?

I’ve deemed http://www.food-ology.com/ a fun FOOD-OLOGICAL site.  They might want to trademark that too, if not taken already.  Thanks!

Does My Blog Look Good In This (“DMBLGIT”) is a monthly food photography contest initiated in 2005 by Spittoon.  It’s now hosted by a different food blog each month.  The submission criteria requires that the photograph be published on a blog the previous month — My January submission appeared on Nibbles of Tidbits in December.  The competition is always stiff, but I hope to win sometime.  So far this month I have a chance, but entries are being accepted until January 20th.  We’ll see what happens.

Check out ALL entries here below — Mine is photograph #9.
http://picasaweb.google.com/kochtopf/DMBLGITJanuary2009#

Related Link:  http://www.ineedtext.com/FoodBlog/?p=1583

Nick’s Pizza Ristorante Italiano is on Restaurantica – http://www.restaurantica.com/blog/Nicks-Pizza-Ristorante-Italiano/130/

Nick’s Tortellini and Chicken with Artichoke Hearts, Prosciutto and Green Peas in a Light Cream Sauce.

Related Links:

http://www.restaurantica.com/blog/

http://www.ineedtext.com/FoodBlog/?p=1240

http://www.ineedtext.com/FoodBlog/?p=1213

http://www.ineedtext.com/FoodBlog/?p=249

http://www.nickspizzapasta.com/

Here’s the article:  http://www.restaurantica.com/blog/Shelly-Borrell–A-Food-Writer-in-the-Making/124/

Restaurantica offers more than 350,000 restaurant listings across the United States and Canada.  Its format is similar to Yelp and Chow.  Restaurantica’s been providing down to earth, honest restaurant reviews since 2003 and now has more than 184,000 reviews.  You can search for the restaurant you’re looking for, after searching for it here of course. 🙂

I’ll be their Costa Mesa expert, if you will.  I’ll be posting monthly on Restaurantica about all the fabulous food finds in Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Orange County, and wherever I might travel.  The above photo is related to my post about Nick’s Pizza Ristorante Italiano.  Restaurantica has ALL the yummy food pictures and details.  http://www.restaurantica.com/blog/Nicks-Pizza-Ristorante-Italiano/130/.

Be sure to check the Restaurantica Blog for monthly reviews and food photos by me, then write about your favorite restaurant.  The more reviews the better.

Related Link:  http://www.restaurantica.com/blog/

Foodbuzz’s live blogging event which hosts 24 Posts by 24 Foodies around the world in 24 Hours is happening right now.  Since September’s 24, 24, 24 was such a success, Foodbuzz may be making it a monthly event.  Below is a medley of September’s 24 with fun music, but you’ll need to log on to Foodbuzz to see what’s cooking in October.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpIMNHiFQEo

http://www.foodbuzz.com/ 

Related Link:

http://www.ineedtext.com/FoodBlog/?p=1025

LAUNCH OF GLOBAL FOODBUZZ
BLOGGER COMMUNITY LEVERAGES REAL-PEOPLE,
REAL-TIME POWER OF FOOD PUBLISHING   

San Francisco – October 13, 2008:   Foodbuzz, Inc., officially inaugurates its food blogger community with more than 1,000 blog partners, a global food blogging event and an online platform that captures the real-people, real-time power of food publishing in every corner of the world.  At launch, the Foodbuzz community ranks as one of the top-10 Internet destinations for food and dining (Quantcast), with bloggers based in 45 countries and 863 cities serving up daily food content.  

“Food bloggers are at the forefront of reality publishing and the dramatic growth of new media has redefined how food enthusiasts access tasty content,” said Doug Collister, Executive Vice President of Foodbuzz, Inc.  “Food bloggers are the new breed of local food experts and at any minute of the day, Foodbuzz is there to help capture the immediacy of their hands-on experiences, be it a memorable restaurant meal, a trip to the farmers market, or a special home-cooked meal.”    

Foodbuzz is the only online community with content created exclusively by food bloggers and rated by foodies. The site offers more than 20,000 pieces of new food and dining content weekly, including recipes, photos, blog posts, videos and restaurant reviews.   Members decide the “tastiness” of each piece of content by voting and “buzz” the most popular posts to the top of the daily menu of submissions.  Foodbuzz currently logs over 13 million monthly page views and over three million monthly unique visitors.      

“Our goal is to be the number-one online source of quality food and dining content by promoting the talent, enthusiasm and knowledge of food bloggers around the globe,” said Ben Dehan, founder and CEO of Foodbuzz, Inc.  

The Foodbuzz blogger community is growing at a rate of 40 percent per month driven by strong growth in existing partner blogs and the addition of over 100 new blogs per month.   “The Foodbuzz.com Web site is like the stock of a great soup.  The Web site provides the base or backbone for bloggers to interact as a community, contribute content, and have that content buzzed by their peers,” said Mr. Dehan.

Related Link:

http://www.foodbuzz.com/

 Foodbuzz just kicked off its 24 Meals, 24 Hours, 24 Blogs promotion.  They picked 24 Blogs from around the world to participate by posting a Meal within the same 24 Hours.  I entered, but you’ll see that the competition was stiff — Hopefully my idea will get picked next time.  Until then, here’s a link to the 24 excellent posts.  All did an amazing job – http://www.foodbuzz.com/24.

As a Featured Publisher, I received this Apron and Spatula in the mail today.  Thanks Foodbuzz!  I’ll take a picture using them someday. 🙂