July 6, 2008 by Kingston

Had a dip into the Fancy Food Show in NYC last Sunday. More than a dip really, I walked the whole show which was huge in three hours. That is a feat let me tell you!

In hindsight, It seemed like aisles and aisles...


Gourmet honey was everywhere--here's one company, Savannah Bee Company, making honey flavored beauty products (with alot of nut oils):

Fancy olive oils, flavored waters (one called Metromint one called Hint) and organic tomato sauce dominated the show.

However a few of our collective gluten-free heroes were there as well. Here's Tina from Glutino. Did you know they had frozen ready-to-eat GF meals? I haven't seen that in my frozen section in Whole Foods, have you?


Cherrybrook Kitchen was there unveiling some new GF cookies, vanilla graham and chocolate chip. I had a taste and forgot to snap a pic...

Here’s me (red-eyes got me again)and Shabtai hottie Andrew (sorry girls, he's taken).


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In some news: Eden Foods has a new line of organic GF rice and beans that I tried the week before. They are a great, cheap and easy lunch for the workplace:


San-J maker of organic GF tamari is making these marinades GF as of January 2009. Very cool!


Hillside Candy, makers of the Go Lightly brand for diabetics, has rolled out a gluten-fee organic hard candy: Go Naturally using evaporated cane juice and brown rice syrup. They were pretty organically yum!

And last bit of news, I met Molly of Miss Molly's icing. I know you've seen it too in the Whole Foods fridge section. It's ready made frosting that's: "Non-Hydrogenated, No Gluten, No Soy, No Nuts, No Eggs, No Preservatives, No Colors". Woo Hoo, right?

Now on the packages it does say made in a facility with tree-nuts and I asked Miss Molly about this. She was advised to place that on the product because she shares a facility with another manufacturer who occasionally uses nuts in his products, but on different days and after everything is cleaned etc. There is NO contact between these two companies and Molly assured me that her highly nut allergic son eats the product all the time and is fine.

Now everyone is different so PLEASE call the manufacturer if you have questions (Tel: 603-491-6464) but I tried it right there, and yup, it's delicious GF icing.


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OK now you know the basics of this year’s offerings. Enjoy!
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by Kingston

Apparently, it's either flowers or stripes this summer. My closet definitely has more stripes than flowers.. How about you, what do you prefer?

Waist of Time

Bike Chat

Flowers by the Lake Flower Race
Stripes by the Lake Copenhagen Caravan

Combining is also an option:
See My Helmet
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by Kingston

With the travelling I've been doing in the past two weeks, I've been so out of touch with the real world (ie. the Internet) that I didn't even know it was Haute Couture week until I logged into style.com! I've only looked through three collections but they have already surprised me as they were certainly different from what I've come to expect from those desginers.
Chanel
Karl Lagerfeld usually sends out pretty, mostly black & white and commercial dresses so I was surprised when many of the dresses had such structured and artistic silhouettes! I have mixed reactions with the dresses though, and some of the dresses looked like a continuation of the silver Chanel dress that Anna Wintour wore to the Superheroes party.
The show started with dresses that were very sophisticated, very Chanel.
And ended with very romantic and elegant evening dresses.
In between, there were the more structured dresses. I especially liked these two. The dress on the left reminds me of a flower (with a model in the middle.) And even though I have no idea what the frame around her model's head (on the right) does, it just looks really cool -sort of makes the model look like a haute couture robot.
Although I wouldn't call these dresses ugly, I'm just not too fond of them. The one on the right especially does not look flattering. To be fair, all these dresses must look so much more impressive in real life.
Givenchy
Before looking at the collection, I was expecting lots of rock chic, black and white again, but this collection was definitely more colourful than the previous ones. The clothes also seemed less structured.
These looks remind me of high fashion soldiers marching to somewhere cold.
And these make me think of glamorous Parisian parties. I like this neutral palette of colours so much more than that khaki green.
Christian Lacroix
Lacroix's collection is always one of the most fun to look at because it always takes you into a colourful, overly luxurious world of chiffon and laces -and this collection did just that.
Just wow! I love the high fashion gothic look, and this was all done with mini skirts or dresses, making the looks very youthful and put together.
The girly looks -although noticeably not as sweet-looking than his previous collections. This ones feels much darker. Notice all the ornaments and laces and details each look has!
How did everyone like these three collections?
Image Credit: www.style.com

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by Kingston


So, what is on your desk this week?

Anna: Today, I have nothing on my desk! I handed in the art for Abigail Spells on Tuesday, then came home and did some cleansing. It is very therapeutic to clean your desk after finishing a project, sort of like closure. Isn't it nice and sparkly?



Grace: Working on chapter headers for my novel. Only 27 more left to go! sigh.





Elaine: Meghan's new book, Astronaut Handbook, is on my desk. (Note: The Fascinating Facts page in the back matter is full of interesting tidbits of information.) You can also see a red notebook and yellow folder. They contain drafts of poems I've been writing for my most recent collection, which now has about thirteen poems. The thick book on top of the notebook is my rhyming dictionary (The Complete Rhyming Dictionary and Poet's Craft Book, edited by Clement Wood). It's a great resource! There are also lots of nonfiction books that I've been browsing through.


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by Kingston


Let the Fed know exactly what you think about the banks that issued the plastic in your wallet
Through August 4th, the Federal Reserve is giving the consuming public a chance to weigh in on new credit-card rules it proposed in May. (The deadline for comments regarding some related proposals, mainly regarding credit-card disclosures, is July 18.) Among the changes proposed: prohibiting, in many instances, credit-card companies from hitting you with a higher interest rate on already-amassed debt. In another change issuing banks would be required to apply at least a portion of consumer payments to higher-rate debt. Some issuers put payments first to cheaper debt, such as balance transfers that have low rates, rather than to higher-rate purchases. But perhaps the most significant change would be to prohibit two-cycle billing, a deft little scam by which banks compute interest on debt on days preceding the most recent billing cycle. This practice, which in my strident, pro-consumer POV amounts to nothing short of mail fraud - because it results in borrowers paying interest on debt paid off during the previous month's grace period. Credit card companies are in a lather, insisting that these measures will "harm consumers" to which my debt-free ass says "PPPHHHBBBBTTTTT!" To weigh in, go to the Federal Reserve website and click on the "Consumer Information" tab at the top of the page.

Another meat recall
Did you know that yet another meat recall is underway, this one involving over five million pounds of ground beef that originated at a packing plant owned by Nebraska Beef Ltd, and was sold to Kroger stores? (KC readers, Dillon's stores are owned by Kroger.) This is not the first time that Nebraska Beef has been implicated in e Coli illnesses. In fact, Nebraska Beef is the company that sued a church that put on a potluck after the family of a woman who died after eating e Coli tainted meatballs at the gathering. After authorities in Minnesota traced the beef that killed her to Nebraska Beef, Ltd. her family sued Nebraska Beef. NB, in turn, sued the church - claiming the volunteers at the church who prepared the food were responsible. In 2007, the company sued the USDA, claiming they were being picked on unfairly by the federal agency that insisted they follow the rules. No word on whether the judge who tossed the case was laughing out loud when he dismissed that case.




Heavens no, we can't "insult" the Chinese!
In keeping with his (total lack of) character, the idiot in the oval will attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics - because failing to do so would be an insult to China. Funny, he doesn't care nearly so much about insulting his own countrymen or he would have long since resigned in disgrace and turned himself over to the authorities at the Hague.



No surprises here
Employees at the Department of education have abused their agency-issued credit cards. Can we put some teeth into the rules and give some of these thieving jackasses jail time? Hows about mandatory sentences for stuff like this? I would rather lock up people like this than college students who get caught smoking weed.


I understand the dedication, but as a fellow military wife, I take her side
It is frankly un-fucking-conscionable that any one soldier has served forty-two god-damned months in Iraq, and if the military hadn't been broken by the chief chickenhawk who idiotically started a vanity war, we wouldn't hear about such abuses of our personnel in uniform - and believe me, forty-two months in a war zone is abuse. Especially when this Soldier serves a president who couldn't even hack it in a champagne-TANG unit, and isn't fit to spit-shine this mans boots. That his wife hasn't bailed is a testament to her. She gets my most crisp salute. (And no warmongering republican chickenhawk fucker will ever get a vote from me. There just aren't any more Nancy Kassebaums running for office.)

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