Frugal Foodie Cook-off {Food Lion Gift Card Giveaway}

Last week, I channeled my inner Top Chef and threw down with ten other food and mom bloggers in a Frugal Foodie Cook-off hosted by Food Lion.

The competition:

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Prior to living in Charlotte, I’d never heard of Food Lion supermarkets, which was founded in North Carolina and has over 1,100 locations.

Don’t let the smile fool you–I came ready to compete!

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The challenge:  prepare a four-person dinner in under thirty minutes using less than $15 worth of groceries.  

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A Big Fatz Giveaway

I remember the first time I drove by a Fatz restaurant.  I’d never heard of Fatz, given the chain is central to the south, with locations in Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and the Carolinas.  Admittedly, the thought of dining at a place with “fat” in the name didn’t sound too appetizing, and I’d written it off without so much as glancing at the menu.  Who am I?!

Then I got an email from Fatz asking if I’d like to come in and try the new Fatz Lite Side menu.  I was more than intrigued.  A light menu?  At Fatz?  How could this be?!  I hit the web for details  and was completely caught off guard by the huge selection of food Fatz offered.  The new light options menu was like the fat-free icing on the chocolate cake.

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This weekend we finally got to check out Fatz firsthand.

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NuGo Slim Bar Giveaway!

I’ve been on the hunt for a tasty low-sugar bar for months… strike that.  YEARS.  I am hypoglycemic, so I’ve been making a real conscious effort to regulate my daily sugar intake in an effort to avoid peaks and valleys in my sugar levels.  Every low sugar bar I’ve tried to date has come up short.  Quest Bars, Think Thin Bars, Atkins Bars… all absolutely horrible in my opinion.  The most common failures for these low sugar bars are the texture and that horrible taste fake sugars give things.  Blegh!  I hate that… just thinking about it makes my teeth hurt!  Not to mention that the sugar alcohols always seem to upset my stomach and make me regret eating the low sugar bar in the first place.

A few months back Shanna from Shanna Like Banana told me about a new low-sugar line of bars from NuGo.  I was super excited to try them out, but I was cautiously optimistic.  I’d had SO MANY failures that I’d kind of reached the conclusion that low sugar unavoidably resulted in an awful taste.

Enter The NuGo Slim line, which consists of three flavors:  Roasted Peanut, Brownie Crunch, & Raspberry Truffle:

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Pizza randomness

Soon after first meeting the BF, we bonded over our mutual love of cheesy niblets.  After perfecting our buffalo chicken dip recipe, we moved on to make THIS our favorite Friday night feast:

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As a kid, pizza was one of my favorite dinners. When mom or dad would come home exhausted from their days, too tired to cook, with just enough energy to utter the words “let’s just order pizza for dinner” my heart would pitter patter with excitement as an uncontrollable cheshire-cat style smile spread across my face.

Pizza was cause for celebration in my family, and back in the day I was a straight up pepperoni and cheese gal.

Red heart Pepperoni and Cheese Red heart

I remember the day I got my braces.  I was 13 years ripe, and I think my dad felt bad that I was in so much pain… Or perhaps he felt bad because he had just assisted in adding more metal to his poor teenage daughters head (as if my GIANT glasses were not enough).

So, in an attempt to cheer up his little girl, he decided we’d order pizza from our favorite hole in the wall pizzeria for dinner.  I remember opening that steaming box and seeing the thick pepperonis all curled up into little cups of grease heaven, and that amazing pizza smell that made the pain suddenly start to melt away.  I was so excited, so high from the pizza induced endorphins, that I grabbed a slice and chomped down without hesitation.

I remember the horror that immediately washed over me as I ripped my hand back from my mouth like a kid who’d just high-fived a hot stove as I burst into tears.  My newly bedazzled mouth was too sore to eat the pizza.  Too sore to enjoy the crunch of that buttery crust or the spice of the pepperoni.  Too sore to even nibble on the oozing cheese.  Through my tears, my dad and I painstakingly cut the pizza into pebble sized swallowable bites and I proceeded to toss them into my mouth followed by long swigs of Coke like a real pizza pill poppin addict.

Why was adolescence so cruel?!

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Yes… that just happened.

But let us focus on what’s important here.

Pizza.

It brings people together.

It puts a sparkle of happiness in your eyes and warm and fuzzies in your belly.

Heck, it even puts hair on your face.

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Hahahaha… That’s my nephew Dylan.  LOVE that pic.  He’s almost 13 now… and sadly, no longer a pirate.

I can count on one hand — strike that — one FINGER the number of people I’ve met in my life who did not adore pizza.  (crazy man, that Tim is)

Pizza is the jam.  The cat’s meow.  The shiznit, if you will.

A couple years back, my sister and I were brainstorming ideas for a Father’s Day present for our dad.  We decided we would take dad out to lunch to the restaurant of his choice.  Mexican or seafood or a big Italian feast.  Whatever his heart desired.

When we presented him with his present, he got a big smile of his face and then told us where he’d like to go.  10116_709197216164_23305880_41001277_853689_n

Cici’s Pizza Buffet.

Yes.

Sometimes all a father really wants is to pig out with his children at the pizza buffet Smile

I haven’t been to CiCis Pizza Buffet since then, which is very sad given how enamored I was with their macaroni and cheese pizza…  So wrong, but SO right!

When I was contacted a couple weeks back about doing a giveaway for Cici’s, I HAD to jump on it (in secret hopes that my one of my siblings will win a free pizza buffet for my pa, of course).

Here’s the scoop:  CiCi’s Pizza Family Funtacular summer scratch and win contest runs through August 28.  The scratch off tickets give you the opportunity to win movie tickets, family fun packs, children’s movie tickets, CiCi’s gift cards, free buffets, carry-out pizzas and beverages.

Oh man… my dad would LOVE LOOOOVE to win this….

Grand prize for two lucky families: an all-expense paid trip for four to Universal Orlando Resort Vacation…. Ok… Shut the front door!!!  Now I really REALLY hope one of my siblings win!

I have SIX scratch off tickets to give away, and I’ll send them ALL to the winner.  TWO ways to enter:  1.) leave a comment (or link) on this post with your favorite pizza topping or recipe AND 2.) Follow me on Twitter @Fervent_Foodie!

I’ll use a random # generator to select a winner Sunday at midnight!

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Technology-1, Mary-0 (plus #giveaway)

So over the weekend, I decided to do a little housekeeping on the blog and categorize all of my old posts.  All 260 of them.  Just so that I could have a nice little category cloud on the right hand side of the screen (check that shiz out!).  Seemed like a fabulous idea, until last night I realized something I was doing was triggering random old posts to get flushed through the RSS feed.

Oooopsie!

I wish I could personally go into each and every one of your feeds and delete all the old posts.  I even tried to hack into a few of your accounts to no avail Winking smile

The only thing I can do now, is offer you free Greek yogurt!

YoCrunch recently sent me a free coupon to give to a reader for their new YoCrunch Greek Yogurt line:

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Honey, blueberry, peach, and strawberry low-fat Greek yogurt all ready to be mixed up with their all-natural low-fat granolas.  Ummm sign me up!  Or actually sign YOU up.

Just post a comment on this post (about anything your heart desires), and I’ll randomly select a winner Monday evening.

Good luck, and sorry if I made a mess of your RSS feed Smile

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