Dylan on The Today Show

So it took a little longer than I hoped for Dylan’s first national media gig (ha!) but she had the good fortune to appear on a Today Show spot, which aired on June 23rd. The spot is about baby food, and the piece was hosted by the lovely and engaging Jenna Wolfe, who is expecting her first baby girl this year! So,where to begin…

Well, the opportunity arose when The Baby Grocery Store posted on their Facebook page about a “national media opportunity”.  I immediately jumped on that shizzle!! I hunted down the cutest pictures of Dylan I could find, and e-mailed them over on a Friday night while drinking wine.

For the record, this was the photo magic that sealed the deal:

 

The Wine Guy

I was in the mood for wine on Saturday night.  Wait...I think that's every night...but let's get to the point.  My dear friend Lisa and I decided to check out The Wine Guy in Gahanna, OH for some food and booze.  She had a buy-one-get-one coupon, and we're all about free eats.  I'd been there once before last summer on a fairly disastrous date (hey boys, don't ever tell a girl on a first date that you've been prescribed Cialis...legit creepyballs) so I think I tried to black out my memory of this joint.  But when free food is calling, you've gotta do what you've gotta do.

When you walk in, the walls are lined with hundreds of bottles of wine.  You can walk around, pick one up, and have it served with your meal.  We decided on the wine flight so we could try a bunch of vino.     

The Green Monster

'Ish got weird this weekend.  REAL weird.  And by weird I actually mean awesome.  My 4th of July festivities started on the 3rd and ended....well...today.  The last seven days have included fireworks, a wedding, boating at the lake, a road trip, a concert, a few country drives, and probably thirty adult sodas.  Oh, and throw in about ten red bulls in there too.  Oops.  Sorry for partying.  Despite eating mostly organo all weekend, my bod is still in shambles.  It's time for some major damage control.

I headed to the grocery store and loaded about fifty pounds of produce and other goodies into my cart in hopes that the nutrient bomb would cure my week long vodka head.  I'm a smoothie freak (see last smoothie post) so I bought tons of items to throw in the blender and go.  Here was my grocery list:

•  spinach
•  frozen blueberries
•  bananas
•  frozen mangoes
•  apples
•  kale
•  avocados
•  frozen papaya
•  frozen raspberries
•  frozen strawberries
•  frozen pineapple
• Greek yogurt
• OJ
• green tea

I got home and decided that I needed to make the greenest smoothie possible, because that was obviously going to reverse an entire week of poor decisions....right?  Well, I whipped up this little guy and was pretty freakin' impressed.

Below are the ingredients for this bad boy:

• 4 oz. organic OJ
• A ridiculous amount of spinach ( just dump a ton in there so you can feel smug about yourself )
• 1/2 cup of fat free greek yogurt
• 1/2 banana
• 1 cup of frozen papaya, mango, and pineapple ( I bought this sweet combo in a "tropical" frozen fruit mix )

Blend. Chug.  Pat yourself on the back for taking this green monster straight to the face.  This smoothie is honestly SO good.  And it blends into a freakishly neon green color which is pretty sweet too.  I recommend starting out your day or ending your day with one of these guys.  What are your favorite smoothie recipes?  What fab ingredients do you add to make your smoothie amazeballs?

Oh, and I'll leave you with a little evidence of the weekend's shenanigans....gah!

I wear my sunglasses at night...

Cheers!

First Friday Blog Hop

We are SO excited to share that we have teamed up with the gorgeous ladies of I Don't Go To The Gym to co-host their First Friday Blog Hop!

First of all, let me take a moment to tell you about these ladies - they get us. They love cooking healthy, actually doable recipes, and know how to get some hot bods without slaving away at a creepy gym. They also know a way to a man's heart is in the kitchen (and man, do they have some cute ones!) and I LOVE how they highlight that a fit bod is 70% what you eat and only 30% about exercise. We couldn't agree more.

So back to the Blog Hop! This is a really great way to discover other fabulous blogs, as well as an opportunity to promote yours. Here's how it works:

1. Follow Organoblondes on Bloglovin here.
2. Pop over and follow I Don't Go To The Gym.
3. Link up below to your home page, bloglovin' page, favorite post - whatever YOU wish to promote!
4. Share about the hop by grabbing our button or share with twitter, Facebook or Pinterest. The more successful the hop is, the more potential followers for YOU!
5. Visit as many blogs as possible and spread the love & follow back :)

Organoblondes is a fairly new blog, and we're looking to find amazeballs new bloggy friends. Let us know if you'd like to swap buttons, set up a guest post, or any other fun ideas you might have!

Say Cheerio to GMOs

We've ALL eaten them. They are as American as apple pie and booze before noon. Cheerios are supposed to be a healthy, heart-friendly breakfast....right?!

Furthermore, they are marketed toward children...and even recommended to tiny babies as one of their first finger foods. At our six-month appointment, my own pediatrician recommended that I give Cheerios to Dylan.

So what's the big problem, you ask? Well, like the vast majority of the food in this country, a deeper look into the ingredients will give you pause...and if you're like me, frantically searching for alternatives.

Take a look at this fantastic analysis by GMO Inside. The highlights are basically that all Cheerios products are made with corn products sourced from the US, 88% of which are genetically modified. In addition, the article states:

Vitamin E in Cheerios comes from Mixed Tocopherols which are most commonly derived from soy, corn, or cotton – the most extensively genetically engineered crops.



Via

All Natural: What Does That Even Mean?!

I'm about to information bomb you with some mad facts on the differences between organic, all natural, natural flavorings, etc.  To be honest with you, I'm kind of a bozo when it comes to these terms, as I honestly thought they were all the same until recently.  Little did I know, "all natural" ingredients can be anything from bug guts (aka carmine - see my previous blog post) to wood pulp (aka cellulose) to beaver butts (aka castoreum).  The last one was so vile and almost unbelievable that I had to get the lowdown.  Castoreum, labeled as a natural flavoring on food packages, is quite literally the yellowish secretion of the castor sac in combination with the beaver's urine, used during territorial marking out in the wild.  Here in the USA, the FDA has considered this "natural" additive to be GRAS (generally recognized as safe).  It is mainly used in food and beverages requiring a vanilla flavoring.   So a beaver's ummm...byproducts...smell like vanilla?! Well hot damn, you learn something new everyday, don't you? 

I gotta say, I have a little bit of creepy vanilla anxiety now.  I mean, what am I going to put in my coffee?  Clearly not my Natural Bliss creamer!  Gah!  Let's be serious, I'm a die hard carnivore, but I'm not trying to have beaver in my beverage.     

Southwest Chicken Chili

I’m about to drop another sweet recipe on you peeps. Much like my last recipe post, this one is easy to throw together and can be enjoyed for days. Like I said, I can’t be bothered to cook every day, so it’s stuff like this or takeout, which is usually not very Organo.

I don’t want to mislead you. I didn’t, like, make this recipe up. That is beyond the scope of what I’m capable of. I found it on SkinnyTaste, an amazeballs website chock full of healthy, easy-to-follow recipes (with mouth-watering photography to boot).  It’s probably my #2 favorite website for recipes, behind Thug Kitchen. More on my obsession with that later.

The original recipe can be found here…I’ll call mine a “loose adaptation” because I almost always forget stuff or add random stuff, and it still tastes fantastic. Here’s how I made it today:

• Two massive chicken breasts 
• Red bell pepper
• Green pepper
• 2 jalapenos
• Yellow onion
• 1 8 oz. can of corn
• 1 8 oz. can of black beans
• 1 16 oz. can of diced tomatoes
• Any kind of Mexican-ish seasoning: Ancho chile powder, chili powder, chipotle seasoning, fajita seasoning, etc. Grab one that looks tasty and don’t overthink it.
• Salt and Pepper