Cast Iron Love

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Andrea

Last year for Christmas, Scott gave me this cast iron dutch oven. This thing is no joke either, it’s heavy!

I admit that I haven’t used it very much because it’s an odd size. It’s not small but it’s not big enough to make soups in either. I was unsure what to do with it but I am making a promise to myself to use it more.

I do love it!

Sunday night I realized that this pot would be prefect for cooking up a huge batch of collards and I was right. This cast iron dutch oven was the perfect size!

I’m going to try and find more ways to start using this pot. My first thought is perhaps making some baked beans. Anyone have any great baked beans recipe? I would like to make the baked beans from scratch as this is something I’ve never done before.

I’ve got a great cast iron skillet as well that I’ve made cornbread in.

Welcome to Food Embrace

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Andrea

Hi everyone and welcome to Food Embrace! I’m still in the process of getting everything straightened out and doing major housecleaning with the site. Please know, this is not the site’s final look. It’s just temporary and site design will be a constant work in progress. I wanted to get it up and running because I was anxious to get started with this new phase of blogging and career. Plus I missed blogging! It was like a hole in my life developed and it was leaving me a tad cranky.

Sorry Scott!

If you are reading via a reader, check in on occasion to see the changes to the website.Currently there are some new things to check out!

If you are looking for something that was posted on Off Her Cork, it should be on here already. You can do a search and should be able to find what you need.

OHC Will Be Changing

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Andrea

OHC will be making some changes. The changes involve a brand new name and a new home on the web. As you know, I started school earlier this year to become a certified health coach. With that comes a brand new career and life path.

I debated long and hard about keeping OHC or developing a new company name. I had many many people tell me to keep OHC because they liked it and thought the name was cute and catchy. I have to agree, I love Off Her Cork very much.

I’ve spent over two years building up OHC and creating life for it. To possibly have to give that up was a very hard decision. Not to mention migrating everything over to a new site, having to rebuild google rank, and rebuild the brand. Whew! I’m tired just writing that.

Seriously though, this is a decision that kept me up at night. What should I do? Do I keep OHC or move to something new? Some people told me to have a new site just for business and OHC for personal.

Maple Bacon Pancakes

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Andrea

Bacon is popular. And with good reason, it is mighty fine eats. It’s crispy (unless you like limp bacon, which if you do, let’s not discuss that), salty, and smoky. Bacon has seen a new popularity though popping up in things like cupcakes and ice cream.

Or maybe that’s always been the case but now it’s getting more press. Regardless it was time to jump on the train and do something with bacon. We love bacon at the HQ and Scott is always tossing hints my way about putting more bacon on top of things.

I took the challenge.

As I was assembling things in the kitchen you could hear him muttering, “What’s going on Rocks?” (He always pretends to be talking to Rocky when he’s trying to work something out.) “She’s got bacon out but it looks like she’s making pancakes.”

All he had to do was put two and two together which would have given him maple bacon pancakes!

The pictures and the thief

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Andrea

I'm talking to you, punk.

A few weeks ago I noticed that someone was hotlinking to some of my pictures from the blog. Not sure what Hotlinking is? Let’s turn to Wikipedia for help!

Hot-linking is a term used on the Internet. Hot-linking is when someone uses a link to an image that is saved on another website instead of saving a copy of the image on the website that the picture will be shown on. For example, instead of saving picture.gif and loading it on to their own website, the person uses a link to the picture as http://website.com/picture.gif. Hot-linking uses the bandwidth of the person who owns the website where the picture is stored. This costs that person money. This is why many website owners are using .htaccess files and uploading it to their websites.

In some cases website owners use the .htaccess file to replace any hot-linked images with an offensive image to deter any other website owners from hot-linking.

Want more info? Check out this other Wikipedia article, or this little article over here.

Happy 2nd Birthday OHC!

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Andrea

Party time! Whooo! OHC turns two today! This little website has come a long way and so has its author. I started this website not really sure what I was doing, no goal in mind, and hoped for the best. I wrote recipes, a few topical articles, and I also documented my daily eats (showing what I ate everyday for breakfast, lunch, and dinner) for just over a year.

Over these two years I have discovered what works and what doesn’t when it comes to me and my blog. I have learned many things, discovered new foods, and made so many new friends.

The site has changed so much and it is constantly evolving which is always for the better! Right now I have a clear goal with OHC and it sort of came to me as I was working on several projects last month.

OHC is a site where I focus on food and exercise. I want to show people that eating healthy and exercising can be FUN and does not have to be HARD. I want to help people get in the kitchen and cook for themselves. I want people to realize how important local restaurants are and to support them instead of big chain places that don’t care about it’s customers.

Different paths

Posted on February 5, 2010 by Andrea

Hi guys! I’ve been thinking a lot about OHC lately and what I would like for it to become and what I would like to talk about. I’m sort of leaning away from the daily eats posts. Mostly because I don’t really have that much to talk about in regards to the minutia of my day. I ate, I walked Rocky, and I ate some more. The end.

Snore fest.

And I’m just not really feeling those posts anymore. Part of the reason is that I also don’t want to bring in discussion topics in those posts. For me personally, I feel like discussion worthy topics should get their own posts to highlight them. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone else but me. :p I am very much a compartmentalized type of personality. I like things to be neat and orderly. Things that are worth a big “discussion” should be in their own category while what I ate for lunch should be in its own category. Because of that mentality, my daily eats posts are full of nothing. The content is not there and I’m not feeling happy with them. Therefore I want to maybe put them away for a little while and focus on some other things.

Changes to OHC

Posted on January 2, 2010 by Andrea

Hi guys! OHC is officially over a year old! We celebrated one year of OHC goodness on the 1st of September. Hooray! The past year we have talked about so many things!

I’ve been blogging my daily eats.

I’ve been providing tips.

I’ve been writing food reviews.

I’ve started doing some other exercise and nutrition discussion.

And basically just talking about life in general.

This past year has been rewarding and challenging in so many different ways. In this year I have also made some discoveries and have come to some conclusions that I would like to share with you.

First up is the daily eats section. Daily eats is hard, yo! It’s not taking the pictures that’s hard, it’s dealing with those pictures and writing the post that is hard and time consuming. One thing you might have already noticed is that I’ve started posting once a day now, in the evenings, instead of two posts a day. Two posts a day was stressing me out. Sometimes I would be in the middle of something and I would have to stop in order to have the time to get my afternoon post up. It takes me at least a half an hour to write a daily eats post and that’s if I do it quickly. Most times it takes me much longer.

Question regarding OHC Reviews

Posted on April 30, 2009 by Andrea

Hi guys! I thought I would toss this question out and see what your thoughts on the matter are. I really enjoy writing reviews of products and I was thinking of expanding on that. I love love love running clothes and gear. Really just workout clothes period, either for working out or lounging around at home.

I would love to talk about some of my likes and dislikes that I have on gear. And also share with you some of my thoughts on different products I’ve tried. Would you be interested in reading some OHC Workout Gear Reviews? It would range from clothing to accessories and also gadget stuff (to indulge my nerdy side). I created a poll so that you can vote on it without having to leave a comment. But I would love it if you did comment as well and let me know your thoughts!

[poll id="2"]

Thanks guys!!

2009 Birthday Giveaway WINNER

Posted on March 15, 2009 by Andrea

And the winner of the chocolate goodies is….

Chocolate goodies

Number 31!! Maggie, The Salad Girl, that’s you! :woohoo: Congrats!! Please email me your address so I can ship off this package of goodies to you! My email is located in the “contact” area of my site. You have until Tuesday, 12pm EST, to email me your contact info. Otherwise your winnings will get passed on to another person.

I used Random.org to pick a winner.

Do no fret my lovlies, OHC will be holding future giveaways as well which will also be chocked full of yummy things. Stay tuned!