On the Rocks.: unsolicited product endorsement

Showing posts with label unsolicited product endorsement. Show all posts

Unsolicited Product Endorsement: SIGG Bottles.

If you know me well, you know that I'm never very far from a source of water. I inhale the stuff...anywhere between 2 and 3 litres throughout the day. Consequently, I have tried a number of water-carrying options for work and weekends.

Since the 90's, I have been a devout Nalgene kind of girl. I have had many of their bottles, dating back to the days when I worked outdoors for the YM-YWCA and needed something that I could carry easily in my backpack, toss into a kayak, or hang off my rock-climbing harness. Nalgene fit the bill and I have always had a few of them kicking around.

The water here is safe to drink, but since it's collected rainwater, it has a distinctive taste that I can only describe as "pond". It tastes like a frog. So, we stocked up on Brita filters and that takes care of it, though you still have to consume it quickly because if it sits around and reaches room temperature, that pond taste and smell seem to return. Unpleasant. I recently started looking around for an alternative to my polycarbonate Nalgenes and found SIGG bottles. I've now had mine for about a week and I'm hooked. And hydrated. The pond smell is a distant memory and my water stays much colder for longer. Plus, since it's not plastic, that nagging voice in the back of my head warning me about plastic leaching into my water is gone. No more worries.

I highly recommend them. I know that Klean Kanteens are pretty popular right now too for all of the same reasons, but we can't get those here. The SIGG is prettier too. Because that's what's really important.

Unsolicited Product Endorsement: Naval Oranges.

I don't know why, but for the longest time I actually "forgot" about oranges. I'd buy them once a year, when the little Christmas mandarins came out, and then completely bypass the normal naval oranges in the fruit aisle for the rest of the year. They were dead to me. It was like they weren't even there.

When we moved here, our fruit selection became limited. Not because you can't find normal types of fruit, but because of the cost and quality. I'm now at the point where I'll pay for my 0.99 apples without making snide comments under my breath, but Kurt's allergic to apples so I knew we needed to branch out into the other, potentially more costly, types of fruit. Pineapple was out. Watermelon was out...$10.99 for a 1/4 of a watermelon seemed a TAD ridiculous, don't you think? Plus, I hate watermelon. Kurt's allergic to kiwis, pears, peaches, nectarines, plums...pretty much all the fruit I love. I could buy them for myself, of course, but they actually don't seem to fare well on their long commute to the island and show up looking pretty ghastly most of the time...like something you'd find on the ground in an orchard AFTER they'd picked all the good ones. We'd buy the occasional grapefruit, and about a month ago, as I was bagging up a few ruby reds, I noticed a big, beautiful pile of naval oranges sitting right next to them. At 0.99 each, they beat most of the other fruit in the price department and they looked like they were in OK shape, so we gave them a go.

Can I just say...I LOVE oranges. They are delicious, and good for you too. We now buy 10 every week and each take one in our lunches every day. It's solved the problem of Kurt's formerly fruitless existence and added a nutritious snack for me so I don't get bored with the old Granny Smiths.

However...they are not without their issues.

First off, they are a labour-intensive fruit. I would put them somewhere in the realm of a pomegranate or perhaps some types of melons, as far as the amount of time you need to put into the fruit before being able to eat it. They require a certain level of commitment which an apple does not (this might actually explain why I'm a cat person instead of a dog person. Dogs are the oranges of pets). The peel always gets under your fingernails, you normally get some of that powerful peel juice in your eye, and then there's the white stuff which I KNOW IS GOOD FOR ME but which I would rather not eat anyways because it's not nice to look at and gets stuck in my teeth.

Secondly, you go through the whole process of peeling and preparing your orange and go to take your first bite...only to find that a certain percentage of the time, the orange is crap. They can be dry (the worst), or tasteless, or too sweet, or can be totally rotten without any indication of this on the outside. Oranges are a crapshoot. You never know whether your investment is going to pay off or bite you in the ass. I've been lucky enough to only have come across one or two bad ones in the weeks we've been buying them, so we'll continue to fork out the dough and buy them as long as they're in season.

Unsolicited Product Endorsement: Vegan Food, courtesy of Veganomicon.

I'm all for trying new things, and I'm also constantly on the lookout for new cookbooks to keep me interested in cooking and all things kitchen-related. This usually works, though some work better than others.

Last December, I purchased a copy of Veganomicon. I bought it based on Amazon reviews (five stars, across the board), and because I was looking for more vegetable-based entrées. I ordered it through a local bookstore and it arrived a week later, hot off the press. Apparently, the vegan crowd was all over it once it was released and it's been tough to get your paws on ever since...though I think it's now been printed again and you can probably find it easily. Kurt was a bit standoffish at first...he had no love for the Veganomicon. But I decided to dive right into it and try and wow him with vegan goodness. And all I can say is...

Wow.

I have never been more impressed with the results of my cooking. One recipe in particular, chickpea cutlets, has become a staple in our weekly diet and I have it memorized. The cutlets, made out of crushed chickpeas, breadcrumbs and vital wheat gluten (sorry H, though I'm sure the recipe could be modified), are super easy to make, and are one of Kurt's new favorite things. Mine too. Topped with a bit of local habanero jam - or anything, really - they are a fantastic new face for the space on your plate formerly inhabited by meat. Other faves are the samosa-stuffed baked potatoes and the corn, edamame and sesame salad. I am in love.

Highly, highly, highly recommended. It's huge (reminds me of my grade 8 science text book, actually), full of tips and extra info about different ingredients, and it's really fun to read. The author is a genius and I'm currently tracking down her previous two cookbooks, Vegan With a Venegeance and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Yummmmmmm.

Good Intentions.

Of course, right after I get the wheels in motion with my blog, I lose steam almost immediately. This time it was health-induced. I think I'm fighting something but not actually sick...if that makes any sense. My Monday run was amazing...so good that I actually jogged instead of walked for my little cool-down afterwards. But by Tuesday, my entire body felt like lead and I was lagging behind Kurt, and today I skipped my run completely. I guess everyone has those days. Still, it's a bummer to have to delete scheduled work-outs from my overly-scheduled calendar. As a little test, I went for 3 days without taking the glucosamine and guess what? The pain came back. So, started taking them again on Monday and guess what? Now it's gone again. Very. Interesting. My unsolicited endorsement stands. And my knee is feeling fabulous enough to do one final 7.5km along that narrow, windy stretch of road before moving production to a different oceanside locale. I don't know yet if I'll be doing any running while we're away. The beach is too slanty to run on (at least, it was last year), but I might be able to try it along some of the little roads in the town we're staying in. My shoes and watch are coming with me, so at least I'll have it as an option, if I get bored with exploring or poolside reading. Ha. Very unlikely.

I forgot something on my UPE: Running Checklist: lululemon headbands. I own at least 10 of these and use them constantly. They're especially helpful when you have long hair (check) and it's windy (check). Be careful though, because one size does NOT fit all, in my experience. My brown one is at least an inch larger than my white one and my green one is totally useless for running because it doesn't stay in place.

We're down to the final two sleeps before the long-awaited vacay and I can only hope that the vacation doesn't fly by as quickly as the time leading up to it has. We've been counting down, but I swear on my favorite purse, the days are shorter here. Or maybe this island is placed into some sort of time tunnel where the minutes click by slightly faster than anywhere else. Regardless...I'm hoping things slow down in Mexico.

Unsolicited Product Endorsements.

I'm long overdue for one of these.

It's now been a month since I moved and that month was full of new places, new food and new things. Some have been great. Others have been just OK. Some were terrible. However, in the spirit of consumerism and my current obsession with online shopping (which never actually results in a sale, since 99% of places won't ship here, but I have loaded virtual carts everywhere!), here is my current list of faves.

1. The "have-it-built-by-a-professional" lunch salad bar. I'll blog about this separately, but I am loooooving the chicken, asparagus, sundried tomato, avocado and feta combo, with balsamic dressing on the side. It's like discovering salad all over again.

2. Perfume. I'm not really a big perfume person - mostly because I'm always afraid of being "that person" who overdoes it. Even one spray in an inconspicuous place can cause major

discomfort for someone else, and since I've been that uncomfortable person many times, I'm pretty conscious of pungent perfumes. That being said, I'm actually allergic to a lot of perfumes (like, anything made by GAP, which is unfortunate when you're a teenager and the GAP perfume is the only stuff you can afford), but every once in awhile, I come across a few that are awesome and don't leave me with a splitting headache. This normally happens around this time of year, when most department stores are shoving beautifully packaged gift sets at you, which for me, has resulted in more than one purchase of a perfume that I actually hated. Like the 'L'interdit' episode of 2002. Yikes. This year, I am fortunate to live in a place that sells high-end beauty products at surprisingly low-end prices, so I've started shopping around again for a new bottle to sit next to my Jean Paul Gaultier 'Classique'. My top picks:

Vera Wang - 'Princess'

Escada - 'Island Heat'

and...perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not...

'With Love' by Hilary Duff.

The Duffster has actually rolled out something pretty sweet. Maybe I was biased given that it shares its name with her catchy little tune (however overplayed), but I was impressed. I do enjoy the occasional stuff by Duff.

3. TV via the internet. I'm totally caught up on the Hills and don't actually own a TV. How great is this?

4. 'The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook' by Tosca Reno, which was recommended to me by Laila when I was home in October. Full of great, easy, healthy recipes. We have been enjoying her recipe for baked oatmeal for a month now...you can change up the ingredients and make it differently everytime.

5. Facebook. Ever heard of it? After two months of waiting to get on a plane and living like a nomad, and probably because I chose to wait out the remainder at home, somehow I ran out of time to say all of my Ottawa goodbyes. Thanks to Facebook, I've been able to say virtual goodbyes and keep people updated on everything with minimal effort. Not to sound lazy or anything, but I do admit that it's made everything just a little bit easier.

6. December NOT in Ottawa. Seriously. I would highly recommend this product to anyone. After 5 complete winters in my nation's capital, I was feeling pretty seasoned to the whole ordeal. Until I went for a walk this morning at 6:30 a.m. wearing only a light shirt. And then got to work to find an email from EXH in Ottawa about some further 30 cm of expected snow, expected to fall on top of the existing 30 cm of snow. As much as I miss how pretty snow looks with Christmas lights, I really don't miss one flake of it.

7. 30 Rock. I've been a longtime Tina Fey fan, so it's not a big surprise that I love this show. Hilarious and so smart.

8. Home-made salsa. Armed with a can of diced tomatoes, a small can of pineapple, some chipotle chiles, part of an onion and some Epicure salsa mix, Kurt mixed up the most amazing salsa last weekend. We've been eating it on everything...pita, chips, chicken, a spoon...it's seriously delicious. He's under strict instruction to ensure that there is a container of it in the fridge at all times.

9. Fish-watching. This may sound like a downright retarded way to pass time, but scarily enough, we're getting into it. It is amazing at how much time Kurt and I can kill watching fish. It's like birdwatching, but instead of looking up, you're looking down. There is some great fish action off the various docks and wharves around our place, so often on our morning walks we will stop and check out what is going on below the surface. It's amazing to watch fish interact, who eats who, which ones swim how fast and wonder why certain fish seem to always be alone. I'm seriously thisclose to picking up some sort of regional fish book so that we can identify our scaley friends. Is that weird?

10. A good loofah. A good loofah, in my experience, is hard to come by. Either they are far too stiff and scratch the hell out of yourskin, or the bristles fall out constantly. In fact, I was completely turned off of loofahs until a new friend pointed out a brand that she'd tried and loved. So, I tried it. And I loved it. I haven't gotten into the whole dry-brushing thing though...I'll save that for another UPE (or the UPE vice, the Unsolicited Product Critique - these are always bad).

Unsolicited Product Endorsement.

It has been awhile since I wrote a UPE, but it has also been awhile since I found that one was warranted. However, I have had a number of things lately spark the UPE flame, so I'm bringing it back. I love sharing what I love. Unless it's only available in limited quantities, in which case I keep it to myself. Obviously.

Last week, I came across some great blogs on new and awesome not-to-be-missed items. I'm going to put some links up at some point to these blogs, because I've found them to be great as far as product ratings by real, actual people go. It's one thing to read about an item from someone who is trying to sell it. It's quite another to read comments from people who have spent/wasted their money on it.

I have been in the market for new blush. Unless I've been running, or exerting myself in some way, my cheeks don't naturally flush. Not even when I'm embarassed. In the winter, particularly, this leads to a kind of death pallor that reflects badly in photos. Seeing as I'm not willing to risk serious sun damage to keep some color on my face, and refuse to wear foundation, I do rely on blush and bronzer, from time to time. And since my entire regular, every day make-up routine consists of no more than blush/bronzer, mascara and lip gloss, I'm more than happy to shell out a few more bucks for awesome products. Though I enjoyed my current blush, I always found that because I don't wear foundation, it was gone before lunch time.

Enter: Tarte Cheek Stain.

This is Tarte Cheek Stain, in the exact color that I purchased. As you can see, instead of a powder, it is more of a glue-stick type of product. Except not glue, and not sticky. It's brilliant. When it first arrived, I thought it would be too dark (despite having read numerous online reviews on this particular color suiting all different skin tones). My fears were unwarranted, because it's very, very sheer, so you can layer on as much (or as little) as you want. Personally, I am not into "clown", and it's very easy to avoid "clown" with Tarte. However, if you were into "clown", you could definitely achieve the look with a few more layers. It's very natural-looking, and you can't feel it when it's on. You can buy it at Sephora, or do what I did and get it from a retailer on Ebay. I'm very impressed. And even though it was a bit pricier than normal, everyday blush (I paid $18.00 for mine, I think Sephora sells it for $39 in store), you really don't use very much so it will last a long time. The only thing I would be concerned with is having it melt into a sticky mess if you live in a warm climate and, say, leave it in your purse. Which totally did NOT happen to me with my favorite Cargo lip gloss palette, which I am still totally NOT pissed about. Needless to say, mine will live in the fridge.

On the Rocks.