Hello Sugar High Friday fans ... Does it happen with every Sugar High Friday? So many entries to this month's Surprise Inside edition used the word 'fun' ... and if there's anything worth striving for in both cooking and eating, it's the fun quotient. Many thanks to everyone everyone who played along! Each entry was a perfect surprise ... and surprisingly perfect. There were so many surprises: unusual ingredients for desserts (Israeli couscous, brown rice for example to say nothing of the vegetable dessserts, three cheers for those!) and spices (wattleseed, anyone?) and a few surprises outside , too (orange cups and egg cups!). And just wait until you see what we've done with caramel and chocolate and oh my! nuts and oh swoon! fruit . A few extra atta-cooks to ... the Sugar High Friday debutantes - nine ten eleven TWELVE now THIRTEEN! FOURTEEN no! FIFTEEN of you! the Australians, who turned out in force the St Louis/nearby food bloggers, learn mo

"We start food blogs for reasons a-many ... to record and share our recipes, to stay connected with family afar, to break writer's block ... but we KEEP blogging because of connection and community." - Current theory, yours truly One of the great joys of food blogging is getting to know fellow foodies from across the world. But a second joy, one I've watched with some envy in San Francisco and the United Kingdom, is getting to know the fellow foodies who live just a few miles away, the ones we might run into at the farmers market or the grocery store, the ones whose kids we meet and whose spouses know our last names AND our blog names. This connection among the St Louis food bloggers (and several other nearby food bloggers we're pleased to adopt!) is just now beginning to form. Many participated in Sugar High Friday and may be new to you. Please say hello to ... Many of you already know Nupur from One Hot Stove . But wait, doesn't Nupur live in New Y

[Are you visiting for Sugar High Friday? Welcome! All the details are here . And here's my own veggie-surprise-inside contribution . Isn't blogging fun?!] When the air conditioning goes off, the oven goes on: it's fall cookie-baking time! First up are a long-time family favorite, oatmeal raisin cookies. The especially good thing about these classic home-baked cookies? Raisins are optional. Just read this week's Kitchen Parade column . [For newcomers, A Veggie Venture is pure blog, a food playground just like all the others except focused on vegetables. Kitchen Parade is the food column I write for small-town newspapers; I publish it online too, just because it's fun to share recipes with lots of people. Kitchen Parade is known for 'fresh seasonal recipes for everyday healthful eating and occasional indulgences'. Oh. And Quick Suppers .] (c) Copyright 2006 Kitchen Parade

So you think that veggie lovers don't some times long to make pretty little cupcakes? We do, we do! For this month's Sugar High Friday (the Surprise Inside edition , hosted by yours truly) I soooo wanted to try XX cupcakes with XX ice cream, recipes I've had my eyes on for a few months, awaiting the perfect occasion. THE CUPCAKES The surprise XX ingredient is ... parsnips! (No surprise that it's a vegetable, of course!) These cupcakes were really easy to make. If you don't have a mixer, this is perfect because no mixer is required, just a whisk and a wooden spoon. Taste-wise, they're great! The raw, grated parsnips fade into the background (like zucchini in zucchini cake) but the spice combination and proportions are magnificent, nothing shy, perfectly balanced. In fact, another time I wouldn't hesitate to try the cupcakes withOUT the parsnips. THE ICING Was good, maybe even very good with fresh ginger (another surprise?) stirred into an otherwise sta

Who's ready to take homemade salsa to another level? Skip fresh tomatoes. Skip canned tomatoes. Instead, use roasted tomatoes, either summer's best fresh meaty tomatoes or inexpensive and easily found supermarket Roma tomatoes. Real Food, Fast & Casual. Year-Round Kitchen Staple. Budget Friendly. Little Effort, Big Taste. Weeknight Easy, Weekend Special. Easy Meal Prep. Great for Meal Prep. Low Carb. Low Fat. Weight Watchers Friendly. Not just vegan, Vegan Done Real . Naturally Gluten Free.

A quick one-skillet supper, just potatoes and rounds of fresh-cut okra. Truly tasty and definitely adaptable to other vegetables. ~recipe & photo updated 2010~ ~ more recently updated recipes ~ 2005 Original: Twenty minutes. One skillet. Truly tasty. The trick to Potato Okra Curry is some quick knife work to dice the potato tiny-tiny so it cooks quickly. NUTRITION NOTES The potatoes and vegetables cook in water, not fat, so this is a very low-fat dish. A teaspoon of bacon fat (or butter, for vegetarians) is added for flavor. A side dish-size serving has only 1 or 2 Weight Watchers points for a side dish, 1.5 to three points for an entrée! It would be easy to bulk this up with other vegetables to serve more people or to use up leftovers. Tomatoes and cauliflower come to mind. But the potato-okra combination is very good. 2010 Update: When okra appears in the farmers market from the middle of July through September, the tiny thumbs are irresistible! This is one of my favorite

(Many thanks to Tamara Nicol from Luminous Lens for developing the Surprise Inside logo!) Have you been wondering, Hmm, when is Sugar High Friday? Early entries are in but there's still plenty of time to get creative about something a tiny bit surprising for Sugar High Friday, the Surprise Inside edition . What's surprising, so far? How 'bout Diet Coke ? Caramel ? Chocolate AND caramel ? Chocolate and liqueur? (Julia, dear, are you old enough for liqueur?!) Peanut butter ? And the house favorite (no surprise, this IS the Veggie Evangelist writing, after all ...) carrots ! And remember, there's a special welcome mat for anyone who wants to be a "food blogger for a day" and enter Sugar High Friday. (c) Copyright 2006 Kitchen Parade