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Tim McIntire explains how he tricked his kids into thinking that Broccoli is a special treat.

Editor Judith Jones has a knack for turning cooks into best-selling authors:

Salem resident Nina Simonds, a Chinese cookbook author, published “A Spoonful of Ginger” and “Spices of Life” with Jones; both won James Beard awards. ” ‘Spices,’ ” says Simonds, “was particularly brutal.” She calls Jones, whom she admires, “a bit of a terror.” They fight all the time, says Simonds, then admits that she does the fighting while Jones remains inscrutable. Once, after a particularly painful session, says Simonds, she decided not to call Jones for a while. Days later, when Simonds phoned her, it was as if the incident had never happened. “That was business,” said the editor. The two, and Simonds’s husband, Don Rose, traveled all over the Far East recently.

Mooncakes are not only loved for their different flavors- sweet and salty-, but for the special role they played in Chinese history. About seven hundred years ago during the Yuan Dynasty, the Chinese were ruled by Mongolians, their northern neighbors. They were very unhappy and desparately wanted to overthrow the leaders but they were closely watched and could not talk freely. The Chinese secretly planned an attack, wrote it down on small pieces of paper, and hid the paper slips inside the mooncakes. They then secretly passed the message of the attack from family to family, house to house with the mooncakes.

The battle was difficult, but the Chinese were well-organized. The Mongolians were completely taken by surprise and the Chinese successfully won the struggle. To this day, they believe that the mooncakes were responsible for the victory.

From “Moonbeams, Dumplings, and Dragonboats,” by Nina Simonds

Video Extra:
Watch Nina and the Moon Cakes girls make The Best Recipe for Moon Cakes Ever in her kitchen.

Gary Vaynerchuck, Wine Library TV, twitters about us:

GArfield DID it UP ..WINE STYLE! http://tinyurl.com/2xe42x NICE WORK and I know wine and video!

Thanks Gary!

Nina Unscripted visits Newman’s Own Organics. Nina meets with Nell Newman, the daughter of actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, to talk about her organic food company, her latest passions, and her unwavering commitment to sustainability. Newman’s Own has given over $200 million to thousands of charities worldwide since 1982.

Dinner Doctor with “Thoroughly Modern Millie”. Nina visits Millie’s kitchen and solves her dinner needs with accessible tips and recipes. At 81 years young, Millie Garfield is one of the Internet’s oldest bloggers. According to The Ageless Project. “With an authentic and humorous voice, a knack for story telling and frequent updates, Millie’s blog, My Mom’s Blog, shows that people want to hear from someone with a story to tell” . Millie is Steve’s mom!

Think Whole Food’s is too expensive? So did we, but a price comparison between three grocery stores proved that “expensive” is relative.

This week, I’m starting a new project, a “rant” column because I have things that I want/need to rant about. Maybe this is a mistake to write a Nina Simonds uncensored piece, but here goes….

My first rant was supposed to be about the prices at “Whole Foods”. I was going to go on about how I have tried to be a good mom who buys organic produce and quality food my family. You see, I am a Jewish mother and I tend to over-nurture (I used to kill plants by over-watering them) and I’ve always said to my husband, “I don’t buy diamonds, furs, or other glitzy things, I just spend a lot of money on groceries.”

Well sometimes I feel like I spend too much at certain grocery stores….

I was going to complain about how expensive Whole Foods is. I used to understand why their prices were so high many years ago when organic produce was scarce but, now that there are so many Whole Food’s stores and organic fare has become much more widely available, why, I wondered, wouldn’t prices be more reasonable?

BUT then something happened. I dispatched my brilliant website assistant and editor, Lily Jampol (Lily, say hello to the folks…) to grocery stores in the Cambridge area to do a little research. I wanted hard facts to answer my question and….

GUESS WHAT WE FOUND???

Our research showed that Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s can both be affordable in different ways.

Read more »

I participated in Vlog Camp Roma on a LIVE video feed from Boston using Operator11.com.

This was very exciting because I was able to roll in my most recent video from Spices of Life and show people what i was talking about when I explained that I shot the show on a Nokia N93/N95, edited it in Final Cut Pro, and hosted it on blip.tv.

Watch the video of me talking about Spices of Life at Vlog Camp Roma.

–Steve

Jonathan Levitt, Boston Globe writes Simonds is the life of this video party.

Oriol (Uri) Pascual from Rotterdam writes in to tell us that he made Salmon with Bok Choy and recorded it on video!

The recipe was featured in the Dinner Doctor: Busy Young Couple, No Dishwasher (Part II) episode.

Visit Oriol’s blog and watch his video. He did a great job improvising a wok cover! I loved this video. If you’ve made one of Nina’s recipes, please take a photo or video and let us know.

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