Ready For a Shopping Sprenzy?

Through my food blog, Sunday Nite Dinner, I’m participating in the 4th annual Menu for Hope charity raffle, which brings together food bloggers from around the world in the fight against hunger. Bloggers offer prizes that you can win by purchasing a $10 raffle ticket. The proceeds of the charity raffle goes to the U.N. World Food Program (WFP).

I was amazed to learn that in the last decade the number of people suffering from hunger and malnutrition rose from 791 million to 854 million. The WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian agency: each year, WFP gives food to an average of 90 million poor people to meet their nutritional needs, including 56 million hungry children, in at least 80 of the world’s poorest countries.

The number of people suffering from hunger is staggering. We have seen it first hand in our travels to Africa and Southeast Asia. Participating in Menu for Hope is one small way to help people much less fortunate than us.

The charity raffle runs from December 10th - 21st with raffle winners announced on January 9th. Prizes vary from homemade cookies to touring the elBulli laboratory with Ferran Adrià. Since I’m a complete gearhead, I have donated an Apple iPhone 8GB (US) as a prize in Menu for Hope. I use my iPhone all the time to keep track of shopping lists, find restaurants while out and about, get directions, take pictures of delicious dishes, and surf for new recipes on my favorite food blogs and forums. It’s the perfect phone for the on-the-go cook or food lover.

The prize code for the Apple iPhone is UW27. Shipped within the US only.

How to Enter/Donation Instructions

1) Choose a prize(s). For a complete list of prizes offered worldwide, visit Chez Pim. For a list of prizes from West Coast food bloggers, visit Rasa Malaysia.

2) Go to Firstgiving, the online fundraising company used to manage the Menu for Hope charity raffle, and make a donation.

3) Specify the prize you would like to bid for in the ‘Personal Message’ section of the donation form. Every $10 donated will get one raffle ticket toward a prize.

For example, a donation of $50 gets 5 raffle tickets, which can be distributed between different prizes, such as 3 tickets for UW27 and 2 tickets for UW33. This would be entered as 3xUW27, 2xUW33. Important: Check the box marked at bottom “I am happy for the page owner to see my email address …”! This will allow the organizers to contact winners.

Please spread the word to your friends and family to help in the fight against hunger! Let me know if you have any questions and thanks in advance for your generosity.

As you prepare for Thanksgiving, make sure your oven temperature settings are calibrated correctly. To test the accuracy of your oven, pick up a Taylor Classic Oven Guide Thermometer. It’s Cook’s Illustrated’s top rated oven thermometer and costs around $15. It has a four inch base, which makes it easy to read and difficult to knock over. And don’t worry about toxic mercury; the Taylor Oven Guide uses blue-dyed alcohol in the thermometer.

I have an old gas-powered oven and noticed it ran hot after over baking an apple crisp. After testing the temperature settings using the Taylor Oven Guide, I discovered my oven is off by 45 degrees on the low end (200 degrees) and 25 degrees off on the high end (500 degrees). I plan on keeping the thermometer in the oven all the time and using it as the official temperature rather than the oven dial.

Where’s the best place to position the thermometer? From Cook’s Illustrated…

“We put this question to Karen S. Yaggie, a marketing representative at Taylor Precision Products, maker of the oven thermometer that won our test (the Taylor Classic Oven Guide). “The best place to get a reading,” Yaggie told us, “is the center–exactly where you place the baking dish for the food that you are preparing.” She emphasized that the thermometer should not be positioned within 6 inches of any oven wall or of the oven ceiling, floor, or door. Our tests showed that ovens do indeed have hot and cold spots. Tests on a gas range, for instance, showed the temperature differential between the bottom and top of the oven to be close to 50 degrees.

We suggest that you place the thermometer at the dead center of the oven–right in the spot where the food will be cooking – as it preheats to get a good reading. When it’s time to put the food in the oven, you can move the thermometer to the side or hang it from a rack such that it hovers over the food. If it ends up sitting fewer than 6 inches away from the interior surface of the oven, remove the thermometer until the food is finished cooking. (We also learned from Taylor that it is safe to keep the thermometer in the oven at any time except when the dial is set to “clean.”)”

If you are looking for a new instant read thermometer, Cook’s Illustrated highly recommends two models…

THERMOWORKS Super-Fast Thermapen
Price: $95.00
Average Response Time: 5 seconds
Comments: Simply the best: fast, accurate, and easy to use. The Thermapen also has the widest temperature range (-58 to 572 degrees).

CDN ProAccurate Quick Tip Digital Cooking Thermometer
Price: $17.95
Average Response Time: 9 seconds
Comments: The CDN Quick Tip was fast and accurate and had every feature we deemed necessary, including a calibration button. Not quite as fast as the mighty Thermapen, but fast enough.

Make sure you don’t overcook your turkey by picking up an oven thermometer and/or instant read thermometer. Happy Thanksgiving!

Here’s a quick update. Back in August, I researched compact digital cameras and concluded that the Canon SD850 IS was the best camera for my needs. My key camera requirements were image stabilization and an ultra-compact form factor.

At the end of August, the Canon SD850 was approximately $340. Today, the price has dropped below $260, which is great value for a camera with 8.0 megapixels, 4x optical zoom and image stabilization (IS). If IS is not a requirement, a bigger bargain is the Canon SD1000 for under $170. It was around $215 in August. The SD1000 is a fantastic ultra-compact camera with 7.1 megapixels and 3x optical zoom.

I’m sure the prices will continue to drop, as we approach the holiday/Christmas shopping season. I’ll keep an eye out for any deals or rebates on these cameras. In the meantime, I’ll have more time to research cameras, as I’m now considering getting an entry level DSLR, like the Canon Digital Rebel XTi. I know I shouldn’t spend the extra money, but the superior image quality of a DSLR is really appealing to me.

If you are in the process of buying a DSLR, check out this article — How to Choose a DSLR Camera. And if you are torn between a compact camera and a DSLR, take a look at — Should you buy a DSLR or Point and Shoot Digital Camera?  Decisions, decisions, decisions… I have more research to do.