Ufollow - Cool New Site and I'm Honored to have Everyday Simplicity Included as a "Leading Blog" in their Chosen Reading Library

UFollow is a cool, new site that is getting favorable reviews as a free service that helps folk surfing the web to cull through content and locate articles based upon a single topic or a single author.

UFollow is free,"indexing more than 100,000 bloggers and columnists from over 4,500 leading blogs, magazines, and newspapers on the web."  Sign up and uFollow sends you a stream of  content organized by your chosen sources, favorite authors, etc.

It's looking to be a popular site.  For example, HackStacks found uFollow to be helpful, describing uFollow back in August 2011 as one of the best sites on the web for organizing and providing content to the reader according to the readers' likes.

I discovered uFollow when I noticed folk were coming to visit Everyday Simplicity via UFollow.  When I went to uFollow to investigate, I was delighted to find that Everyday Simplicity is a publication listed among such notables as The New York Times, Huffington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor, and that my name is listed as one of the top authors, in the area of "simplicity."

I'm second, first place going to Merlin Mann of 43 Folders and third place to Darren Murph of Engadget. That's some nice company.  Of course, ranking will change as uFollow grows -- but it's a nice thing to think about today. 

I'm honored to be included by the folk at uFollow and I'm happy to think that this means that living a simple life is something that more people are interested in investigating, even if they aren't ready to make a big lifestyle change.

Thought I'd share this with you, Dear Reader (and Fellow Simplifier).

Blog Tour for Baylor Prof Jim Roberts New Book, Shiny Objects

I was recently invited to join a blog tour for a new book that has just been published by HarperOne this fall entitled Shiny Objects: Why We Spend Money We Don’t Have in Search of Happiness We Can’t Buy.  
Written by James A. Roberts, professor of marketing at Baylor University (which is about three hours due north from me on Interstate 35, up in Waco, Texas), it sounds like a great read from someone who has been studying consumerism and consumer behavior for awhile now.  (Check out his online bio here.)

I agreed to read and review the book because I liked the idea of learning what a noted academic with a reputation for studying the "dark side" of American consumerism / marketing had found.  Will Dr. Roberts have anything nice to say about voluntary simplicity?  Will he have any interesting facts and figures about all that ridiculous excess we see everyday (yes, Kim Kardashian was in the news again).

My review will be posted here on December 1, 2011.  It's part of the November 2011 TLC Blog Tour. 

Meanwhile, Dr. Roberts has a blog too, if you're interested ....

Really Easy, Really Cheap, Really Fast, and Really Good Recipes - No. 1: Cheese Dip

Easy, fast, cheap, and good food.  That you make at home.  It's possible.  Here, my first in a series of recipes with instructions for those on a budget, who hate to cook but are tired of fast food:

Chili con Queso

This isn't very healthy in its simplest form but there are lots of ways to make it better for you.  It's never going to make Dr. Mercola really happy, but it will sure make everyone around the TV happy on movie night, or game time, etc.

Basic version (and the one that my ex-husband swore made him fall for me):

• 1 box of Velvetta (the box about the size of a textbook cut in half lengthwise)
• 1 can of Rotel tomatoes (canned diced tomatoes with hot chili peppers)
• chips of some sort

Cut the Velvetta into little squares so it heats up faster and easier.  Throw in the canned tomatoes.  Heat until the cheese melts (in the microwave, in a pot, on a campfire, wherever) and stir.  Serve with tortilla chips or Fritos, whatever you like.


Other ways to eat this stuff:

You can add cilantro to this.
Take away the canned tomatoes and use fresh Pico de Gallo instead (cut up tomatoes, onion, and chili peppers, usually jalapeno or serano)
Use real cheese instead of the Velvetta, add a little milk as needed as it melts
Add beans and use less cheese
Add chili and use less cheese
Pour this stuff over lettuce and eat cheesy salad
Pour over grilled chicken
Pour over sliced avocado