Child Hunger Ends Here: Something sweet for your support

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This is my last post as a blogger ambassador for the ConAgra Foods Child Hunger Ends Here campaign. The campaign isn't over, nor is the need for support for food-insecure children across the country. My ambassadorship, though, comes to an end next week.

In light of that, I'd like to circle back to the beginning, to why I was—and still am—delighted to have been chosen along with a handful of other bloggers nationwide to promote Child Hunger Ends Here. It all boils down to this: I like to feed those I love and care about. And I indeed care about the 16 million kiddos across the country who are not sure where their next meal will come from. Which is why doing what I could to help feed them was and is an honor.

While acting as blogger ambassador for Child Hunger Ends Here, I was also honored—humbled, in fact—by the overwhelming support for the campaign by the Grandma's Briefs readers. You all have read posts, commented, entered codes, shared stories, re-tweeted and, most of all, you cared. I appreciate far more than my words can express your support and your help in putting an end to child hunger.

So, in typical grandma fashion—or at least in a fashion typical of this grandma—I wanted to bake up something sweet to share with each and every one of you to show you how much your support means to me. Which, of course, isn't feasible. I can, though, do the next best thing. I can share with you a recipe for something sweet, then request you do me the honor of making it for yourself.

It's a super fast and super simple recipe, I promise. And this being the finale to my time with the Child Hunger Ends Here campaign and all, it's only fitting that the recipe includes one of the participating products from the campaign. And that the recipe came from ConAgra's ReadySetEat website.

Please accept my token of appreciation for your support of me and your commitment to the Child Hunger Ends Here campaign:

Chocolate Peanut Butter Mug Cake (slightly adapted from ReadySetEat)

Courtesy ReadySetEat    PAM® Original No-Stick Cooking Spray
    2 tablespoons Peter Pan® Creamy Peanut Butter
    Reddi-wip® Original Dairy Whipped Topping (about 2 cups)
    1 egg
    1/2 cup dry chocolate cake mix

    Spray inside of 2 large microwave-safe mugs with cooking spray. Place 1 tablespoon peanut butter in bottom of each mug. Whisk together Reddi-wip, egg and cake mix in medium bowl. Place half of batter in each mug.
    Microwave each mug individually on HIGH 1 minute to 1 minute 15 seconds or until set. Invert each cake onto a plate. Serve immediately with additional Reddi-wip, if desired.

Two servings

See? I told you it was simple. And it's good; Jim and I gobbled it up for dessert just last night. So please, make yourself a mug o' goodness and enjoy. You've earned it!

Of course, as I mentioned above, my blogger ambassadorship may be ending but the Child Hunger Ends Here campaign isn't. It runs until the end of August, and considering that with kids out of school for the summer—school being where many children get their only nutritious meals of the day—the need has never been stronger.

Here's how we all can continue to help end child hunger in America:

Purchase products from ConAgra Foods that are specially marked with the big red pushpin as part of the Child Hunger Ends Here campaign. Participating brands are:

Then visit www.ChildHungerEndsHere.com to enter the eight-digit code from the package. For each code entered, the equivalent of one meal—up to three million meals—will be donated to Feeding America, the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity.

Again, thank you for making a difference—to the campaign and to me.

Disclosure: I have been compensated for my participation in the Child Hunger Ends Here campaign and all posts, tweets and updates related to the campaign.

GRAND Social — Grandparent linky — May 21

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Welcome to the second edition of the GRAND Social linky for grandparent bloggers. It's easy to participate: If you're a blogger and a grandparent, fall in and link up. If you're a reader, grandparent or not, pick a few posts—or all the posts—to visit and share some comment love.

How it works:

  • All grandparent bloggers are invited to add a link. You don't have to blog specifically about grandparenting, you just must be a grandparent who blogs.
  • Posts shared can be new, old, one you wish had gotten better exposure, one that got more comments than usual and you want to keep up the momentum. Your choice, so have fun with it.
  • To link up, copy the direct link to the specific post you want to share, not the link to your blog's home page. Then click the blue "Click here to enter" text below the thumbnail photos and follow the directions to add your post and thumbnail photo to the list.
  • You can add up to three posts, but no duplicates and none you have promoted on a previous GRAND Social linky, please.
  • No contests, giveaways, or Etsy sites, please.
  • All content must be safe for work and family friendly; I reserve the right to remove links I deem otherwise.
  • Adding a mention at the bottom of your linked posts, such as This post has been linked to the GRAND Social blogging event, is appreciated but not required. (I'll eventually have a GRAND Social button to share.)
  • The GRAND Social linky is open for new posts through Wednesday evening, so please come back to see those added after your first visit.

READERS and PARTICIPATING BLOGGERS: Please visit the posts others have linked to by clicking on the thumbnail photos, and comment on those you visit as that's how we get to know one another, support one another. Feel free to mention you visited directly from their link on GRAND Social. And feel free to comment here to share which links you found especially inspirational, funny, informative, interesting.

Thank you for participating in the GRAND Social grandparent linky, as readers and as bloggers!

Introducing GRAND Social — A linky for grandparent bloggers

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My friend and fellow grandma blogger Connie recently started a linky called Say It Saturday on her Family Home and Life blog. For those who don't know what a linky is, it's a feature that invites other bloggers to add blog post links related to a particular topic, and Connie's chosen topic is anything related to grandparenting.

Connie's hope with the SIS feature is to help create a network for fellow grandparent bloggers. Right away Connie had several grandma bloggers posting their links, myself included. Funny thing is, although I've been a grandma blogger for nearly three years and pretty sure I'd run across most other grandma bloggers, Connie's linky revealed a few I had never even heard of. I was delighted to click on their links, visit their blogs, and make new friends.

As the grandparent-only linky was clearly a great way to meet other grandma bloggers and drive traffic to one's blog, Connie emailed me the other day to ask why I don't do a linky on my blog. I didn't have a good answer. Her question got me thinking, though...and researching. Ultimately, it inspired me to try it out.

My intention with featuring a weekly linky on Grandma's Briefs is, like Connie, to help develop and encourage a network of grandparents online, a grandparent network of both bloggers and non-bloggers. As we all know, there is a strong grandparent presence online, we've just not yet found a way to network with one another the way many other bloggers have (think mommy bloggers and food bloggers). I hope to join Connie in encouraging such networking, connecting.

Let me assure you that having a linky for grandparent bloggers as a regular feature on Grandma's Briefs doesn't leaving out the non-blogging visitors; in fact, the linky will give Grandma's Briefs readers many more (I hope) grandparent blogs to peruse. I'm sure non-bloggers will get as much from this new feature as do the participating bloggers.

So here it is, the debut of GRAND Social, a linky just for grandparent bloggers, to be featured Mondays here on Grandma's Briefs. I'm delighted to have you join me in the venture.

GRAND Social guidelines:

  • All grandparent bloggers are invited to add a link. You don't have to blog specifically about grandparenting, you just must be a grandparent who blogs.
  • From your blog, copy the direct link to a specific post you want to share, not the link to your blog's home page. The post you share can be new, it can be old, it can be one you feel should have gotten better exposure, it can be one that got more comments than usual and you want to promote it even more. Your choice, so have fun with it.
  • Click the blue "Click here to enter" text below the thumbnail photos, then follow the directions to add your post and a thumbnail to the list. (I've gone first as an example.)
  • You can add up to three posts, but no duplicates, please, and none you have promoted on a previous GRAND Social linky. (Which obviously shouldn't be a problem this time considering it's the feature's debut.)
  • All content must be safe for work and family friendly; I reserve the right to remove links I deem otherwise.
  • No contests, giveaways, or Etsy sites, please.
  • Adding a mention at the bottom of your linked posts, such as This post has been linked to the GRAND Social blogging event, is appreciated but not required.
  • I encourage all readers and participating bloggers to visit the posts others have linked to by clicking on the thumbnail photos. Please comment on those you visit, as that's how we get to know one another, support one another. Feel free to mention you visited directly from their link on GRAND Social.
  • The GRAND Social linky is open for new posts through Wednesday evening, so please come back to see those added after your first visit.

Thank you for participating in the inaugural GRAND Social—as a blogger, a reader, or both. And thank you to Connie for encouraging me to give it a shot.

Please leave a comment to let me know what you think of GRAND Social, as a reader and as a blogger. Thank you.

What is a grandma?

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My website stats show that folks often arrive at Grandma's Briefs by way of the search query, "What is a grandma?" As we grandmas darn well know, defining who and what we are isn't as simple as penning a few sentences similar to a dictionary entry.

That said, the Grilled Grandmas are experts in the field, so I figured combining their answers to the grilling question of "What one word do you hope your grandkids think of when they think of you?" would provide a pretty darn accurate answer of what a grandma is, or at least what one should strive to be.

So I did it. I went through all the Grilled Grandmas—from the very first to the one featured last week—collected their answers to that question, and input them into Wordle, using each word only one time (some, such as love, fun, and caring, were mentioned numerous times).

And here, my friends, is the result: The ultimate answer to the ever-burning question of ...

What is a grandma?

Bottom line? Looks to me like the best way to put it is that grandmas are just plain awesome!

Today's question:

What other words do you think should be added?

The golden ticket: Child Hunger Ends Here

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I've been blogging here on Grandma's Briefs for nearly three years. In that time, it's been interesting to go from scrounging for opportunities to review products and services to now getting so many offers that I end up turning down—or ignoring—more than I accept.

While it's cool to have gone from populating the Back Room first with reviews on cleansers and frozen foods to recently getting free clothing and nifty gadgets to try out, the golden ticket for most bloggers—for me—is that elusive offer to become an ambassador for a company, a cause. Ambassadors are handpicked to help promote products and campaigns. They have important duties to perform. They make a difference. And they get nifty badges to decorate their blogs.

Well, folks, I have finally received a golden ticket. And I must say, it is the most golden of golden ticket opportunities because it's for a cause I feel strongly about: child hunger.

I'm honored to announce that I am officially a blogger ambassador for ConAgra Foods’ Child Hunger Ends Here campaign. Now in its third year, ConAgra's Child Hunger Ends Here campaign strives to raise awareness of child hunger in our nation's communities and infuse hope into the fight against it. The campaign goal: Donate five million meals this year to Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization. I look forward to helping ConAgra reach that goal.

With all the cool campaigns and worthy causes out there, why is this one particularly close to my heart? Because as a child for whom making stone soup was not just a story but was at times a reality, child hunger mattered. When dandelions were once pulled from the yard to be cooked and served for dinner because there were no other fruits or vegetables in the house, child hunger mattered. And when one's mother often ate ketchup or mayonnaise sandwiches—nothing but the condiment between two slices of bread—in order to save the nutritious food for her seven kids she'd become single mother to, child hunger mattered.

As a grandmother, child hunger still matters to me. For the second blogiversary of Grandma's Briefs last year, I made a small difference by donating money toward child hunger relief. I now have the opportunity to make an even bigger difference as a blogger ambassador for the Child Hunger Ends Here campaign. Grandmothers are well-known for their penchant for filling the tummies of loved ones, so I consider this my golden grandma opportunity to help fill hungry tummies far beyond just those of my own grandsons.

And there are an overwhelming number of hungry tummies out there. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food insecurity—the inability to access enough food to live active, healthy lives—affects more than 16 million children in the United States. I find that heartbreaking on so many levels. Here is just one story:

 

My job as ambassador is to raise awareness of the Child Hunger Ends Here campaign. Over the next few months, I'll be posting campaign news and notes. This is just the beginning; I hope you'll follow along with me through to the end.

Easy ways you can help:

Visit www.ChildHungerEndsHere.com to download original versions of the campaign's original song, Here's Hope, written by Hunter Hayes, Luke Laird and Barry Dean with three versions recorded individually by Jewel, Owl City and Jay Sean. While there, enjoy exclusive content from each artist and support the campaign goal of donating five million meals to Feeding America.

  • To participate, purchase specially marked packages of select ConAgra Foods brands (see list below), then visit www.ChildHungerEndsHere.com to enter the eight-digit code.
  • For each code entered, the equivalent of one meal—up to three million meals*—will be donated to Feeding America and one version of “Here’s Hope” can be downloaded.
  • Codes (from packages specially marked with the red push pin) can be redeemed through August 2012.
  • In addition to downloads and access to cool content, you can also submit your zip code to enter your local Feeding America food bank into a competition for an 80,000-meal donation. At the end of the campaign, ten food banks in the zip codes with the most entries receive the donation courtesy of ConAgra Foods.

ConAgra Foods brands participating in Child Hunger Ends Here include:

  • Banquet
  • Chef Boyardee
  • Healthy Choice
  • Hunt’s
  • Marie Callendar’s
  • Manwich
  • Orville Redenbacher
  • Peter Pan
  • Snack Pack

*Enter the 8-digit code and a monetary donation will be made to help provide one meal through Feeding America's network of food banks, up to a maximum of 3 million meals for codes entered through 8/31/12. Valid in U.S. only. $1 donated = 8 meals secured by Feeding America on behalf of local food banks.

And there's more: You can also participate in Child Hunger Ends Here discussions on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ConAgraFoods. Plus, tweet along on Twitter by following www.twitter.com/ConAgraFoods and using the #ChildHunger hashtag.

Disclosure: I have been compensated for my participation in the Child Hunger Ends Here campaign and all posts, tweets and updates related to the campaign. That said, anecdotes and opinions are my own and not influenced by anyone.

It's show-and-tell time: Share a little love

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I'm going to try something different today. It requires audience participation, so I hope YOU will participate.

It's Monday. No one feels like working. The weekend is hanging on. Am I right? I thought so. So let's stretch out the weekend just a wee bit more by sharing in the comments below one little thing we each loved about our weekend.

Maybe it's an article or blog post you read—or wrote—that you especially loved. Well, give us all the link so we can love it, too. And be sure to include WHY you love it so we are more determined to click to it. (And those who click on it, especially if it's a blog post, be kind and comment to show you were there.)

Or maybe you watched a movie, read a book, heard a song that you loved. Tell us about it...and feel free to leave a link to the trailer or book site or video. Or just write why it mattered at the particular moment you experienced it.

Maybe over the weekend you had an incredible cup of coffee, ate the best donut, took the coolest photo you've ever taken, enjoyed giving or getting an early Valentine, were on the receiving end of some sweet words from a grandchild or family member—or stranger.

Maybe you simply enjoyed a few peaceful moments to yourself.

Whatever it may be, show it, tell us about it. Just one little love from your weekend. That's what I want to hear. That's what we all want to hear, I venture to say, to keep us from having to consider the week and the work ahead.

I will go first.

As I'm still struggling to get over a super cold bug that attacked once I returned home from the desert, there weren't any huge things I loved about this past weekend. There were little ones, though. One little thing I loved was actually a couple little things rolled into one: I love my new camera. I love that it snowed. I love that because I didn't feel like going outside (thanks to that bug I don't love at all), I could sit at the table in my warm dining room and take photos of the snow and practice a few of my new camera's features.

Here are a couple shots taken during that moment I loved—practicing blurring and focusing on what was right out my door: 

Sometimes, no, A LOT of the time, it's the little things that matter. There's mine, now show me your one little thing you loved. (Be sure to visit shared links, too, as well as come back to see what others have shared after you.)

Let show-and-tell time begin!

Today's question:

What's one little love from your weekend?

One word

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No improvement needed here—perfect as they are.

Improvement. That's my one word, and I'm sticking to it.

That one word is my response to a question posed yesterday on Facebook by SITS Girls, a network of bloggers I—and several other Grandma's Briefs readers—belong to, a network built around the idea that "The Secret to Success is Support".

The question SITS Girls asked its members yesterday: "What's the one word you hope defines 2012?"

I hemmed, hawed, considered (but never consulted) the thesaurus. Then I settled on improvement. Mostly because I desperately want, desperately need 2012 to be an improvement over 2011...and 2010 and 2009—the years that became so tough in so many ways since losing my job. The years that have been so tough for so many since losing jobs, losing retirement investments, losing savings of all sorts, and, for many, losing hope.

I thankfully never lost hope. Ever. And my hope for 2012 is that it's marked by my chosen word: improvement. Not just improvement in year-over-year as a whole, but improvement in nearly every single sector of my life.

I hope to see improvement physically. I need to eat better, exercise more, feel fit to function in far better ways than I have been.

I hope to see improvement financially. I have little gigs here and there that foster this improvement, but I need to improve my numbers—of gigs, of words written, of options. Mostly, I need to improve the numbers in my bank account.

I hope to see improvement in my home, and I have more home improvement projects on my plate than I care to admit. Accomplishing even just one or two would surely be an improvement, so success in this sector is a given. I hope.

I hope to see improvement in my piano playing, picture taking, recipe making, wrinkle erasing, and more.

I hope to see improvement in the quality of relationships I have, the friendships I maintain.

I hope to see improvement in the number of hours I spend reading—for enjoyment, not review or research.

I hope to see improvement in my ability to relax...without guilt...without reservation and unnecessary explanation.

And I hope to see improvement in the amount of time I devote to gratitude, thankfulness, appreciation. Of all I already have. All I already am. All I already can do and give and be.

Improvement takes work. And persistence, motivation, perseverance. And the ability to overcome frustration, as I'm sure I'll get frustrated along the way to improvement—frustrated with myself, with others, with circumstances beyond my control. (Especially with circumstances beyond my control, which makes me consider that I should really work on improving my need to control everything, too.)

With work, persistence and more, paired with hope—humongous heaps of high hopes—that one word will be mine. Improvement. In all areas. In this year over years past.

Improvement. That's my one word, and I'm sticking to it.

Photo of Bubby and Baby Mac: Shamelessly stolen from Megan's Facebook page.

Today's question:

As the SITS Girls asked, "What's the one word you hope defines 2012?"