Lazy Summer Recipes

I was randomly searching the net for some simple summer recipes and came upon these delightful gems. I hope you like them. ;)

Lazy Summer Pasta

From: BBC Good Food

Ingredients

1 medium red onion , cut into wedges
2 courgettes , cut into chunks
3 garlic cloves , unpeeled
3 tbsp olive oil
250g punnet cherry tomatoes
40g fusilli or other short pasta
handful of basil leaves
freshly grated parmesan , to serve

Directions

Preheat the oven to fan 200C/conventional 220C/gas 7. Put the onion, courgettes and garlic into a large ovenproof dish. Slosh over the olive oil, season well and give everything a quick stir, then roast for 15 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes into the veg and continue roasting for 15 minutes more. At the same time, bring a large pan of salted water to the boil so the sauce and pasta will be finished at the same time.

Drop the pasta into the boiling water and cook according to pack instructions; about 9-12 minutes.

Drain the pasta. Take the vegetables out of the oven and pop the garlic cloves out of their skins. Mash the garlic against the side of the dish and stir through the vegetables. Tip in the pasta and toss everything together, tearing in some basil as you go. Pile into two bowls and serve with grated parmesan.

Roasted Potato and Green Bean Salad

From: Wired Berries.com

Serves 6

Ingredients

2 lbs. small red potatoes, halved or quartered
10 cloves garlic, peeled
4 Tablespoons olive oil
1 and 1/2 cups green beans, sliced into one-inch pieces

Dijon Vinaigrette

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon horseradish, drained
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup chopped parsley, for garnish

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325. Put potatoes and garlic cloves on cookie sheet. Toss with the 4 Tablespoons olive oil and salt to taste. Roast for about 1 and 1/4 hours or until fork-tender. Transfer to a large decorative bowl.

2. While potatoes are cooking, boil the beans in salted water until al dente, about 3 minutes. Add to the potatoes.

3. Whisk mustard and horseradish together, then whisk in olive oil until emulsified. Pour over potato-bean mixture, toss well, and garnish with parsley.

Blueberry Batter Pudding

From: Guardian.co.uk/Life and Style

Ingredients

serves 4-6

eggs - 4
plain flour - 75g
caster sugar - 80-90g
single cream - 250ml
full cream milk - 225ml
blueberries - 300g
icing sugar and cream to serve

You will also need an ovenproof dish about 25cm in diameter and a little butter for greasing it with.

Directions

Butter the dish. Whizz all the ingredients except the fruit in a blender or food processor, or beat them all together with a hand-held whisk.

Tip the fruit into the dish, pour over the batter,then bake in a preheated oven at 200 c/gas 6 for about 40 minutes, till the batter is lightly risen, golden and lightly firm to the touch.

Dust with icing sugar before serving.

Enjoy! :D

Article Marketing for Moms – Much More Than Submitting Articles to Directories

By Denise Willms

When work at home moms talk about article marketing, they're usually referring to writing an article on your area of expertise and then submitting it to various article directories around the Internet.

At the end of each article is a short bio that tells who you are, what you do, and includes an active link to your website. This information is included every time someone reprints your article.

The idea behind article marketing is that other website owners will reprint your article in exchange for keeping your bio and the link to your website intact. It’s a win-win situation for the article author and the publisher. The publisher gets great content, and you, the author, get more exposure for your website.

To be effective, your article needs to be highly informative and relevant to your target market. Give your readers the information they're looking for, otherwise you'll wasting everyone's time. Supply real answers to your market's burning questions – but don't give away all your tips and secrets! At the end of the article, you want to leave your reader wanting more so she'll gladly click the link in your bio to get it.

Article directories are a really good place to begin your article marketing campaign. Most directories have frequent visitors who are always looking for new, quality content. As well, the article directory owner will market her directory, and your articles along with it.

But, article marketing isn't limited to submitting articles to article directories. In fact, investing a little more energy and creativity in your article marketing can get you even better results.

Article Marketing Begins at Home. Your article marketing strategy should include publishing your articles on your own website for your visitors to find. New visitors will come back regularly if they know you consistently provide updated, useful content. With each visit, the chance that they will become customers increases. Sending out your new articles to your opt-in list is another form of article marketing.

Niche Directories. Instead of submitting your next article to all the article directories you can find, look for niche directories that would attract your target market. For example, if you write articles about parenting, submit them to directories that specialize in topics that are of interest to parents, like WAHM Articles. Doing this little bit of research will increase the likelihood of your target market finding and reading your articles.

Offer Exclusive Articles. When you find one of your articles reprinted on a site that's popular with your target market, contact the publisher and see if you could write an article for them that you wouldn't publish anywhere else. Most publishers love original content when they can get it, and will usually give your article prominent placement in return for writing an article just for their site.

Take it Offline. Article marketing isn't limited to online publishers. Look for local print publications that would appeal to your target market. Contact the publishers to see if they would like to publish one of your articles in return for including your by-line.

Don't limit yourself to just one form of article marketing for your home business. Every business and every target market is different. Try to combine a few of the above strategies to see what works best for yours.

About The Author

Denise Willms is a professional article writer who specializes in creating content for moms. Visit www.WAHM-Articles.com to download her free ebook, Get Started!! Making Money by Writing WAHM Articles and learn how you can tap into this lucrative market.

Writing Work at Home Articles with Keywords – How to Keep Track of Keywords for Your WAHM Articles

By Denise Willms

Using popular keywords in your work at home articles will help make sure your audience can find your articles when they search for them. But once you find your keywords, how can you keep track of them?

I keep track of my keywords in an Excel spreadsheet. Here are some of the things I track, to keep my keywords organized:

Date: This is the date that you found the keywords. If you’ve been researching keywords, you’ll notice that the things people search for change over time. So, you may not want to optimize an article for popular keywords you discovered last year, without checking to see that they’re still popular.

Keyword Phrase: In the next column, I put the keyword phrase that I found. Remember that you want to stay away from single words, and actually go with a meaningful phrase.

Popularity: This is the number of how many times that phrase has been searched for in the past month. Your keyword research tool will tell you that.

Competition: This is the number of how many other pages are competing for that keyword. Depending on which tool you’re using, you may have to do separate research to find out for yourself.

To find how much competition you have in Google, for example, do a search for the phrase with quotes around it. If I wanted to check the competition for people who are writing about dogs like mine, I would search for "curly cream schnoodle", just like that, with the quotes around it.

A note on popularity and competition: Your goal is to find keywords that are popular, but don’t have a lot of competition

Articles: Then I have several columns for the titles of articles I write using that keyword phrase. You could even include the dates you wrote and submitted each article. I use a different spreadsheet to track where and when each article has been published.

Denise Willms publishes work at home articles for moms at her article directory,WAHM-Articles.com. To have your article read by thousands of work at home moms, visit www.WAHM-Articles.com and sign up for a free account.

Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com/

Article Writing: Can it Help Grow my Forum?

By : Nicole Dean

Question: I’ve got a forum and it’s a ghost town. How can I get people to my forum? – NobodyLovesMe

Dear Nobody Loves Me,
Building a forum into a happenin’ place is a LOT of work. Don’t be discouraged if your efforts aren’t paying off yet. It does take time.

That being said, there are ways to boost your forum and keep boosting it, without having to spend a lot of money. Let me share one of my favorite ways to get traffic, writing articles.

You may not be familiar with article sharing. Basically, you write and share your articles with other websites and newsletters that need content. They publish your article with your author resource box (including your website URL). This helps both of you. The website publisher needs interesting, informative content and you need the exposure.

But, what does this have to do with building your forum? It can help you in two ways.

1. In your author bio, include a link directly to your forum so people that click through your link can sign up immediately and get chatting with the other members.

2. Or link to your website and have your forum prominently displayed on every page. The more incoming links you have pointing to your website content, the more important the search engines will think your site is – and you’ll get more natural traffic from google, msn, and yahoo.

So, how do you take advantage of this method of generating traffic? You can start today.

1. Choose a topic. You can even use your own forum posts for inspiration. If you’ve recently answered questions in a post on your forum about any topic, turn it into an article. (Of course you may only use the materials you yourself have written and any and all names should be changed.)

2. Include your Author Resource box. Make sure to think about this part a lot. Many people just skim over it and, frankly, have useless resource boxes. What do you offer to the visitors? Do you have a free incentive for joining? Think this one through. Make it enticing.

3. Submit your Articles. Find article directories where you can share your articles.

4. Then, don’t sit and wait for traffic, repeat the process over and over and watch your forum grow.

The results will be long-lasting as your articles will float around the web for years and years to come.

Author Resource - Nicole Dean doesn’t pay for advertising – ever. She uses Article Marketing to get free advertising on websites and in newsletters worldwide. You can use articles to get free traffic, too. Visit http://www.EasyArticleMarketing.com to find out how.

Article From: http://www.freeaffiliatearticles.com/brandable/

Work At Home Forums: Networker or Spammer?

By Tammy Embrich

1) No Flaming: Please be kind to other members and treat them with respect.

2) Advertising: Please keep all your ads in the proper forum.

3) Signatures: Please keep all signatures to 2 text links. No banners. Thanks!

4) Absolutely no spamming other members with PM's about your advertisements.

5) You must introduce yourself before posting any ads in the ad section of the forum.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should if you're accustomed to reading and following rules on a forum.

I'm surprised at just how many people come onto a business message board and instantly click themselves in the "post your opportunity" section, spam their ad, and then leave. What are those forum spammers proving to others by doing this? Where does this get them?

Part of being a respectable member of work at home forums is to consistently read the posting rules. Failure to do this can and most probably will jeopardize your forum account.

The above consequence doesn't seem to matter to quite a few members. Reading the rules of any forum you join is the very first thing you must do BEFORE making your first post, and also your first step toward properly networking with others. It only takes a few short minutes of your time and will substantially benefit you and your business. Business forums are created for business networking, not for spamming.

What exactly is the meaning of "business networking?"

Business networking is building relationships with other business owners and sharing thoughts and ideas, and getting to know one another. It means rationally conversing with others, discussing marketing ideas and techniques, lending support, and consistently adding something of value to the community. Share ideas, ask questions, and consequently gain the trust of the members. And as a result, you will be viewed and looked upon as a competent business individual.

That type of reputation is what it truly takes to make or break the sales, not one who is there just to spam their ads.

Now you should be able to easily answer this question. When joining your next work at home forum, are you joining to spam or network?

Article Written By Tammy Embrich

Tammy offers work at home articles, free work at home job leads, and other business resources on her Work At Home Forums.