Amanda's Adventures and New Product Reviews

Confessions of a reluctant foodie | Group Tour Magazine Blog MONDAY, APRIL 23, 2012 Photo: Amanda Black Fresh produce waits for a buyer at the Old Town Manassas Farmers Market in Virginia.  Confessions of a reluctant foodie Cool is not my middle name. I don’t understand steampunk, and most popular music sounds like noise to me. But somehow, I’ve joined the hipster crowd. It wasn’t the new pair of glasses I just ordered or the amount of time I spend watching the  Nerdist Channel  on YouTube. It’s this fact. I’m a foodie. There, I said it. I’m a foodie. Foodie. Gourmet. Epicure. Picky eater. Worried about sustainability. A cook. A member of a food co-op. Frequent visitor to the farmer’s market. A person who drives through the country with dollar bills in my pocket so I can buy the freshest produce. This is not the place I expected to end up, but I’m very happy here. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and I can think of several re...

All the small things | Group Tour Magazine Blog All the small things This blog by Senior Staff Writer Amanda Black ponders the benefits of thinking small Time passes too quickly. I suspect I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. While I can’t do anything about the march of time, I’ve decided to do something about wasting so much time. I was thinking back to last summer and couldn’t come up with much that I did—besides a nice vacation t o Bowling Green, Ky . I live 10 miles from Lake Michigan, and the only time I saw the lake was in September when my mom came to visit. This weekend, I was talking to my mom, and I told her about my plan to make the most of the summer. Her reply was that it’s not summer yet. But I explained, for those of us who live in the frozen north, summer means any time there’s not snow on the ground. I’m not going to let so much time pass without doing something exciting. But, gas costs a million dollars a gallon, I’m busy, I have a bad knee ...