In a nut shell, Grocio let’s you find the best deals in your neighborhood on groceries. It might not sound like a big deal at first. If you’re a coupon clipper or circular reader, you are already up on your game when it comes to saving on your home’s food bills. But if you are not doing these things already or if you are, you might find the task daunting. Grocio takes the footwork out of it and makes finding the best deals wicked easy.

Check out the video below to see a demonstration of how Grocio works and sign up at the website for a free account. Grocio will be launching soon and it could not come at a better time for many Americans.

I also want to mention how amazing it is to me that this startup is coming to fruition in these times. In his talk at OpenBeta, Mr. Buckley mentioned that he first started working on Grocio in 2001. While this would have been a handy site to have have then, given our current economic situation, the site has now become relevent to many more people. To launch the site amidst these conditions seems very smart (or lucky). I would not be surprised in the least to see Grocio appear on the likes of Good Morning America or read about it on sites like Wise Bread in the near future. I’d also like to point out that Grocio is based out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. As a fellow Oklahoman, it excites me to see innovation like this come out of our state. Awesome is spreading.

When I first started making breakfast I used a boxed baking mix like Bisquick for the pancakes. Since then, at the urging of my wife, I have begun to make pancakes from scratch. I’ve often been frustrated with pancakes served at home because they never quite tasted like the ones at iHop. I visited Google and soon came upon a top secret recipe for iHop pancakes. These pancakes are bad to the bone! Since finding the recipe I have altered it to use whole wheat flour and I ad a touch of vanilla extract. The result is a sweet pancake that tastes a little hardier and is nutritionally justified (somewhat) thanks to the whole wheat. I’ll admit a pancake breakfast isn’t the best thing to eat, but I’m trying to make it better by altering recipes, using turkey bacon instead of pork, and using low-calorie jams and syrups.

In the past week I have found two new resources to help me get better at cooking and, hopefully, do a better job feeding my family foods that will keep them healthy.

startcooking.com
I found this website via Guy Kawasaki’s blog. Guy has a recipe for his famous teriyaki sauce at startcooking.com along with dozens of instructional videos and tons of recipes. The videos are perfect for those with little attention span. Everything is shown to you quickly and the videos use stop motion, bright colors, and fun music which keeps things quirky and casual. The entire site is designed and written in this manner which puts me at ease and presents cooking as a skill that is accessible to anyone. The creator of the site and host of most of the videos, Kathy Master, is very personable and can totally be my friend.

Jessica Seinfeld: Deceptively Delicious
Okay, the above link is to Oprah’s website, but hear me out! I work with a lot of ladies. Ladies who are wise in the ways of feeding their kids and wiser now thanks to Oprah. Yesterday the ladies at the office were telling me about Jessica Seinfeld (Jerry’s wife?) who had a hard time getting her family to eat their vegetables. She punched this problem in the throat by sneaking pureed vegetables into foods like macaroni and cheese, brownies, and pancakes. She recently appeared on Oprah for some demonstrations and to pimp her new book. I have not tried any of these recipes yet, but I did download the sweet potato pancake recipe (find it using the link above) and this weekend I will modify my current pancake recipe to include pureed sweet potatoes (I’m thinking about just using baby food). I’ll let you know how it goes.

Oh and by the way, I’m still waiting for my Oprah connection to pay off. So if anybody with Oprah Infulence™ is reading, I’ll appear on the show at an affordable rate;-)

UPDATE: The sweet potato pancakes were great and the kids liked them too! I made a ton so we had them for Sunday breakfast with sliced bananas. Delicious! Also, thanks to startcooking.com, I am now an omlette master. I prepared bad-to-the-bone omlettes for the wife and I and they looked and tasted great!

I’m a sucker for free samples and months ago I signed up for samples from True Lemon. True Lemon makes crystallized powders from lemon, lime and orange juice that come in sweetener type packets. When I got my samples in the mail I added the powder to a beer (pretty good), a diet soda (good, but not really the point), to water (good again) and I sprinkled the lime over popcorn once with some chili powder (awesome).

These little packets make a bottle of water a lot more interesting and they do it without artificial sweetener. The flavors are very natural and bright tasting. As an added bonus, you can take them to restaraunts and use them in your beverage instead of having a sketchy, potentially filthy, lemon wedge floating in your drink. So, if you’re a sample junkie like me or are looking for an alternative to soda, check out that article and then visit True Lemon’s website.

Pretzels
The upside: One ounce has just 110 calories.
The downside: These twisted low-fat snacks have one of the highest glycemic indexes of any food. In fact, they rank above ice cream and jelly beans in their ability to raise blood sugar.
The healthy alternative: Cheese crisps — baked pieces of cheese that crunch like chips.

Woah! If those cheese crisps are anything like the cheese that bakes onto the cookie sheet when I’m making nachos, count me in with a side of ranch! Mmmm…healthy.