Sprenzy Shopping Blog

Through my food blog, Sunday Nite Dinner, I’m participating in the 4th annual Menu for Hope charity raffle, which brings together food bloggers from around the world in the fight against hunger. Bloggers offer prizes that you can win by purchasing a $10 raffle ticket. The proceeds of the charity raffle goes to the U.N. World Food Program (WFP).

I was amazed to learn that in the last decade the number of people suffering from hunger and malnutrition rose from 791 million to 854 million. The WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian agency: each year, WFP gives food to an average of 90 million poor people to meet their nutritional needs, including 56 million hungry children, in at least 80 of the world’s poorest countries.

The number of people suffering from hunger is staggering. We have seen it first hand in our travels to Africa and Southeast Asia. Participating in Menu for Hope is one small way to help people much less fortunate than us.

The charity raffle runs from December 10th - 21st with raffle winners announced on January 9th. Prizes vary from homemade cookies to touring the elBulli laboratory with Ferran Adrià. Since I’m a complete gearhead, I have donated an Apple iPhone 8GB (US) as a prize in Menu for Hope. I use my iPhone all the time to keep track of shopping lists, find restaurants while out and about, get directions, take pictures of delicious dishes, and surf for new recipes on my favorite food blogs and forums. It’s the perfect phone for the on-the-go cook or food lover.

The prize code for the Apple iPhone is UW27. Shipped within the US only.

How to Enter/Donation Instructions

1) Choose a prize(s). For a complete list of prizes offered worldwide, visit Chez Pim. For a list of prizes from West Coast food bloggers, visit Rasa Malaysia.

2) Go to Firstgiving, the online fundraising company used to manage the Menu for Hope charity raffle, and make a donation.

3) Specify the prize you would like to bid for in the ‘Personal Message’ section of the donation form. Every $10 donated will get one raffle ticket toward a prize.

For example, a donation of $50 gets 5 raffle tickets, which can be distributed between different prizes, such as 3 tickets for UW27 and 2 tickets for UW33. This would be entered as 3xUW27, 2xUW33. Important: Check the box marked at bottom “I am happy for the page owner to see my email address …”! This will allow the organizers to contact winners.

Please spread the word to your friends and family to help in the fight against hunger! Let me know if you have any questions and thanks in advance for your generosity.

Sorry for the lack of posts this month. I’m back to blogging. If you have any product suggestions for me or need any product advice, drop me a note using the feedback form.

Last week, a broad group of companies, government agencies and Yahoo! launched the 18Seconds movement. The environmental initiative is named for the average time it takes a person to change a standard light bulb to an ENERGY STAR labeled compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL).

Lawrence Bender, the producer of An Inconvenient Truth, stated in a Yahoo! press release…

“This movement is about empowering the individual – to say to every person in America that with one easy step, they can become part of a movement that will literally change the world. I believe the CFL is the Trojan horse into the minds of the American public. Once you get somebody who feels good about making a difference and at the same time saving money, you have them thinking about what else they can do.”

In conjunction with the 18Seconds movement, Yahoo! created a site, 18Seconds.org, which ranks states and cities based on the number of CFL bulbs purchased since the beginning of the year. From 18Seconds.org…

“A compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) is a light bulb that uses less  energy than a standard bulb to provide the same amount of light. Those bearing the government’s ENERGY STAR label use 1/3 the energy of a traditional bulb, can last up to 10 times longer, and save $30 or more in energy costs over their lifetime. You can find ENERGY STAR CFLs most anywhere you currently shop for light bulbs.

What kind of difference can one CFL make? Consider this:  If every American swapped just ONE bulb for an ENERGY STAR labeled CFL, it would collectively save more than $8 billion in energy costs, prevent burning 30 billion pounds of coal, and remove 2 million cars worth of greenhouse gas emissions from our atmosphere. Just imagine the difference we could make if we replaced all of the lights we use most!”

18Seconds.org has additional information on why and how to switch to CFL bulbs and more importantly, how to recycle CFLs, which contain a small amount of mercury. On the site, you can also spread the word by creating a badge like the one shown above right.

Currently, San Francisco is only the 83rd ranked city in the number of CFL bulbs purchased. So I’m calling on my friends and neighbors in San Francisco to do our part and make the switch to CFLs. We can do better than 83! It’s a simple step to help save our environment and it only takes 18 seconds.

From everyone at Sprenzy, we want to wish you a Happy 2007! We hope you had a great 2006 and have an even better 2007. So whatever your goals or dreams are for the new year, we hope you realize them.

If you find yourself down or facing an obstacle, remember to take the advice from our theme song, Shopping, by the Barenaked Ladies…

We are excited about the new year and look forward to enhancing Sprenzy.com to help you in your shopping endeavors. Again, Happy New Year! And take a listen to Shopping…

I have spent the last several months writing blog posts on products that I thought were interesting, had a lot of buzz or on products I own and enjoy using. So I want to take this opportunity to find out what products you are interested in buying. If you need assistance looking for a gift or just conducting research on a new product, let me know and I’ll help out by conducting some research for you.

The more information you provide me, the more relevant my advice will be. For example, if you are looking for an HDTV, let me know your budget, screen size, brand or any other requirements you have. Pose your product advice question in a comment below and I’ll respond with a post.