The BlogStalker

Alright. I promise this is the last day (this week) where I just make a post out of promoting other people’s free stuff. Tomorrow I’ll do my blog roundup. Here’s some more free stuff for you:

Shawna at Gettin’ Fit and Happy is giving away five Prana Bars. You should go here to get the rules and regulations. Shawn at Gettin’ Fat and Depressed isn’t giving anything away. He’s an ass.

I don’t really know what Prana bars are and I’m too lazy too google it, so I’ll just talk about other stuff. Hmm, I’ll talk about my favorite five types of bars, I guess. In no particular order:

1. Candy Bars. First I wrote snickers, and then butterfinger, and then I decided that there aren’t many candy bars that I don’t like. Except maybe Charleston Chew - but I don’t think they’ve made those since Reagan was in office. When I weigh the pros and cons of visiting any city named Charleston, the dance is in the pro column but the candy bar is in the con column. Anyway, candy bars make my top five.

2. Gold Bars. I’ve never really seen one, except in movies. Gold is so much cooler in bar form than it is in coin or yellow gold necklace form. 

3. Dive Bars. I have many favorites, but I’d recommend Sherwoods in Jacksonville, Florida. Don’t let the creepy looking clowns on the windows scare you. 

4. Piano Bars. As long as there aren’t any bachelorette parties going on and they aren’t doing that damn thing where they play the college fight songs over and over again. Those two things can ruin a good piano bar.

5. Prana Bars. Not really. I’m sure they are great. I’ve never had one. I just didn’t feel like coming up with something for #5, so we’ll go with that. Now go enter Shawna’s contest here.

In other giveaway news…

Kelsey at Bites and Bowls became the 473rd blogger to give away some MixMyGranola. Go here to enter.

That’s all for today. I’ll be back tomorrow.

Hello Again Friends. I still haven’t figured out how to enable comments on my Free Shiz page, so I’ll just post all of the contests here for now. And it gets me out of having to come up with original content during the week, so everyone is a winner.

Iowa Girl Eats is celebrating her one month Blogiversary. Now I like creating new words as much as the next girl, but Blogiversary isn’t may favorite to write or say. Anyway, so she’s been blogging for a month and is giving away a bunch of free stuff. Impressive. I usually celebrate one month of blogging by taking six months off and then starting a new blog, but that’s just me. She here’s all the stuff she’s got going on with her contest:

One jar of Crunchy Barney Butter
Apple Pie Lara Bar
Chocolate Coconut Chew Lara Bar
Peanut Butter Cookie Lara Bar (my #1 fave)
Chocolate Brownie Cliff Bar
One package of Cocoa Roasted Almonds
One package of Dried Black Mission Figs
One coupon for a free frozen Kashi frozen entree

That’s a lot of free shiz. What is she going to do when she’s been blogging for a year? Well, I guess you’re just going to have to wait 11 months to find out.

I think I’d go for the Barney Butter. I’ve got a theory that it will become the next precious metal. After Cash Into Gold buys up the world’s supply of gold and the price drops, Barney Butter will come in and will be the new standard. Anyway, if you want to win this contest, you can:

Enter to win up to three times by:

Posting a comment here and tell Iowa Girl which item you’d most like to try

If you have a blog, link back to this post in one of your own posts. (If you don’t have a blog, email her at iowagirleats@hotmail.com to enter an additional time)

If you have a blog, add Iowa Girl Eats to your blogroll and email her at iowagirleats@hotmail.com to let her know!

Well that’s pretty smart. Getting people to link to her and add her to their blogroll. I should probably do something like that. I’ll look around my house and see if I’ve got anything I want to give away. Well, I mean there’s this massive juicer on my counter, but Kate would get pretty pissed if I gave that away. I’ll keep looking.

So that’s all. And brownie points to anyone who picked up on the post title reference. For those of you who didn’t, Kevin Costner used to make good movies.

Hi Kids. Do you like vegan food? How about the ethical treatment of animals? Yeah, I thought so. Well then, how about entering for a chance to win a PETA Cookbook? If you’re interested, go visit HangryPants here, and comment with answers to the following questions…

Alright. That’s all. Good luck. Go win yourself a cookbook.

Hi Friends. Welcome to my new blog. It’s a hot mess, isn’t it? If you like the design, then I give all the credit to Pinky’s husband, who helped me out big time. Actually he did it all. I just supervised. And by supervise, I mean I drank beer and watched Juno and offered words of encouragement. He was done before with this fancy design before Juno’s third trimester. He’s good with the Word Press and the interweb, so if y’all need help with your blog, you can get in touch with him through Pinky’s blog. If something isn’t working correctly, that’s probably my bad. Let me know and we’ll try to get it fixed. After reading this post, I’d encourage you to take a tour of the blog. But first, let’s do our weekly blog review. 

We’ll start in our nation’s capital with Anna from Blue Plate Special. Anna’s sister Meg wrote a heart wrenching post where she came clean about her gambling addiction. Well, not really, but she did admit to bidding on four items in the recent blogger bake sale, which is sort of like gambling, right? I mean, those are some expensive baked goods. I can see her on the phone with her bookie, saying she’ll take the VeggieGirl blondies plus two, with the juice running at five points a week. Or maybe she’ll bet the over on Tina’s Chocolate Pumpkin Loaf. In other BPS news, Anna has sworn off using cocoa powder in her oats after three unsuccessful attempts. I understand where Anna is coming from on this one. I put a leftover birthday cupcake in my oats the other day. My cupcake oats tasted okay, but then when I wanted to eat my cupcake at lunch, it was already gone. And then I had to explain to Kate where the leftover cupcake went. And it doesn’t matter that I put it in oatmeal, I still ate a cupcake for breakfast.

Speaking of Kate, I would like to thank Jenna and the Fitnessistitanissstasa  for taking away what little counter space I had left in my kitchen. Thanks to the juicing habits of the aforementioned bloggers, Kate has now purchased her own juicer. Awesome. It also happens to be the same model that Jenna has, but Kate swears that’s a complete coincidence. I’m not buying it. So now Kate is making juice twice a day. She asks if I want some juice about five times a day, even though my answer is always ‘sure, as long as it doesn’t have any vegetables in it.’ This machine sounds like a lawnmower fighting with a 747.  Oh, and this juicing robot/countertop stealer is the size of R2D2 and probably has as many working parts. So every morning when I come down to make my oats, it looks like someone has taken apart a ’67 Buick. This is what I mean

Sorry for the poor photo quality. I’m pretty sure that the juice robot ate my camera for fuel, so I had to use my camera phone instead. And regardless of the ingredients, the juice always looks like it should be dumped on top of celebrities at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards. I better stop. I could do an entire post on how this juice monster has impacted my life. So thanks Jenna and Fitnessistanissista! 

Caroline at Banana Cabana had a blogger date with GraduateMeghann this week during GM’s trip to California. Caroline and Meghann checked most of the requirements off of their blogger first date checklist. Ethnic food – Check. Ice Cream/Frozen Yogurt – Check. All that was missing was a shopping trip at a crunchy grocery store (they tried but Trader Joes was closed).  Banana Cabana is a new blog for me. Caroline wrote one of the funniest comments I’ve ever read the other day on Healthy Tipping Point, so I figured I’d have to start reading her blog. I’m sad that I just started reading, because Banana Cabana should’ve made my list of blog names that sort of sound like porn.  

And how many more years do you think Meghann can squeeze out of the GraduateMeghann name?  I mean, sure, she’ll always be a college graduate, but it would be sort of silly to refer to herself as such when she’s 47, right? I’d say she’s got two more years as GraduateMeghann. So if in two more years she still wants to use the GraduateMeghann domain name, I think she’ll have to go back to school for grad school. That would help her squeeze a few more years out of that name.

It was a good week in Hangryland. ‘She says’ made some Cadbury Mini Egg Cookie Bars. She has also taken on one of my pet causes: making seasonal holiday candies available year-round. So Ms. Hangry - I think we need to find like-minded bloggers who also want to support this cause. Maybe we can use blog revenue to hire a lobbyist. I don’t have any blog revenue, so I guess my contribution will be to come up with a list of candies that need year-round shelf space. So far I’ve got:

1. All Easter Candy: Peeps, Cadbury Everything, Peanut Butter Eggs (I know it’s just a peanut butter cup, but it tastes better when shaped like an egg), and everything in the jelly bean family.
2. McDonald’s Shamrock Shake - I know it’s not really candy, but it’s my list
3. Chocolate Santas - I never eat these, but they always look so damn jolly. I just like seeing them on the store shelves. 

Mr. Hangry (Hangryman?) gave an update on his salad challenge. I don’t understand how these challenges work. Is there a prize at the end? Do you at least get a certificate of completion or a participant ribbon. I think if you’re able to eat a salad every day for two weeks, then you should get a prize. I propose a $50 bill and a Schwinn bicycle. It’s like hitting bucket #6 on the grand prize game. I’ll call The Bozo Show and see if that’s available. None of those little kids ever make it to bucket 6, so they have to have a bunch of bikes just laying around in the studio. If you didn’t grow up watching Bozo, this paragraph probably didn’t make any sense to you. Sorry about that. Hangryman had a Coneheads reference in his post, so I thought Bozo would be alright/less obscure, no?

Now we need to get serious. There have been multiple instances of trunk on blogger violence over the past week. Caitlin Tipping Point had to go all Rachel Ray on her trunk and cover it in EVOO in order to get it to open and release her groceries. Kelsey at Bites and Bowls was essentially assaulted by her trunk. I mean, her trunk literally punched her in the face. How does that even happen? Kate works with the elderly and swears that most bad things happen in threes, so I’m sort of scared that the trunk on blogger violence isn’t over yet. Kate is usually talking about old people dying in threes, but I bet it applies to trunk violence as well. Be afraid. Be very afraid. 

Matt at Brew and Bake gave me my first official free stuff. It was a blondie from Great Harvest. I’d show a picture of it, but I couldn’t find the camera and I got hungry. So instead, here’s a picture of the bag that it came in, as well as the note that Matt wrote on it. 

If you can’t read that, it says “Because I don’t ever want to be called out on the internet for not bringing you blondies.” At least we know his heart is in the right place. I feel like I’ve really made the big time now. My first official free blog stuff. Damn. Maybe I should’ve given it away on the blog. Maybe next time. 

Stock Up

Buitoni Wild Mushroom Agnolotti – At first I was a little jealous when I saw that the foodbuzz fairy visited much of the blogworld and gave this stuff to everyone. But then I learned that Kate has as much trouble pronouncing Buitoni as she does pronouncing Fitnessissta. So at least it was entertaining. 

Chia Seeds – What the hell are these? Is this the same stuff that I plastered onto my Chia Pet? Because it clearly said on the box that you’re not supposed to eat that stuff. 

Mix My Granola – I entered at least 17 comment contests to try to score some of this stuff. Stupid random number generator has it in for me. And I already had my mix picked out. It was gonna be gin, vermouth, and an olive. Or does it have to include granola?

Blogapalooza Surveys – I guess it is also being referred to as the Blogger Summit. I have heard more about this upcoming summit than I have heard about Jane Seymour’s tacky looking ‘Open Hearts’ collection at Kay Jewelers. Sorry about that tangent…back to Blogapalooza…whatever you want to call it, I’m so there. Wherever ‘there’ is. Y’all coming with me?

Kale Chips

Cocoanut Milk/Meat/Water. All things coconut. 

Stock Down

the –ie suffex – as in brekkie, and Sammie. Ladies, we’ve already discussed this. Now we’ve added grapie to the list? Where does this end? As I say to my three year old neice…use your big girl words.

Sugar – Everyone seems to be giving up/cutting back on sugar. But didn’t y’all give up high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners already? What’s left?

Blogger’s Choice Awards – Stock down because I’m not winning yet, and Kath’s not winning yet either. What’s up with that? I’m losing to a blog about funny cakes. This cannot be. Vote for my other blog here and vote for KERF here. It we win, this one might make stock up in a future week

Well hello there. Thanks for stopping by. Welcome to The BlogStalker. So here’s the deal with this blog…

I spend a lot of time reading blogs. Then I usually comment based on what I read. Most of the time it’s just me talking to myself, my wife, or my dog. Then I made some friends and they all read blogs too. So they usually got the stupid stuff that I said about blogs. Then about a month ago I started doing a weekly blog roundup on my other blog, where I basically just talked about what other bloggers were doing.

A few people seemed to like it, so I decided that I’d create a blog where that’s all I did. So that’s how we got here. Let’s take a tour of the blog and all it’s wonderful features. Here’s what we’ve got going on with the navigation:

The Stalker - That’s where I talk about myself. I promise it’s not too deep or preachy. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t even know the questions.

The Fam - This is where I talk about Kate and Gilbert. I have a feeling Kate will make me update this page frequently. She’ll say things like - “you need to update Gilbert’s hobbies.”

Free Shiz - This is a good one. If anyone ever gives me free stuff and I’ve got some to give away, I’ll talk about it here. Oh, and if you’re a blogger and you have some kind of contest or giveaway going on, this is where you can promote it. Good idea, right? Yeah, I thought so. 

Blog Reviews - I have no idea what I’m going to do on this page. We’ll figure it out later.

Pictures - Kate won’t use our Picasa album, but I think she might look at/post pictures here. So there you go.

That’s my navigation. Here are the categories of posts that I’m going to have:

Weekly Roundup - That’s what I’ve been doing for awhile now. If you scroll down you’ll see some examples of that. I’ll try to do this one once a week. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a weekly roundup, would it?

Extended Comment - Here’s a new feature. Usually when I’m reading a blog, I want to comment. Usually the potential comment in my head is inappropriate, too long, or some kind of inside joke. So I usually hit the comments button, sometimes make it to the point of typing out the comment, but rarely ever hit submit. So I’ll post those extended comments here with a little bit of context. I don’t know how often I’ll do that. I’d like to do it daily but it’s more likely that it’ll happen a few times a week.

So there you go. That’s what we’ve got going on here. Thanks again for stopping by.

Note: This was originally posted at yourselfinfiveyears.blogspot.com

Hi Everyone. Welcome to the fourth and final edition of the food blog roundup. It’s not the last one ever, just the last one on this blog. The new blog should be ready to go next week. I could’ve had it ready to go this week, but I had to watch The Masters all weekend, then I was sick, then it was my birthday, and then I had to catch up and read all of the blogs. So hopefully I’ll get around to it in time for next week. I’ll keep y’all posted. I think it has been an excited week in blogworld. There have been fires, free Garmins, and most importantly, my birthday. Sadly, my mailbox was blondie-free on my 29th. Alright, enough about that. Here. We. Go.

Mara at What’s for Dinner had a busy week. The week started with a nice post for her fiance’s birthday. Yes, I realize that there is an accent mark at some point in that word, but I don’t feel like digging around for special characters in the blogger editor. Anyway, it was a somewhat sappy but nice ode to fiance. My only criticism is that she used the phrase “my stomach flipped with joy.” Now while this might be accurate, when ‘stomach ‘and ‘flip’ are used together, I just start thinking about the end of Marley and Me (both book and movie). And then I think of the 100+ people openly sobbing around me when we were at the theatre. So I don’t really know how Mara’s fiance love post ends because I started thinking about Marley and got distracted.

Mara also had a blogger playdate with Jenn from Eating Bender. It was an action-packed date, filled with everything that a food blogger meet-up should include: overpriced organic grocery store, uncooked Asian foods, specialty cooking stores, and ice cream. I bet there’s a lot of pressure when two food bloggers meet for the first time. If I was the food blogger responsible for coming up with the agenda, I think I’d probably just schedule a bunch of out of character activities. Well, out of character for healthy food bloggers, at least. I’d use a theme, like ‘buckets.’ My Chicago food blog meet up would probably start in one of the neighborhoods around U.S. Cellular Field. We’d make enough wrong turns that we would end up near a Harold’s Chicken and enjoy a bucket of legs, wings, thighs, and grease. Then we’d head south for a couple buckets of beers at Bourbon Street on 115th, and then downtown for a big Bucket of Garrett’s Carmel and Cheese Popcorn.  It would probably be our last meeting and the pictures wouldn’t make the interweb.   

Speaking of Eating Bender, I was going to devote an entire paragraph to Jen, but then I noticed that she’s doing the P90X workout. If she is able to make it through one session of that, then she can officially kick my ass, so I’m going to watch what I say. For those of you that don’t know what P90X is, apparently you don’t have cable or sleeping issues. It’s a workout program that only advertises on basic cable between 2:00-6:00 AM. I feel sore after watching one of the infomercials. It looks like Level XIV of Jillian’s 30 Day Shred, and the ‘after’ spokespeople look like Brad Pitt in fight club. Good luck with that.

Caitlin Tipping Point (seems easier than writing out Caitlin, at The Healthy Tipping Point) had some excitement this week when her apartment complex caught on fire. My only critique of this is that there was only one post devoted to The Great Fire of 2009. It was comprehensive coverage within that post, but I would’ve dragged it out over a few days. It was sort of like in the last season of The O.C. when Marissa Cooper started hooking up with the chick that’s now playing 13 on House. There was one episode of The O.C. devoted to their torrid love affair, and then by the next episode Marissa was back to dating Ryan Atwood and hating her mother. Or am I the only one who compares food blogs to Teen Drama plot lines? All I’m saying is that you missed an opportunity to turn this into fire prevention week on HTP, with instructional videos for fire extinguisher usage, and more pictures of the dreamy firefighters. Also, I’m not really a black helicopter guy, but I find it quite a coincidence that there was a fire at the apartment during the same week that Caitlin announced her running hiatus. I’m just saying that maybe someone in the running industry might not be happy about this decision and may have had something to do with the fire. Because ‘fire’ is the #2 cause of spontaneous running, just behind ‘someone chasing you.’

Am I the only one that’s a little jealous of all of the free stuff that Kath gets? She got a freaking Garmin? Kath is my friend so I should be happy for her (and I should realize that maybe I can borrow some of her free stuff sometime) but I want to understand the secret to getting free stuff. I mean, this blog is read by literally DOZENS of people every week, but I guess that isn’t enough. So far I’ve got

Step 1: Create Blog

Step 2:

Step 3: Free Stuff

Maybe I should drop some subtle hints…

The check engine light is on in my Toyota Highlander. I just love my Highlander and I hear that the new Hybrid model is fantastic. I sure would like to drive one of those.

Or

My Kenmore washing machine is one of my favorite appliances, but the spin cycle seems to be acting up. I’m just not sure where I could find a replacement.

If I haven’t made this clear yet, let me say one more time: I am willing to sell out this blog (and my new blog) for free stuff.  I’ll take almost anything. Except maybe the WWII era cereal that Kath got this week, with the picture of a kid that looks like a cross between Ralphie’s little brother in A Christmas Story and one of the Children of the Corn kids. I don’t think I could eat breakfast with this kid staring at me.

Alright, back to the blog review now

There was some excitement on Hangry Pants this week. There was finally a ‘he said’ post! For those who do not read Hangry, each post starts with either “He Says” or “She Says” depending on who is the author of the post. Sort of a clever idea for a shared male/female shared blog. Only problem is that there isn’t an even balance between he says and she says. Specifically, we’ve gone entire weeks recently without a single he says post. So going to the blog and looking for a “he says” post is sort of like Where’s Waldo or one of those magic eye posters. You know, those things that you stare at for 30 seconds and then you see a panda that says I love you emerge from the trippy design.. Now I know that Daddy is very busy at work, but we stay up late to wait for him to come home, and then he doesn’t talk to us kids out in blogland. We need more “he says” posts – the last one introduced me to new salad toppings, including Pepperidge Farm Goldfish and Honey Wheat Kix.  That is food blog gold, and I want more.

Diana at The Chic Life broke the all time food blog record of excessive use of the word ‘sammy.’ Now there has been some discussion and debate on the correct spelling (is it Sammie or Sammy). My official answer is that it is neither, as the word should not be used. Ever. Problem solved.. Now Diana is a friend and loyal reader. She knows how I feel about the use of the word Sammy. Yet she managed to use Sammy four times in one post. And it’s not like she was describing four different sandwiches – it was just one sandwich. And this isn’t the first time. I did a quick control + F and found no less than 13 instances of Sammy on one page of The Chic Life. And I double checked, and none of them were about Sammy Davis Jr. or Sammy Hagar. Diana, we need to talk about this. We might just turn my birthday party tonight into a Sammy usage intervention for you. All of your blogging friends and family will be here to help you through this.

Oh, and to fill out our list of places that spinach should not be:

3. Pancakes

4. Brownies

Thanks to Heather (from Heat the Salmon Butt) and Jennifer (from Blogger Profile Not Available Error Page) for submitting these winning entries.

Stock Up

Salad Challenge – I was going to participate until I found out that chicken salad, taco salad, and potato salad would not count as my daily salad.

Getting Free Stuff from Companies – Unless you are me.

Soups that look like baby food - bleh

Obscure Nut Butters – I don’t think there are any nuts left that have not been made into a peanut butter substitute. Also, ‘Obscure Nut Butters’ would be an awesome band name

Peep Art and Peep Consumption – Peep Utilization in food blogs was up almost 24% from last year

Stock Down

Cooked Food (or whatever the opposite of ‘raw’ is) – This means that natural gas and electricity are both stock down this week

Cadbury Cream Eggs – I looked at least 50 food blogs on Sunday and didn’t see a single one. I saw lots of Cadbury mini eggs, but not their goo filled big brother.

Pirate Attacks – Although I don’t want to call them Pirates

Alright. That’s all for this week. I’ll put next week’s post here and on the new blog. Let me know if there are any blogs that y’all want me to talk about. I gotta get going. Only a few hours until My SpongeBob Birthday Party/Diana’s Sammy Intervention. Talk to you later.

Note: This was originally posted at http://yourselfinfiveyears.blogspot.com/

Hi Everyone. Welcome to week 3 of the food blog review. Hopefully just one more post on this blog and then I’ll have a new one ready to go.

I have to confess that I didn’t spend too much time reading food blogs this week. Well, that’s sort of a lie…I didn’t spend as much time as I usually do reading food blogs this week (still would probably qualify as ‘too much’ depending on who you ask). So this week I relied on my lovely assistant, Kate, to take some blog notes for me.  Here’s how it worked-Kate would scribble something down that said “Heather Spinach Oats” and then I would have to decipher what that means and come up with something funny to write about it. Her notes sort of remind me of Russell Crowe’s crazy thoughts and paper scraps during ‘A Beautiful Mind.’ Here. We. Go. 

It was a very exciting week for Tina at Carrots ‘n’ Cake. Tina caught Mr. Mal eating Wendy’s in their apartment. Judging by the picture and my knowledge of the Wendy’s value menu, it looks like Mal went with the 5 piece chicken nugget, a junior bacon cheeseburger, and medium fries. Some excellent choices for sure. Unfortunately Mal made some poor decisions with the consumption strategy. First of all, you just can’t bring the food home. At home you have to worry about disposing of the evidence, as well the fast food smell that will linger for at least 24 hours. I’d recommend eating in the car. Now if you must eat at home, then I suggest adding a large chili to your order, which would make clean-up a little easier. You could stick the Nugget holder in the fries holder. The paper wrapper from the Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger will fit in the nugget holder, and then the holders will fit nicely in the empty Chili container. You put the lid back on and then you’re good to go. Then even if you get busted and someone spots the evidence in the trash can, all she’ll see is the Chili cup, which isn’t so bad. Not that I’ve ever done that before, but I have a feeling that might work.

Heather at Heather Eats Almond Butter is getting a little carried away with the oatmeal toppings. Avocado? Raw Spinach? I just don’t think I can support these toppings in oats. This recent proliferation of spinach usage in the food blog world is reaching epidemic proportions. I’ve come up with the follow chart to assist food bloggers who aren’t sure when or where they should use spinach.

Places Where Spinach Should Be:

1. In a salad
2. In a dip with artichokes and cheese. Ideally at a casual dining establishment, complimented with pita chips and a large beer
3. At the grocery store
4. In a tin can in Popeye’s hand. So he can squeeze it into his mouth and get big and strong.

Places Where Spinach Should NOT Be:

1. In Smoothies
2. In Oatmeal
3.
4.

Spots 3 and 4 are reserved for next week. I’m sure someone will try to put spinach into something new. 

I don’t think I can talk about spinach in oatmeal anymore without losing my appetite, so I’m going to change the topic now… 

One thing that I like to do for fun is to see how many words I can spell with Heather’s URL (www.heathereatsalmondbutter.com) without rearranging the letters. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

First there are the easy ones: Heather, eats, almond, butter.

But if you look closely, you’ll also see: wheat, heat, heath, at, the, there, salmon, alm, but,  and butt.

So if we just removed a few letters, it could actually be “Heat The Salmon Butt” which would be a pretty awesome blog name. 

Graduate Meghann held her online blogging bake sale this week. Now I know it was for a good cause or whatever, but I gotta say, those better be some damn good baked goods. When there were bake sales at my elementary school, I could get a couple cookies for a quarter or fifty cents. Whoa, that just made me sound really old, didn’t it? Like some kind of “back in my day” story from Grandpa Simpson or anyone over the age of 80 talking about walking in the snow (uphill both ways). Also, the legacy of the YIFY blog roundup is now complete, now that Derek’s ‘Easter Bunny’ label seems to have stuck. Better yet, he has gone from being THE Easter Bunny, to MY Easter Bunny. My work here is done. Oh, and VeggieGirl’s blondies went for $85/batch. Just think how much I could’ve driven up the bidding if only I would’ve received some samples. 

Get ready for it…here’s the first ever discussion of a non food blog. My friend Pinque is having her first every blog giveaway. She thinks her blog name is pronounced “Pink” but I’ve decided that it is ‘Pinky’  so that’s what I call her now. I’d like this nickname to stick, so if you comment on her blog, please start each comment by saying “Dear Pinky”. Thank you for your support. Anyway, Pinky is giving away a Vera Bradley purse. If you want to win, you better go register. If you’re reading this on Saturday or later, then you already missed it. But you should still go visit Pinky’s blog.  

Here’s my commentary on Vera Bradley. Kate had a stretch from 2005-2007 when she was convinced that she liked Vera Bradley stuff, but not enough to actually buy something. So for two years, every time we saw a store that sold Vera Bradley stuff, we had to stop so she could look at the exact same purses that she looked at last time. So I made at least 150 visits to a Vera Bradley retailer without a single purchase. Now I knew that she didn’t really like Vera Bradley stuff enough that she’d actually carry one of their purses, but I really, really didn’t want to ever go into another store. So I bought her the one for Christmas, knowing that she wouldn’t like it and would probably return it. That is exactly what happened. I haven’t had to go into another Vera Bradley store since. I consider this one of my finest moments. 

Kath reported yesterday that she contacted the tempeh people and that they confirmed that tempeh is safe to eat raw. Well that’s great, but she offered me raw tempeh two weeks ago. And there was no warning like “I’m not sure if this is safe to eat or not.” 

So I guess there were two steps in finding out if tempeh is safe to eat raw:

1. Feed it to Nate and see if he dies
2. Email the company and ask them

Am I wrong for thinking that we should switch those two steps around?

Stock Up

Wishing VeggieGirl a happy birthday. Were there any food blogs that did NOT give VeggieGirl a happy 21st? My birthday is next Thursday and I’m expecting the same level of bloglove

Raising Money for Charity. Between Meghann’s bake sale, Zesty’s shirts, and Jenna’s cookbook, the blogworld is really coming together – sort of “We are the world” style. So I think I should do my part. For every dozen baked goods that you send to my house, at least six will be donated to a local charity. I think we all know where the other six are going to go. Now if only Zesty’s shirt had a picture of his glorious bald head on it…

Food Blog Ads with Pictures of Chocolate. This one is a complete mixed signal. I mean the food blog is all about Kombucha and Spinach and FlaxWheySoyTempeh whatever, but the there’s an advertisement for chocolate. I’m confused. 

Stock Down 

Actually couldn’t think of any stock down this week, so I replaced it with the following segment…

Blog Names that Sort of Sound Like Porn
Making Love in the Kitchen
Tales of Expansion
Apples and Twigs
Cream Puffs in Venice
Get Sconed
In a Pickle and a Jam
Jess Likes it Hot
LovIN My Tummy
Raw Mom – Raw Love
The Food Sex
Two Peas and Their Pod

That’s all for this week. I wanted to write about The Chic Life, Hangry Pants and Eating Bender, but I went on too many tangents so those will be in next week’s roundup for sure. We’ll do better next time

P.S.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY VEGGIE GIRL!!!!

Note: This was originally posted at http://yourselfinfiveyears.blogspot.com/

Greetings, and welcome to the second weekly food blog roundup. Thanks for coming back. It’s been an exciting week in Food Blog World, and I’ll do my best to take you around in the next 1000 words or so. I’ve decided to change it up a bit and go for more short reviews, instead of a handful of really long ones. We’ll see how that goes. I usually just start rambling, so that might not work. Here. We. Go.

Kelsey at Bites + Bowls had a very busy week. In addition to wearing some Flashdance-style leggings, she also tried on 17 different colors of nail polish and took about 15 inappropriate pictures of fruit and veggies. Since Kelsey doesn’t eat mammal, there is usually fruit and/or veggies with every meal. This means three opportunities per day for phallic fruit and veggie placement. Oh, and she also became the first food blogger to take a picture of her dirty laundry. Congrats, Kelsey. Bites and Bowls was also under attack this week by a Negative Nancy commentor. There were like five consecutive posts when the same person kept writing nastygrams about pretty much everything. So I had to put on my disguise as my blog commentor alter ego/sassy middle-aged woman (this time I was named Marge) and come to the rescue. Marge saved the day and once again stopped the advances of Negative Nancy.

VeggieGirl – I hope your VeggieCameraman/VeggieDad is feeling better. He didn’t sound too good on your last video. I could send you some Robitussin or maybe some Sucrets or something. I’m hoping it’s just a springtime cold, and not a ventilation problem in the VeggieGirl kitchen/VGTV Studios. Oh, and VeggieGirl, my blondies have not arrived yet. What does a girl have to do to get some VeggieGirl blondies? Everyone else in Blogland seems to have received their VeggieGirl Blondies, and mine are nowhere to be found. Did you lose my address already? And why doesn’t my cable package come with VeggieGirl TV? I get Starz 8 in HD and four shopping channels, but no VeggieGirl TV. That ain’t right. Time Warner - If you’re listening, can you please add VeggieGirl TV to my channel lineup?

Caitlin at Healthy Tipping Point is considering a move to Charlotte. I am 100% in favor of this move. If it helps make your decision, I’ll let you refer to me as “Replacement Meghann” after you move. I’m cool with it, really. Caitlin had the first food blog night that I could actually relate to on Saturday. It involved onion rings, watching basketball,  and drinking beers. Not just A beer, but beers plural. Then you had to ruin it by running 10 miles while listing to the Twilight Soundtrack. Why must you torment me like this? You can move here if you want, but you better leave those damn vampire friends in Florida. Caitlin also finished her 30 day shred. Finally! I was exhausted just from reading about it.

On a Lobster Placemat. Okay, so I haven’t started reading this one yet, but I really dig the name and Kate likes your blog. Most of these food blogs seem to follow a pretty consistent naming convention of [Name/Nickname] + [What I like to Do] OR [ Name + What I like to Eat] OR [Some Noun and Verb Combo]. And then out of nowhere comes this fantastic abstract blog name that I really don’t understand. This is the food blog equivalent of Pearl Jam’s “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” in a sea of one word song titles like Daughter, Jeremy, Alive, and Black. I will start reading your blog, just because of the name. And because you play with your food.

Super Caloric Chalk Dust is also a pretty fantastic blog name. I also feel like SCCD must live in one of those cities where companies  test out all of their new products before launching them across the country. That’s the only theory I can come up with, because I spend a lot of time at the grocery store, and I’ve never seen half of the products that you’ve tried this week. Doritos Collisions? Jelly Belly Pudding? Aloe Juice? Where do you find these treasures, and have they been approved by the FDA? I get scared when you go a couple of days without posting. I start to think that maybe one of these experimental/only available wherever the heck you live foods caused some significant health issue that is keeping you from your blogging responsibilities. Or maybe you just have other stuff to do.

ZestyCook – So I finally started reading this one so I have more to talk about than his beautiful bald head, but then I got sidetracked. I saw that you made a chocolate cake and used a Skor Bar as a topping. They still make Skor bars? I thought those went the way of the Rollerblade. Maybe they just started selling them in Canada and stopped U.S. distribution. Which reminds me – do they still sell Clearly Canadian in Canada? Because that stuff kicked ass. So if you can get your hands on some Clearly Canadian, you can send it my way. It would go really well with VeggieGirl’s blondies (which should totally be here by now).

The Fitnessista got a shout-out in one of her favorite (and my favorite) magazines this week – Glamour. My favorite part of Glamour (and Cosmo) is taking their little quizzes. It always comes back with results like “you really need to work on pleasing your man” or “you are a strong independent woman.” I’m starting to think that maybe those quizzes aren’t designed for men who are just killing time at the grocery store checkout. Anyway, Fitnessista’s Glamour quote had something to do with healthy living and loving your body. I didn’t really read it. But I did see that she said something about doing Zumba. Kate and I tried doing Zumba once in South Beach with my Uncle Joe and Aunt Rolando. It was not pretty. My uncles were Zumba professionals and we were not.  I think Kate and I were both two entire songs behind the rest of the class. I also like Fitnessista because Kate can’t even come close to pronouncing her blog’s name correctly. So I like to ask Kate what she’s looking at (while I know she’s looking at Fitnessista) just to hear the pronunciation.  Kate’s version includes about 12 S’s and 6 I’s.

Matt at Brew and Bake just posted his 7th step in his how to home brew series. 7 steps and we can’t even drink the beer yet! I’ve decided that if anything takes more than three steps to explain, I’m probably just going to buy it instead. Or, I’ll just hang out in Matt’s garage when he gets to the ‘bottling’ step. And when he goes in to type out his blog post, I’ll just take the beer. Probably shouldn’t have written that plan down – there goes the element of surprise.

Stock Up/Stock Down – With Commentary. Sometimes.

Stock Up

Green Smoothies – Yeah, somebody thought it was a good idea to put spinach or kale in a smoothie. I’m sure it’s pretty healthy. It’s been a great weight loss tool for me. No, I haven’t tried one of these, but Kate has jumped on the bandwagon, and every time I see the post-Green Smoothie Blender in my kitchen I start to throw up in my mouth and skip my next meal. Thanks ladies!

Kombucha – So it costs like $3.50 and tastes like garbage water…what’s not to love? Oh, and it’s the only drink I’ve found that still doesn’t taste good, even after you mix it with alcohol.

April Fools Jokes – Seriously… saying you ate something fried or had fast food is not enough. Ladies, this is your one day out of the year when you can lie and nobody can get mad at you. Go out on more of a limb. Next year I’m expecting a food blogger to say they were coked out with Lindsay Lohan or huffed gasoline for breakfast with an Olson twin. 

Breakfast Cookies - I stopped getting excited when I found it they weren’t talking about Oreos

Stock Down

Pistachio Nuts - This latest recall hit the food blogging community very hard. We’re going to pull through this. I promise.

Exercise-related injuries - Everyone seems to be magically healed now.

30 Day Shred – Level II - That was so last week.

Using the terms ’sammie’ and ‘brekkie’ - Specifically for sandwich and breakfast. Actually stock is way up on these two. I just really want it to stop. So I thought maybe putting them in the stock down category would lead to their demise - at least on this side of the Atlantic.

That’s all for this week. I should be back next Friday. Give me a couple weeks and this food blog roundup will have its own blog. It’ll probably have a weekly long post and then some shorter stuff on a daily basis. The new design will be fun, flirty, and feminine with a spunky edge. Not really. I actually just stole that from a food blog.  A free VeggieGirl blondie to the first person who can tell me where I stole that last line. I’m lying about the blondie too, but curious if anyone can name that blog. 

Alright, time to go.  See y’all next week.

Note: The following was originally posted on http://yourselfinfiveyears.blogspot.com/

Hello, and welcome to the first (and potentially last) edition of the YIFY Food Blog Roundup. This could probably go in a couple of directions from here. Either it could become wildly popular and create it’s own spin-off blog, or I could offend a bunch of people that I don’t even know, feel guilty about it, and then go back to blogging about my dog or hard alcohol. Only time will tell. A few of the ground rules:

1. Blogs were selected at random. And by random I mean I’m commenting on the handful that I read regularly, or those that seem to be popular because they get frequent shout-outs in the blogs that I read.

2. If you have your own food blog that you want to be included, or, if there’s one that you read and you want me to comment on it, just leave it as a comment. No promises here - remember that this might be the last edition.

3. I’m not trying to be an ass. Really. This is about as edited/filtered as I get. Sorry if it is still in some way offensive. This is the first post where Kate actually has editorial control. Mostly because she’s the nicest person that I know.

4. If I write something about you and you don’t like it, you can email me and I’ll edit the post, print a retraction, or apologize profusely - your pick. But if you don’t think it’s too painful, I’d say just laugh it off. There may be some symbiosis here eventually. If we hit the big time, then maybe we can help drive traffic your way.

Alright, now that we’ve got that our of the way, here’s your roundup

Blog: Kath Eats Real Food
Blogger: Kath

Kath returned from Africa last week and got back to her normal blogging schedule. I’m not going to lie…life was a little more difficult when Kath was in Africa. Posts were inconsistent. Matt did his best to fill the Kath shaped hole that was left in blogworld, but it was hard on all of us. And when Kath did post, there were comment battles popping up everywhere. It was very difficult.

But now Kath is back and all is right in blogworld. She had a bunch of contests in the past week. I think it might be related to her trip to Africa. I have a feeling that next week she’s going to announce that she’s actually a Nigerian princess, and if you make a small deposit (of barney butter) into her account, then she can access all of the riches of her motherland and shower you with gold and ivory and probably some oatmeal. Be on the lookout for that, as I think it might be a scam.

Speaking of oatmeal, Kath and Oatmeal were fighting earlier this week. And by fighting, I mean that she chose other breakfast treats for a few days. It was difficult to watch. I felt like I was sitting in the back of the minivan and plugging my ears and saying la la la to myself to drown out the noise of Mom (Kath) and Dad (Oatmeal) fighting. I was worried that I would have to pick sides if they split up for good. I mean, we really like hanging out with Kath and Matt, but Oatmeal and I have such history together. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. Kath and her oats are reunited once again. 

Did I really just write an entire paragraph about someone else’s relationship with oatmeal?

[Leaving the United States. Driving North. Going through Customs. Welcome to Canada] 

Blog: Oh She Glows
Blogger: Angela

OSG just launched a “Bikini Body Bootcamp” contest. Basically she’s having her readers send in some ‘before’ pictures in bikinis (along with their measurements) and then they’ll have a winner at the end of the thing. I’m trying to figure out how I can show my support. Which of these would be the least creepy?

1. I could take my picture wearing a women’s bikini

2. I could go with imitation being the most sincere form of flattery, and also ask my blog readers to send in bikini pictures

3. I could send in my picture wearing a speedo and an “I Glo” baby tee

I think all of the above are pretty creepy, so maybe I’ll just send in a celebrity bathing suit picture and say its me. I’d probably go with the famous Tyra Banks or Jennifer Love Hewitt pictures or something like that. 

But best of luck to OSG and the rest of the contestants. I know that bikini season is only about three days long in Canada, so hopefully they’ve got the scheduling figured out.

Blog: Zestycook
Blogger: Hmm, Zesty, I guess. Mind if I call you that? Perhaps Zest for short…

I have to admit that I don’t really read this blog. I’m going to start, I just haven’t gotten around to it. But it seems popular and fancy enough so I thought I’d write about it. Also, Zesty is successful in a female-dominated space, and I applaud that. I compare it to my success on the Taylor Swift Karaoke circuit, where it’s usually just me and a bunch of women. But since I don’t read his blog (yet) this is probably going to be a fairly superficial roundup.

I love Zesty’s beautiful bald head - and I don’t care who knows it. Have y’all seen his head? It can be seen in all its glory on the “About Zesty” page. It looks so damn smooth. It’s probably good that we haven’t met yet. I’m 97% sure that I’d start the conversation with “is it cool if I feel your head?” I used to think to myself that I’d much rather have gray hair than go bald, but a couple of things have changed my mind on that topic:

1. I started getting gray hair. And it seems to be coming in on the sides faster than the top. That was not part of the plan. I was hoping for George Clooney, but I’m worried it’s going to be more like Grandpa Munster.

2. I saw Zesty’s glorious bald head, and thought, yeah, that’s definitely better than the Grandpa Munster look that I’m working on right now. 

I promise I’ll stop talking about Zesty’s head soon, but one more thing on that topic. When I was 14 and had to go to the dermatologist, there was a picture hanging on the wall. It was a side by side comparison of a 50-something plains Indian woman, and a 90-something Tibetan monk. The plains Indian woman spent all of her time in the sun so her face looked like an old catcher’s mitt. The Tibetan monk spent all of his time protected from the sun and his bald head looked flawless. For the last 14 years I have been looking for a bald head as flawless as the monk head, and now we have found it…This concludes the somewhat-creepy section of this post where I describe another man’s head.

I promise I’ll actually read the blog next week so I can actually talk about it instead of Zesty’s head. 

[Leaving Canada. Stopping briefly at Duty Free to buy some booze. Next stop = Florida]

Blog: The Inner Workings of a College Graduate
Blogger: Meghann

It’s been a very exciting week for Graduate Meghann readers. At long last, Meghann addressed her relationship status. For those of you who haven’t been following along (shame on you), Meghann has been spotted out with this guy named Derek, since the Valentine’s day time frame, but he has not yet received a title on the blog. So every time Derek and Meghann do something, there are usually a handful of comments saying something like “are you and Derek dating” or “is Derek your boyfriend.” 

Well, Meghann finally cleared this up for us. Sort of. In a recent post, Meghann stated:

“Truth is Derek and I discussed it this weekend and we both honestly do not know what to label each other. We both know that we enjoy each other’s company and that we are just seeing how things move from here. There is no rush to produce labels, so one day at a time people! LOL”

Well, that might be good enough for you two, but those of us in blogworld need a label. It doesn’t even have to be an accurate label, as long as it is used consistently. So if you don’t want to go with ‘Boyfriend’ or ‘Dating’, that’s fine, but give us something. You can call him the Easter Bunny or the Pope or whatever you want - just give the guy/relationship a title. It can be like a game of blog Mad Libs.

In other Graduate Meghann news, Meghann and her Easter Bunny, Derek went rollerblading this week. Wait, what? How did they do that? Did they get into a DeLorian with Michael J. Fox, get it up to 88 miles an hour and set the flux capacitor for 1996? I can’t remember the last time I saw rollerblades, but I’m pretty sure Clinton was in office. I’m not really sure why Rollerblades disappeared. It wasn’t like a better technology came along like with the Zach Morris cell phone or the Betamax or laser disc player. People just stopped using them. But maybe Meghann and her Easter Bunny are bringing them back, and I support that. BTW, spellcheck doesn’t even recognize ‘rollerblades’ as a word anymore.

Blog: Eat, Live, Run
Blogger: Jenna

Alright, this will be a short one…mostly because this post is already too long. I don’t know what happened here. I went out of town last week and Jenna was like the queen of yoga and every post had something to do with yoga. Then I came back and now every post talks about swimming. What the hell did I miss? It’s like someone did a big ’search and replace’ on the entire blog and took out Yoga and replaced it with Swimming. I’ll get over it, but I feel like it was all really abrupt. It’s a good thing that this isn’t a ‘Single White Female’ scenario, otherwise I would’ve already invested in my own yoga mat and personal Yogi, only to have to switch it up and buy goggles now.

In other ELR news, Jenna and her BF were at the beach, and apparently Jenna’s BF is friends with Albert Haynesworth and other professional football players. Now I don’t doubt that it’s true, but it would be an amazingly funny inside joke if it wasn’t. Like he could just give her another random celebrity every week and she would have to weave that person into the blog. Almost like a Barbara Walters-style namedropping (I was horseback riding with the King of Jordan just last week…I was in a hot tub with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck). Also, I’d really like to see a photo of Jenna with Albert Haynesworth. And yes, he’s the one stomping on the other dude’s head. If I was decent with photoshop, I’d make that happen…instead you’ll all just have to imagine it in your mind.

Blogging Trends or Stock up/Stock Down (not sure what to call it yet)

Stock Up
Barney Butter
Tempeh
Commenting with ALL CAPS and plenty of !!!!
Fake signatures at the end of posts
30 Day Shred Level II

Stock Down
Yoga
Protein Powder
Labels for boyfriends
Black tar heroin
30 Day Shred Level I

Stay tuned for next week (or next time that I get around to this) when I’ll review Brew and Bake, Healthy Tipping Point, Bites and Bowls, and whatever other blogs y’all tell me to write about.

That’s all. Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think.