The BlogStalker

Hi Friends. Thanks for coming back to my blog. So I know I kind of promised that I’d do two posts this week, but that’s not going to happen this week. I thought all good television was over with for the year, and then I get sucked into a Deadliest Catch Marathon AND the Scripps Spelling Bee. Oh, and I’ve been busy with work too. Sorry if this late Thursday night/early Friday morning post (check local listings) throws off your Google Reader routine, but I’m traveling tomorrow and this will probably be my only posting opportunity. And if you think it sucks for you…I have to miss Taylor Swift’s performance on the Today Show. Doesn’t work know that I’ve been looking forward to this ever since Matt and Meredith announced their summer concert schedule?. 

Thanks for all of the positive feedback on last week’s ideas. If any of you guys decide to move forward with development of my hamster transportation system, or if you create your own cool tub, please send me pictures. Since y’all liked those ideas, I guess I can just use this blog to share all of my awesome ideas. I’ve shared these on my other blog, but since only seven people read that blog when I wrote that post (and I think I’m related to 6 of them) I’ll repeat myself. Here are my inventions…feel free to steal them. I promise I’ll get to the blog review after this.

Electrocuting Baby Doll - Probably need to work on the name, but it’s basically a little kid’s doll that shocks the hell out of a dog if the dog touches it. Not just for shits and giggles (unless you’re really mean) but as a training aid for the family pet when the mom and dad are expecting a human baby. Ya know, so the dog doesn’t eat the human baby. Because that would be bad.

Screw Off Chicken Bucket - All of you healthy people probably aren’t my target demographic for this one, but I think the bottom of the KFC bucket should screw off and contain silverware and napkins. Then you can use your other hand to carry your side dishes.

Vibrating Remote Control - When I’m switching between two channels, I want to know when my primary channel comes back from commercial. A vibrating remote would alert me when it’s time for me to change back so I don’t miss my Housewives.

Please invent one of these products. Oh, I’ve also got a pretty badass idea that would revolutionize banana distribution, but it’s too long to summarize here, so you can just read about it in the Editor’s tangent on this post. Now for our weekly blog recap.

Hangry Pants wrote a nice post about how she met Mr. Hangry earlier this week. I don’t know why, but I love this kind of stuff. Especially when there are pictures from the ‘before they were bloggers’ era. It’s sort of like the E! or VH1 shows with big time celebrities back when they were doing commercials or music videos. This would be an excellent time for me to include an old school picture of Kate and I from when we met, but my digital camera in 2002 actually held a 3.5 inch diskette, and my 2009 laptop doesn’t have a disk drive. Yeah, we’re an old married couple. Oh, and if you recall, Mr. and Ms. Hangry sent me chocolate muffins and liquid crack last week, which means they get to hold the #1 slot on the blog round-up until I get more free stuff. Yes, I like free stuff that much. Hmm…not sure if that’s an honor or not.

Caitlin Pancake wrote an entire post about the upcoming Twilight sequel. I think this tops her birthday post from a couple of months ago when she said she wanted the Twilight action figure as a gift. So her new name is Caitlin Twilight Pancake. I know she’s not alone in her obsession. There were like 65 comments on that post, and most of them were about how dreamy the man vampire is. And Kate’s step sister once said that she wanted to marry a vampire (because of the movie). Don’t get me wrong, he’s dreamy for sure, but I still don’t get it. In other news, Twilight has been added to my list of stuff that I don’t understand. It fits somewhere between Radiohead and fax machines on this list.

Angela at Oh She Glows wins the best post title of the week award with this alliterative post. It was a nice post with a positive ‘feel good about yourself’ message, but one thing keeps bothering me. The Green Monster keeps showing up in different glassware on OSG! I think I’ve seen a green drink in a Champagne Flute, Wine Glass, Rocks Glass, and maybe a couple more. I think this just leaves shot glass, camelback,  and beer helmet as the only drinking vessels that haven’t had the pleasure of being filled with blended green things. I’m sure there’s something psychological about drinking out of a fancy glass and making it more fun to drink the Green Monster, but I’m just not buying it. Seeing a green monster in a wine glass just makes me not want to drink wine. Everyone says they are great, and I’m sure Kate will somehow feed one to me when I’m not paying attention (because that’s how she rolls) but I think the Monster would be better in a dark glass. But then Angela totally redeemed herself with more fancy spelling…which is the best (or should I say my favourite) part of OSG. It makes me feel classy when I read the fancy spelling. Her spelling is much more regal than the backcountry gibberish that I use here.

I have been wanting to write about Polly at Yoga is Yummy for several weeks now. Polly is a fan of this blog and I enjoy reading her blog, so it makes sense for me to write about her, right? To date, Kate has always vetoed me with something like “Polly is the nicest person we know and you’ll say something mean or smartass and you won’t think it’s mean but you can’t say something mean or smartass, okay”. So this naturally scares me out of writing about Polly. Oh, and when Kate says that Polly is the nicest person we know, we are basing that entirely on her blog and comments she posts on other blogs, but I think it’s pretty accurate. Most bloggers average about one frustration post per week, where they use the blog as an opportunity to vent or something, and that’s fine. I can’t really swing that, since I only post once a week, but whatever. Anyway, all of Polly’s posts are super upbeat and nice, which is probably why Polly is now ranked above me on Kate’s ‘nice people’ list. So all I’m going to say is that I too am a Taylor Swift fan, and I think that the poster in this post is pretty sweet. Kate probably wouldn’t let me hang a poster in our bedroom, but she is going to allow me to sing some ‘Picture to Burn’ when we do Karaoke at the dive bar next weekend. Stay tuned for pictures from that.

Stock Up

Adora Calcium Discs - These things probably should’ve been stock up last week, but I was kind of hoping that I’d somehow get some in the mail, and I’d feel bad if I wrote something smartass about them. Turns out I didn’t get any, so opportunity lost. But I did steal one from Kath’s house the other day. I give them a C+ if you treat them as candy, and a A- if you consider it to be some kind of vitamin. 

Twitter Usage - The entire food blog world is now on Twitter. I have no idea what the hell I’m doing on Twitter. I’m waiting for The Video Professor to come out with a Twitter training CD because I feel like an 80 year old man on there. I don’t understand the jargon or protocol, but if you want to follow me, I think you can do that by going here.

Chocolate - Chocolate is showing up in breakfast, lunch and dinner posts this week. It’s actually kicking the pants off of Peanut Butter in their ’sweet but kind of healthy’ death match. I expect a strong response from Peanut Butter (and the rest of the nut butter family). I even saw some Chocolate Peanut Butter. I don’t know if I should count that in the Peanut Butter column or the Chocolate column. I’ll call it a draw.

Guest Posting - Following in Caitlin Pancake’s footsteps, Kath has single handedly moved guest posting into the stock up category. FFS, I hit refresh and I’ve got like six new guest posts to read. I feel like Laverne (or Lucy) working the assembly line. Slow it down! And no, I’m not that old, but I watched some Nick at Night.

Stock Down

Milk from Cows - Someone should probably notify all of the Kindergarten teachers out there, as this will have a significant impact on their curriculum. Sorry teachers, but you’re going to have to work on lesson plans this summer to explain that milk comes from the Soy or the Coconut, but not the cow. Good luck with that.

Using an Oven - Everything is either grilled or raw

Swimming (the exercise kind, not the floating kind) - The legs of the triathlon have their ups and downs. Running and Biking are back up again, but swimming is back down. Floating and/or laying on the beach is still pretty popular, so we’re just talking about lap swimming here.

Alright, that’s all I’ve got for this week. I’ll try to post twice next week. Not sure if I can fit it in with a new episode of Jersey Housewives and everything else I’ve gotta do. We’ll try to do better next time.

Hi Friends. Thanks for coming back and spending some of your holiday weekend with me. I hope you enjoy the long weekend. I think we’re going to buy a mattress. That’s what the loud guys on the television commercials are telling me to do. Kate is settling in with her new blog reading machine. Thanks to everyone who suggested various bookmark storage methods (as well as Google Reader). probably not gonna happen, but thanks anyways.

We were kind of bored last weekend. When we’re bored and have lots of time on our hands, we usually come up with ideas that may or may not be good. Like in college when I wanted to buy two aquariums, hang them on opposite sides of the room and connect them with some clear tubing. Then we were going to buy a hamster. The brilliance comes in with the food and water distribution. I wanted to put the food in one aquarium and the water in the other aquarium. That way the hamster would be forced to walk back and forth through the tubing to entertain me. To this day I consider this to be the best idea that I’ve ever come up with, but unfortunately it never got past the diagram on napkin stage.

I bring this idea up because Kate had a similar idea this weekend. The previous owners of our house installed a massive hot tub on our deck. I’m not quite sure why they did this, but based on the popcorn ceilings and mountains of brass throughout the house (that have since been removed), I assume they never moved out of the 1980s. So for the past 11 months, we’ve been trying to figure out what to do with this damn hot tub. It would cost too much (and leave a massive hole in our deck) if we got it removed, but we really don’t see ourselves taking outdoor baths with our friends anytime soon. So Kate decided that we would turn it into a cool tub or mini pool (still working on the name). I didn’t think she was serious, but then she came home with his and hers inflatable rafts. Our weekend was spent draining, cleaning, and refilling the cool tub/mini pool. I wasn’t buying into this idea when her pitch was “you can just lay around and read magazines,” so then she changed it up and said “you can lay around and drink beer.” That’s all it took to get me to buy in. Here’s the cool tub in action:

Snap, I’m like 400 words into this post and I haven’t started talking about blogs yet. I better get going.

The Gilded Clam is packing up her apartment and getting ready to move. If she is as good at packing as she is at arranging fruits and vegetables on a plate, then moving should be a breeze. I swear she eats more fruits and vegetables than anyone I know. And by ‘know’ I mean people who have blogs that I stalk. Her fruits and veggies are always so neatly arranged on her plate too. Reading her blog always makes me feel guilty about my lack of fruit and veggie consumption, and motivates me to go buy produce. After reading this post, I went to the grocery store and bought an orange. But instead of just eating the orange, I went to the beer aisle and bought a 12 pack of Blue Moon to compliment the orange. The beer is almost gone, but the orange is still in the fruit bowl. I blame you, Clam. Oh, and I know the blog name is Gliding Calm, not Gilded Clam, but Gilded Clam is more fun to say, so I’m going to stick with that. 

Kath’s house is apparently turning into a wildlife preserve. In the past week or so, we’ve seen the love ducks, Winston the Garden Snake (there is only one Gilbert in Charlotte blogland, and he’s my dog), a family of squirrel babies in her garage, and a roach on the ceiling. This is getting out of control. I think word has traveled through the animal kingdom that you have a compost pile filled with Matt’s beer ingredients and that food companies send you lots of free stuff. I’m going over to Kath’s house for dinner tonight, and I’m thinking about dressing up as Brian Fellows and staying in character for the entire evening. Oh that is one fuzzy bug!

Speaking of animal sightings, Kelsey took an amazing shot of a moose knuckle in this post. I would love to provide more detail on this post, including the meaning of moose knuckle, but this is a family show. You can look it up on Urban Dictionary, or just look at the pictures on the post and you can probably figure it out. I’ve sat here for about five minutes trying to come up with a family friendly way to describe this post, but I’ve got nothin. You’re just going to have to check it out for yourself. I’m just glad I wasn’t wearing 3D glasses while reading this post, because it might have poked my eye out. 

The beautifully bald ZestyCook is holding a pimp my blog contest here. I would prefer if he held a scalp giveaway contest so I could have his beautiful bald head (instead of my white man afro that the humidity is taking from Will Ferrell to Bob Ross style), but his idea is good too. It’s such a good idea that I almost didn’t tell you guys about it. Not that I need a blog makeover (this blog is a hot mess - thanks to Pinky’s husband) but 10 hours of Zesty magic seems like a good idea. If I win, I’d like him to focus primarily on figuring out how I can make money on this thing, or optimize my blog for free shiz. The UPS man drives by every day and never stops, and that needs to change. For those of you that don’t know, Zesty provides about 96% of the tech support for the food blogging world. When anyone has a design or formatting issue, they just contact their Canadian blog guru. It’s like he’s some kind of one man Mountie Geek Squad. 

Stock Up

Extreme Close-ups of fingers and toes - These are taken both pre-mani/pedi and post-mani/pedi. I have a recommendation on this one. Just include a link to a picture of your fingers and/or toes. Then blog readers can make a personal decision as to whether or not they want to see your fingers and toes. Just a suggestion. 

Tofu - Tofu posts are outnumbering Tempeh posts 2-1 this week. I expect Tempeh to make a strong comeback next week. These two are going point/counterpoint like Obama and Cheney these days.

Pancakes - Caitlin is really the only blogger that is rocking the fried cake and syrup, but since she eats them every friggin day, she has single handedly brought them into the stock up category. We’re currently calling her Caitlin Pancake, but might change that to Pancake Tipping Point or Healthy Tipping Pancake. 

Tattoos - Lots of blogger ink out there

Stock Down

Staying at home - I never realized that bloggers were such road warriors. Lots of blogger travel in the past week, and I don’t like it. I like consistency in my food blogs. I’m probably just mad because all of my blogger friends are traveling too much which means I can’t hang out with them. I’ll stop whining now. 

Danielle and Gucci Model’s Phone ‘Relationship - This one is for all the Real Housewives of New Jersey fans out there. That lady is a piece of work. In other RHNJ news, I’m a big fan of Albie. 

Smoothies - Juicing and Green Monsters are still going strong, but overall blender usage is down 28% from last week. Perhaps it’s related to the recent cold streak that hit the east coast. Or maybe I’m just thinking too much about this.

That’s all for this week. I’m going to try to do two posts next week. One for the blogs that I usually stalk, and then one where I talk about blogs that I haven’t talked about before. Should be able to swing it, since most of my TV shows are now in re-runs. We’ll see how that goes, and I’ll try to do better next week.

Update: Alright…I have to update this post. Big news here…I got my first free shiz delivered in the mail today!!! Hangry Heather sent me some throw back Mountain Dew, throwback Pepsi, and some delicious baked goods. I heart Hangry Heather. I feel like I’ve made the big time now. I’d take a picture, but I’m sort of busy eating some Hangry Muffins.

Alright. Now I swear I’m done. Thanks again, Heather!

Well hello there. Sorry if I disrupted your Google Reader schedules. I know, strange for me to be posting on a Tuesday. Or really any day other than Friday. It’ll be a short one, I promise. Just wanted to let y’all know that Janet at Pretty Green Girl is giving away some free shiz that you guys might be interested in. Apparently the wine ice cubes aren’t taking up all the room in her freezer, as she’s been eating/blogging about WholeSoy & Co with their soy yogurt and soy frozen yogurt (or fro yo as the kids call it). They hooked her up with some free shiz and she wants to give it away to all of you out there in blogland. Just go to this post and read the rules and regs for the contest. She says it’s good, and I don’t have any reason to think Janet is a liar, so go enter.

Oh, you’re still here? Well then, while I’ve got you here, I’ll just go on a couple of random tangents.  ”WholeSoy & Co” seems like an odd name for a company. It makes it look like WholeSoy is a person. I guess it would make sense, if the founder’s name is something like Winston WholeSoy. Maybe it is. I’ll do some research on their website.  

Also, Pretty Green Janet got her free shiz from someone named Yesica. My first thought was that Janet’s ‘J’ key was busted. I mean, it is on home row and since her name is Janet, it could happen. But then I read through her post and saw the word ‘just,’ so I’ve gotta go to my backup theory. Backup theory is that the lady’s name really is Yesica and that her parents were fans of the 70s progressive English rock band, Yes. Maybe they were going to name her Yes if she was a boy, but decided to go with Yesica when she was a girl. This is just a working theory, but there is a precedent. One of the Road Rules: Semester at Sea cast members was named Yes after the band, so I can see how Yesica could happen. In other news, I’m pretty sure that was the last decent season of Road Rules. 

Alright. That’s all I’ve got. Now go enter Janet’s contest, and I’ll see you kids on Friday.

Hi Friends. Everything is right in the world again. We have replaced Kate’s blog reading machine. It was a difficult process. Kate had very high standards when making this purchase:

1. Laptop must be small/cute - but not tiny
2. Laptop must be light - who knew that there was such a large difference between a laptop that weighs 4.6 pounds as opposed to 4.7 pounds? Kate did, that’s who.
3. Laptop must have good battery life - there is no shortage of electrical outlets in our house, but Kate is not a big fan of plugging in her power cord - it takes away from valuable blog reading time.

The Geek Squad guy was waxing poetic about some computer - talking about how it would meet all of our HD Video needs. I tried to tell him that the only video work that we’ll be doing on the computer is watching VeggieGirl TV, but I don’t think he knew what  I was talking about. So here’s what we went with:

So far Kate’s pretty happy with it. Kate’s only regret is that she doesn’t have a hard copy of her 100 or so food blog bookmarks that she had on blogreading machine 1.0. In fact, she actually had to ask me for the link to my other blog. I was a little upset about her not having that one memorized, but at least she wanted to read it, right? Alright…enough about the computer. Let’s get going with the blog review.

Post-Graduate Meghann is in San Antonio for work. You can read about her adventures in this post. It was a nice post, and she should receive some sort of compensation from the San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bureau. There was one line in the post that I have to take issue with:

“A bowl of fresh fruit starring me in the face is my true weakness.”

What? Fresh fruit? Fresh Fruit cannot be a weakness. Chocolate can be a weakness. Kryptonite can be a weakness. Black Tar Heroin can be a weakness. According to Barry White and MC Hammer, Your (Yo) Sweetness, can also be my weakness. Fresh fruit is just stuff that you’re supposed to eat.

Post-Graduate Meghann also did an extensive post on sports bras. I thought about writing about it, but figured that there’s really no way for a guy to comment on that post without sounding like a giant perv, so I won’t. But if you are in the market for a sports bra, and want to shop by brand, fabric, size, color, or store, then this is probably a helpful post. Doh, I said I wasn’t going to write about this one and now look at me. Okay, I’ll stop now.

Hangry Pants and Mr. Hangy Pants took a break from developing obscure nut butters and went shopping at the Super Caloric Magical Store in this post. I have mentioned in previous posts that Emily from Super Caloric Chalk Dust somehow finds every random ass test product ever developed. This happens so frequently that it has now become a commonly used term in our household. If we find random ass products at the grocery store, we call it super caloric. Unfortunately, we don’t have magical bodegas down here with rare (and potentially not FDA approved) products. Charlotte’s idea of a new product is a commemorative 18 pack of Miller Lite with pictures of NASCAR tracks on the cans. I don’t think that counts. Anyway, the Hangrys found Throwback Mountain Dew, which absolutely qualifies as super caloric (in a couple of ways). I believe I have mentioned that I am a strong supporter of Diet Mountain Dew. I have continued my support, even though Kate now refuses to buy it for me (and calls it Garbage Water), and I’m not even into jumping out of airplanes on a snowboard or base jumping. Based on their commercials, this must be the target market for their product. So yeah, I’m pretty jealous of the Hangrys for this find. Hopefully it’ll make it down to Charlotte in a few more months, although it’ll likely have a NASCAR track on the label or be in the shape of a tire or something like that.

Kelsey at Bites and Bowls made an exciting announcement this week. She selected a new yoga studio in this post. I assume that having a blogger choose and blog about a yoga studio is sort of like having a celebrity endorsement for a political candidate. Kelsey clearly made an informed decision, laying out the pros and cons of each of the candidates. You know…all of the important stuff like cleanliness of the studio, as well as the music that the studio plays. Now I think Kelsey should’ve gone with the studio that was playing Hootie and Britney, but I’m not really a yoga expert. My one formal yoga experience was very similar to my one Zumba experience. I think I’m the first person to ever get yelled at during a yoga session. I do sometimes lay in bed for a few minutes before waking up. I guess I could just come up with names for each of my still-kind-of-asleep positions and then I could call it yoga. Then I wouldn’t feel like such a lazy ass when I wake up at 7:59 and walk downstairs for work. No honey, I wasn’t sleeping, I was perfecting my “Tired man lower case t” pose in the yoga studio (bed) upstairs. I love it. Kelsey also wrote a nice post that involved volume drinking (always a fan favorite) but the font size and color changes got to me before I could finish reading it, and I moved to another blog before the chest pains got too bad. 

The latest blog that I’ve been stalking is Homegirl Can Eat. That’s just fun to say/write. Now I’ve been fairly critical of some of the abbreviations that have been showing up in blogland recently (see previous thoughts on sammie, brekkie, and grapie). Homegirl has taken a new approach. Instead of falling into the baby talk trap that has caught so many good bloggers, she has basically developed her own language. I’m actually a fan of this approach. It sort of reads like some kind of twin talk or Jodie Foster’s dialogue in Nell. Fortunately for me and the rest of Homegirl’s readers over the age of 21, she has developed this dictionary to explain what the hell she is talking about. Unfortunately it took me a few visits to this blog before I found the dictionary, which made my first few trips feel like a day of Telemundo watching…very enjoyable for sure, but I clearly felt like an outsider. If only MTV would offer a dictionary, then I could get back to watching The Real World without feeling like such an old man.

Stock Up

Mexican Food - I thought it was just a Cinco de Mayo thing, but we’re going on two weeks now

Descriptive Yoga Posts - Yoga is already in the stock up hall of fame, but now I’ve seen quite a few descriptive posts where people talk about different poses and I just sort of lose interest mid sentence. It’s kind of like when people start describing their dreams. If it doesn’t involve me, then I lose interest very quickly. 

Grey’s Anatomy - Not the show so much, but posts about the show. If you are looking to fill the McDreamy-sized hole in your TV viewing, I recommend The Real Housewives of New Jersey. The shows have nothing in common, but I want more people to watch the housewives so I can discuss them in this blog.

Questions or Quotes at the end of posts - Now I’m a fan of these, but keep in mind that doing this increases your comment volume, which will make some people (Kate) think your blog is super popular. I guess that’s probably a good thing.

Strikethrough Correction - Often used in context of: what I really want to say more eloquent or politically correct way to say what I really mean to say. This technique is reaching Twilight levels of popularity in blogland.

Stock Down

Red Wine - I’m trying to keep it from disappearing entirely for the summer, but I’m just one man.

Trader Joe’s Sushi - Not because it isn’t on blogs anymore, but because I didn’t realize until I got home that they think Jalapenos belong in a tuna roll. This was very upsetting. I know it isn’t really in the spirit of this blog to talk about my own food experiences, but I consider this one a public service announcement for anyone who doesn’t want to find a jalapeno in their sushi. Which should be everyone in the world.

Sliced Bread - Everything in blogland is now in wrap form. There are also paninis and bagels, but no regular old slices of bread. Do we need to change that expression about it being “the greatest thing” now?

Alright. That’s all I’ve got. We’ll try to do better next time.

Hi Friends. Thanks for coming back. Sorry that I haven’t posted since last Friday. I actually haven’t been doing much blogstalking this week, so I’m not sure how this is going to go this week. But I do have a few valid reasons for my decreased blogging/blogstalking:

1. I was traveling for work all week. I still haven’t figured out how to make blogstalking a billable expense. 

2. When I did have free time on the interweb, I spent most of it watching this video. I don’t know why, but I can’t stop watching it. 

3. Due to an unfortunate incident, Kate’s laptop is no longer with us. Not only does it have an earthquake fault line running from the top of the monitor to the bottom, but it also has contracted the blue screen of death. So Kate’s blogstalking has decreased 100%.

Sorry about the poor picture quality. The late laptop is the one that has our photo software on it, so this picture is brought to you by my iPhone. Awesome.

They just don’t make ‘em like they used to. HP/Apple/Dell…if you’re listening…we’re a laptop down over here. Hint hint.

Alright. Enough with the excuses. Here’s what I’ve got from my limited blogstalking…

Caitlin Tipping Point is detoxing after a college-style weekend spent at the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival. You can find her ‘blogger gone wild’ post here. This was probably one of my favorite posts of the week. Kate and I had a discussion a couple weeks ago about what our blogs would look like if we had been food bloggers in college. Of course we didn’t have food blogs in college, because we’re old and the interweb didn’t exist back then. But we’re amazed at how healthy all of the college food bloggers are these days. My college food blog would look a whole lot like Caitlin’s Apple Blossom post. Dinner would be a large pizza and a twelve pack (insert pictures of sweet, sweet college). Late night snack would be Southern Comfort and one of my roommate’s pet goldfish (insert slightly blurry pictures). Breakfast would be served around noon and would be a 64 ounce orange Gatorade, a couple of Advil, and leftover pizza crust from the night before (insert picture of the pizza box in the garbage can, and me rescuing the discarded crust). Oh, the memories.

Kath has spent the last few days freaking out about a snake that she found in her garage. Now, I’ve got no problem with her freaking out about a snake. I’m not a fan of snakes. My beef is with the snake’s name. Those of you who have wandered off of the home page may have noticed that our dog son’s name is Gilbert. Then Kath goes and names her garage snake Gilbert too. This is not cool at all. There is only room for one Gilbert in Charlotte blogland, and he is covered in fur. I expressed my concern to Kath and she said she’d stop talking about Gilbert the snake if I came over and removed it from their garage. I actually considered it for a good 30 seconds, but then I thought that even if I got rid of the snake, there would probably be a KERF post about me removing the snake and it would be Gilbert this and Gilbert that all over again. I just can’t win. Doesn’t the snake have a middle name or something that we can call him instead? Maybe I’ll start a petition to get his name changed. Nah, I’ll just read some more blogs instead.

Heather at Heat the Salmon Butt made some purple cauliflower in this post. I did not know that things existed in nature in that color. I was giving Crayola all the credit for bright ass purple (it can only be found in the big box of crayons). Good to know. I doubt I’d like the cauliflower, but I do appreciate the color. I like foods where I can correctly identify the color. I’m not very good with colors. Another way to say that would be to say that I’m sort of color blind, but that makes it sound like it’s a big deal, so I prefer to say that I’m not good with colors. Most people don’t know that about me until I completely mess up the color of something and they look at me like I’m stupid. I’ll usually say something like, pass me the green peppers. They’ll look at me, and then pass me the peppers which are most likely red. I can usually just blame it on the wine. But with this cauliflower, I am 100% sure of the color, so maybe I should give it a try. Who am I kidding…I’m not going to eat cauliflower. 

It was an exciting week for Jenn at Eating Bender. Not only did she finish 90 days of P90X, but she also got engaged to Bobby. You can read all about it (and be the eleventy billionth person to comment) here. It was a pretty solid proposal story. I’m not really picky when it comes to proposal stories. All I really want is:

1. A creative way of proposing
2. No mention of ‘heart’ and ’skipping a beat’ in the description

Jenn and Bobby succeeded on both fronts. He proposed on the golf course. I was going to comment on the post, but thought better of it. Everyone was saying things like “oh, that’s so romantic” and “that ring is beautiful.” My comment was going to be something like “what courses do you recommend in Chicago? And congrats on qualifying for state your sophomore year of high school.” I decided against it. But seriously - Bender, if you can get me on Medinah you should let me know. Oh, and congrats to you and Bobby.

K-Dizzle at K’s Good Eats had an entertaining week. Her name probably isn’t really K-Dizzle, but I couldn’t get an official name (other than K) so we’re going to go with K-Dizzle until I hear otherwise. Actually, that’s probably going to stick even if I find out what her real name is. Anyway, K-Dizzle made some greek yogurt parfaits in this post that actually looked really good. I don’t think I really like greek yogurt. It’s sort of a game at our house. Kate buys it. I make smartass comments about her buying it, then she somehow finds ways to sneak it into my food and then doesn’t tell me until I eat it. Nothing makes her happier than sneaking things into my food without me knowing it. It’s all fun and games unless she decides to poison me, Law and Order Criminal Intent-style. K-Dizzle is a fan of Law and Order, so she knows what I’m talking about. 

Stock Up

Computer Sales - Well, not yet. But I doubt Kate is going to make it anyone week without a blog reading machine 

Seizure-Inducing Font Colors - Bites and Bowls is one of my favorite blogs, but if Kelsey continues with these font colors, she should include a warning label for pregnant women and the elderly. Sorry Kelsey…Matt made me write that. 

Personification of Food Box Picture People - I’ve seen an uptick of food bloggers referring to the people either named or pictured on food packaging as if they are friends or family. See Arnold and his bread, Annie and her mac & cheese, Bob and his rolled oats, etc.

Half Marathons - Congrats to Rose, her lobsters, her placemats, and all of the other food bloggers who recently completed a half.

Stock Down

Spam Comments on my blog - I still get a few. Mostly from some random ass weight loss company trying to sell some kind of super colon blow weight loss product, but I haven’t been getting as many as usual. What happened to the Viagra spam comments? Do y’all not like me anymore? Number of comments is Kate’s only metric for determining blog popularity (More Comments = More popular blog). I want my wife to think this is a successful blog…so bring it.

Swine Flu Hysteria - I didn’t see anyone wearing masks at the airport this week. And The Today Show went a full segment without talking about it. So maybe we’re done with the flu. Or maybe it was because Tripp Palin and his baby mama were on with Matt Lauer. Or are we done freaking out about this global pandemic now? That was fast. 

Jillian’s Devil Shred - That was so last month

Alright. That’s all for this week. We’ll try to do better next time.

Hi Friends. Thanks for coming back for another week. I can’t believe that I’ve been doing this for six weeks. I’m thinking about changing up the naming convention of this weekly post. I like the Roman Numerals, but once we get past the number of whatever Super Bowl we’re on, I’ll probably need help on the numbers.So if anyone out there is either Roman or a Papal Historian, please let me know once I get to week XLIII. More details to follow. One change that I am making is based off of reader feedback. Lee posted the following comment after last week’s post:

“Love the blog, hate the fact that you don’t include links to the specific post you’re referring to. Do you know how long it took me to find the Wendy’s post on Carrots ‘n’ Cake? (Totally worth it, by the way.) Help me out here … I’m supposed to be writing essays when I am reading your blog so the least you could do is help minimize the time I spend procrastinating!”

Well Lee, thanks for your feedback. I’m going to do my best to link to both the blog homepage and the individual post. So here’s your request, and dedication. Alright, time to get on with the blog roundup… 

Tina at Carrots ‘N’ Cake started reading Bethenny Frankel’s book in this post. For those of you that don’t know, Bethenny is one of  The Real Housewives of New York. Kate and I are both big fans of the Housewives franchise. New York isn’t my favorite, but I still watch. Bethenny is my favorite member of that cast, despite the fact that the title of her book (Naturally Thin) makes me flick it off when I see it at Barnes and Noble. Yes, you heard that right. I stick my middle finger up at a book when I see it at B&N. My favorite Housewives cast has to be Atlanta. Those women are just batshit crazy. I felt stressed out just watching Nene and Kim at the cast reunion. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just turn on Bravo. It’s probably on right now. I don’t recommend watching if it’s Saturday afternoon. There are usually marathons during the weekend. I have lost entire Saturdays with those damn women. 

Sarah from Tales of Expansion wrote a post about a blogger meet-up in Brooklyn titled Recycled Balls. I think it’s about Bubble Tea. Bubble Tea has been stock up for about three weeks, but since I really don’t know what the hell it is, I haven’t classified it as such. I like to be educated about these various products before I write about them. And by educated, I mean I want Kate to buy them, me to complain about her buying them, and then me to sample them. That’s just how we roll. Sarah at LovIN My Tummy emailed me a couple of weeks ago about the marked increase in ball references in food blogs, and she was right out in front of this trend. So I really don’t know what Bubble Tea is. All I know so far is:

1. It seems to be a big thing in New York
2. Nobody can talk about it on a blog without making jokes about, well, man bits

And I’m okay with the second one. I’m the guy with the list of blog names that sound like porn, so your ball jokes are fine with me.

Angela at Oh She Glows has been busy this week, launching Project Glow. From what I gather, Project Glow is Angela’s 30 day program to improve your skin. There are three steps for Project Glow:

1. Skin Care - A bunch of stuff about buying new product and taking off your makeup before you go to bed. Okay, I think I can handle that. Although I’m not sure if there’s any room in our shower caddie for more product. We probably have most of it already. Kate seems to be stockpiling product for some reason. Anyway, I’ll be sure to take off my makeup before bedtime

2. Glowing from the Inside Out: FOOD - Food is in all CAPS, so I guess it’s really important. She wants everyone to eat one of those damn green smoothies everyday. I have no doubt that it would probably help me glow, but this one probably isn’t happening. My thoughts on the green monster have been well documented. I like the Green Monster at Fenway, but that’s about it. And if Angela was feeling really entrepreneurial, she would require the Project Glow devotees to consume products that she sells at the Glo Bakery. And then you could say that those same products would help in the Bikini Body Boot Camp. That would be the OSG equivalent of a triple word score.

3. Reduce Stress - This one should be easy. I don’t really have anything stressful in my life. I mean, I spend my spare time reading food blogs, how stressful can that be? I think the most stressful thing I have going is trying to keep up with OSG’s multi-national conglomerate. Between keeping up with the Glo Bakery, and my instructions for the Bikini Body Boot Camp, and now this Project Glow, my schedule is pretty booked.  

In between facial scrubs, carub brownies and bikini body workouts, I checked out Matt’s post about mint juleps on Brew and Bake. It’s a pretty fantastic post. I mean, he dressed up and posed for the blog. How many of you have blogged in costume? That’s what I thought. The mint julep post was the lastest in Matt’s how-to series on Old Man drinks. I’ve enjoyed it so far because, well, I really like old man drinks. But I also think he should start a series on young man drinks. Post one could be jello shots. Post two could be how to infuse a watermelon with vodka. Post three could be whatever the kids are doing these days. I dunno, just a thought. And he could dress up in costume. Maybe a popped collar, a frayed baseball cap and some khaki cargos. We’re just brainstorming here. 

On a somewhat related topic, Janet at Pretty Green Girl made wine ice cubes in this post. Now I’m generally a big fan of creative alcohol use, but this one was disappointing. See, I like to open a bottle of wine, knowing full well that Kate is only going to drink one glass. My go to excuse for drinking the rest of the bottle is “well honey, I don’t want it to go bad.” So Janet’s idea, however ingenious it is, gives us another answer to the question:

1. How do I stop this bottle of wine from going bad?

A. Drink it
B.

See. I really liked it when there wasn’t a B. Now there is. Thanks a lot, Janet.  

Stock Up

Edward Cullen References - This guy just won’t die. Although I guess he is technically a vampire, so that’s sort of expected

Sample Packets of Barney Butter - These seem to be popping up everywhere. Although I havent’ seen any pictures of bloggers eating Barney’s sweet nectar right from the package. I bet it has happened off camera.

Swine Flu Threat Levels - Expect facial masks to be stock up next week

PETA College Vegan Cookbooks - My new advocacy group, PETT (People for the Ethical Treatment of Trees) is going to start protesting PETA if they keep sending out paper cookbooks. Can’t y’all create a digital cookbook instead? For instructions on how to do this, please email ZestyCook, you treekillers.

Stock Down

Running Marathons - I’ve run a few so I’m all for it, but there have been some comment pissing matches recently with some anti-marathon people. Is that really a cause? Are there lobbyists? I guess comment pissing matches should technically be stock up, but I’ve already got a decent list of stock up. And comment battles annoy me. I don’t think anyone walks away saying “yeah, I used to think this, but now that I’ve heard from some anonymous person on the internet, I’ve totally changed my opinion.”

Emoticons - Not yet on the endangered species list, but the overall population of yellow smiley faces has certainly declined. 

Kombucha - Ya’ll are still drinking it in blogland, but I haven’t seen any in my fridge for awhile. So it must be stock down at my house

Alright guys. That’s all I’ve got for this week. We’ll try to do better next time.