The BlogStalker

Hi Friends,

Welcome back. Seems like we just talked. Now I’m back on track, so hopefully I can stick to my rigorous 1 post/week schedule. We’ll see how that goes. Hmm…trying to think of interesting things that have happened since my last post. Oh, here’s one…

Kelsey of Bites and Bowls fame is moving to a new place. She’s out of town and needed someone to help move some possessions (couch, bed, etc). This is right in my wheelhouse, as two of my greatest skills are lifting heavy things and reaching tall things, so I was more than happy to help her out. Problem is that her possessions > Size of my SUV. So this meant renting a truck. No big deal…figured I’d get the little truck and it would be fine. Turns out that they don’t rent the little trucks for in-town moves. I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out how that could make any sense at all. Still working on it. Anyway, I got to drive the big 16 foot yellow truck through Uptown Charlotte. During the lunch hour. When most of the roads that I needed to drive on were under construction. Or closed. Or were one way streets with the cars going in the opposite direction. Now I consider myself a pretty good driver. No accidents or speeding tickets in 13 years of driving. But I never did figure out if there’s a way to make a right turn in the big yellow truck without taking out the curb or the people that are standing on it. So I have a new-found respect for real truck drivers, and I’ll probably stop pumping my fist when I pass them (trying to get them to honk) as they have more important things to focus on, and most people grow out of that when they turn 10. Oh, and the moving was totally worth it, as Kelsey had left beer and barney butter for met at her new place. And she gave me some Great Harvest blondies that Matt made. I must say that they were every bit as good as a VeggieGirl blondie. Actually, I can’t say that, because I still haven’t tried these VG Blondies (hint) that everyone else speaks of, but these were good blondies.

In other news, Kate picked up this new shampoo at the store. She wanted me to mention that it was free with a rebate.

Sorry for the poor photo quality. If you can’t read that, it says it includes coconut milk and egg white proteins. It just so happens that I was making brinner last night and was short 1 egg from making the ideal omelette. The thought crossed my mind to supplement my eggs with some of this shampoo. I mean, it says it includes egg whites and milk, which is what I was looking for. I decided that the shampoo might include other ingredients as well, so I did not make a shampoo omelette. I’ll keep you posted if I change my mind at a future brinner.

Hmm…trying to think if anything else exciting happened this week. I think I only left the house by car one other time since the last time I blogged, so I got nothin. Guess I’ll get going with the blog review.

Jenn from Eating Bender is in Maui with Ma Bender and she’s even blogging from vacationland. This shows true dedication to the blog, something that I clearly don’t have. Now I’ve actually been pretty anti-Hawaii when people suggest it as a potential vacation spot. That’s probably an understatement. I react to the Hawaii suggestion the same way that Kate reacts when someone mentions Angelina Jolie. I don’t know what it is, but I have no urge to go to Hawaii. It’s mostly because when I hear my coworkers or friends talk about their trips to Hawaii, it seems like there’s some kind of vacation checklist - like a list of 5-7 touristy things that every mainland tourist does when they go to Hawaii. It usually goes something like “volcano, blah blah blah, luau, blah blah pig and hula dancers and fire, blah blah seven sacred somethings, blah blah oh and the pineapple at the hotel blah blah.” I’m sure there are thousands of fun things to do in Hawaii, but it seems like everyone does the same five things. So my anti-Hawaii feelings are driven by either this tourist checklist theory, or some fear that I’ll end up like one of the Real World Hawaii cast members. Either a trainwreck like Ruthie or a completely unwatchable assbag like Colin/Amaya. But then Bender did her first vacation post and I thought “hmm, Hawaii looks nice” so maybe I’m getting over it. I think it was the pizza. Anyway, thanks for changing my thoughts on this Bender.

Mark Hangry (from Hangry and Hangry, LLC) is giving away a cookbook in this post. I’m not a really big cookbook reader. For me, it’s sort of like the owner’s manual in my car. I can read through it and look at the pictures, but at the end of the day, I’ll probably just outsource the actual work. I read enough to know that I’m not capable of doing what needs to be done. But this looks like an interesting cookbook. Mr. Hangry mentions that there is a toilet paper icon next to recipes that make you go. I think restaurant menus should offer the same thing. Mark Hangry also came up with a creative entry process for joining his contest. None of this add me to your blogroll nonsense for the Hangrys. No, you have to come up with a poem about the blogger to enter. I’m a big fan of creative contest requirements like this. Links and tweets are not the only currency that we can use for contests, blogland. So please take Mr. Hangry’s lead and come up with creative rules and regs for your free shiz giveaways.

Everyone’s favorite Homegirl had a nice post about babysitting. It was one of those posts that makes you want to be a little kid again. I want to sit in a wagon and eat ice cream while someone pulls me to the park. Although that would be pretty strange at my current age and size.  She mentioned that one of the kids was going to Circus Camp, which sent me into flashback mode. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here or not, but I spent the majority of my childhood as a circus performer. You can get all of the details of my circus life in this post. I have hung up my sequins and spandex (to the delight of anyone who has their sight), but I will occasionally still juggle. Like after a few drinks at Universal Studios CityWalk when I want to show up a clown with my skills. I never miss an opportunity to show up a clown. That’s not slang…I mean a guy wearing face paint and making animal balloons. I hate clowns.

Rose from On a Lobster Placemat (my favorite blog name ever) did something interesting at the end of this post. She asked for male readers to de-lurk and introduce themselves. I proudly followed her orders and identified myself. I think men are an underrepresented group in food blog land. My working theory is that readership skews about 90/10 female. I have absolutely nothing to base this on. The only guys that comment on my blog are related to me, friends of mine, or other bloggers that I write about. So I’ll steal Rose’s idea. Male blogstalker readers, please identify yourself. Female readers, do the same thing. This way I’ll end up with lots of comments, and it’ll make this blog look popular.

In other news, I have grown increasingly jealous of Jenna from Eat, Live, Run for landing an interview for the coolest job in the world. You can read about it in this post. From what I gather, a winery in Napa is interviewing Jenna and some other people (who I’m also jealous of) for a job where they use their social media influence to promote the winery. It involves hanging out in Napa and getting paid good money to blog/tweet/post about wine. Um, yes please. At first I thought this would be the perfect job for me. I mean, I like drinking wine, I love Napa, and I sort of work in social/interactive/online stuff with my real job. Then I thought about it, and figured that it would lead to increased drogging, and that all of my tweets would probably just be quotes from Sideways - quotes that out of context could be viewed as vulgar and offensive. So I’d probably get fired. Best of luck to Jenna in landing the job, as it would be an awesome opportunity and may lead to some wine giveaways on ELR. I usually don’t enter contests, but if wine is involved, I’ll make an exception.

Stock Up

Protein Powder - Blogland is bulking up with muscles like Major League Baseball in the 1990s. This could lead to a new foodbuzz steroid policy. Let’s hope that Barney Butter doesn’t end up on the banned substances list.

Spinoff Blogs - Like Operation Beautiful and Green Monster Movement - which seem to be successful spinoffs (like Frasier). I’m having trouble keeping up one blog, so don’t expect a blogstalker spinoff anytime soon.

Blogger Meet-ups - Well, not really a trend, but we’re going to dinner with KERF, Pinky, and the C&C Blogging Factory tonight, so that counts, right?

Biking - I think it has something to do with the Tour de France.

Apple(s) - Both the technological and edible kinds. Most bloggers are getting their recommended apple a day. And those who aren’t eating their apples are playing with their iPhones or trying to win a MacBook Pro.

Stock Down

Television viewing options - I’m done with Summer re-runs. I need my housewives to return. And Jon and Kate. And 30 Rock. I could go on, but you get the idea.

The Today Show - I love my Matt and Meredith time (and Hoda and Kathie Lee) but this has been a bad week. Al is on vacation, and I don’t think Willard even did his smuckers birthday list this week.

Juicing - Our juicer is collecting dust, and Fitnessestenista had a near juicing disaster. I expect juicing to make a strong comeback in the upcoming weeks.

The Sun - I haven’t seen it yet this week. Maybe because it has been really cloudy. Or maybe because I haven’t left the house much.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. See you next Friday, and we’ll try to do better next time.

Hi Friends. Thanks for coming back, and I’m sorry that I’m a couple of days late with this post. I really have no excuse. I mean, I didn’t even have to work on Friday. Poor form on my part. I’ll try not to let it happen again. I’ll start with giving an update on what I’ve been up to this weekend, and then we’ll get to the blog review. Sound good?

So instead of blogging on Friday, Kate and I spent the day shopping for granite counter tops. Most of you know that Kate and I have been working very hard (with lots of help from my Dad and Home Depot) on updating our 1980s house. We have already performed a brass exorcism, removed the popcorn ceilings, and Kate has painted most of the house.

So operation get-our-house-out-of-1984 is now focused on new counter tops. For those of you who haven’t been shopping for granite, it’s sort of an experience. For me, it was particularly entertaining, since I’m pretty much color blind and don’t really spend a whole lot of time in the kitchen. So I spent most of my time adding insightful commentary, like:

“That looks really heavy. I don’t think I could lift that up by myself” - said when looking at the large slab of granite

“That one looks like the lobby at the Fairmont in San Francisco” - said while looking at some over the top white granite

“My house will be full of granite, marble and onyx” - Said while doing my best impression of Teresa from Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Instead of blogging on Saturday, I noticed that I was starting to get a lot of spam comments on the blog and I wanted to address that. So I dug into WordPress, and noticed that I could create a blacklist of words for comments - basically a list of naughty words that, when used in a comment, would lead to a comment getting automatically deleted. Creating this list was a fun exercise. I started out just using all of the words that show up in most of the spam comments (viagra, cialis, etc), but then started getting into all of the naughty words that I could think of. I think there are five languages represented in my comment naughty word blacklist. It’s like a potty mouth United Nations. So that took up most of my Saturday - happy birthday America!

As for Sunday…it’s with a heavy heart that I announce the passing of a family treasure. Lawnmower (2004-2009) passed away today in the backyard. I’d like to say that he passed away quietly in his sleep, but instead it was super noisy and embarrassing. Lawnmower and I shared so many great moments. There was my summer-long duel with crazy Indiana neighbor who wanted to have a better lawn than me. Crazy neighbor might have had me beat with his mad edging skillz and Cracker Barrel quality rocking chairs, but he couldn’t compete with the quality work that lawnmower did for me. And then there was the time that I thought I could fill up a camelback with beer for an afternoon of lawn mowing (not as brilliant of an idea as it sounds). Your beer will taste like gatorade, and your gatorade will taste like beer. Hmm, maybe if I had two camelbacks. Anyway…Lawnmower made the trip with us from Indiana, and lived exactly one year at our new house. He joins Weed Wacker (2004-2007) Red Truck (1998 - 2005) and Kate’s Laptop (2006-2007) in joint asset heaven. He is survived by gas can (2004-) and weed wacker #2 (2009-). In lieu of flowers, please send unleaded gasoline or spark plugs. A private ceremony for friends and family will be held at Lawnmower’s final resting place - the crawlspace under the deck. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Alright - time for the blog review now.

Anna at Blue Plate Special gets the top spot, because she sent us some free shiz. She sent us some delicious supercharge me cookies. Because of their name, I treated them like little vitamins. Unfortunately, they did not lead to me going out and running a marathon, but eating one of them did give me the energy to eat another one. So thanks again, Anna.

Anna made the world’s largest salad in this post. Either that, or this is the world’s smallest hand and blackberry. I’m not sure which it is. Sometimes I like to hold those little 6 oz Coke Cans in my hand and act like I’m a giant. I also do the same thing with the mini bottles of booze on airplanes. It’s not very difficult to entertain me. Also, shortly after her green monster, Anna was offered $5000 for this blender on the antiques roadshow.

Hangry Heather showed off her obscure nut butter collection in this post. I’m glad that Heather shared this picture. I’m also glad that Heather mentioned Scurvy…I always try to mention rickets or scurvy, but generally only do so when playing The Oregon Trail. And that usually happened because I’d buy 99 boxes of ammunition and no clothing for the children. This is no way for a banker from Boston to prepare for a trip across the country, which is why Nate Jr. would always end up with cholera or scurvy. I also mention scurvy when talking about the lead singer from the Spin Doctors (he just looked sickly), and he just doesn’t come up much these days. Anyway, I like this picture, because Kate has been falling in love with Polly’s fridge lately, which is super clean. Kate has talked about going with the ‘empty fridge/buy groceries for one day’ method. I don’t see this ending well for me. Neither of us is going to be able to go to the grocery on a daily basis. I can hardly commit to making it to my office every day, and that’s just upstairs. Hell, I can’t even blog every seven days. So please, more pictures of full fridges.

K-Dizzle from K’s Good Eats tackled an important topic in this post. In addition to sharing several mushroom glamour shots (K-Dizzle loves mushrooms - almost as much as the Real Housewives) she also discussed how her dogs are scared of fireworks. We have the same thing going on with Gilbert. This was a big problem when we lived in Indiana, because our hillbilly neighbors considered the 4th of July to be a week-long excuse to set off fireworks. I don’t get it, the duration of the holiday is clearly stipulated in the holiday’s name. It’s the 4th of July, not the “first week of July.” So Gilbert Michael wouldn’t go outside without bribery for a week or so. Fortunately we don’t have the same issue here in NC, or maybe Gilbert is just growing up. He knows he has to step up and be an adult before his upcoming nuptials with Penny. Man, we really need to stop treating that dog like a person. Oh, and a belated happy birthday to K-Dizzle.

Heather from Heat the Salmon Butt jumped on the banana ice cream bandwagon in this post. She also had a birthday party for her dog Einstein. Good to see that we’re not the only ones who treat our dog like a person. I would’ve liked to see the birthday hat on Einstein. We tried to put a birthday hat on Gilbert during my Spongebob party, but he decided to eat the hat instead. That dog loves to eat all paper products (Kate likes to say that he has a paper tooth). I’ve been kind of scared to try the banana soft serve. Several bloggers (Kath, Fitnessestenessa, Heat the Salmon Butt) have referred to it as a life changing experience. As I’ve mentioned before I’m not really a big fan of change, so I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of a commitment. If someone could confirm that it will taste good, but not change my life, I might give it a shot.

Post Graduate Meghannnn is on vacation, which means lots of guest posts. I was happy to see a post by her Easter Bunny, Derek. I like when bloggers have their significant others post for them. Most of them follow the format of: I don’t really pay attention to what I eat, I eat food from boxes, I don’t use all of those fancypants ingredients, I eat healthier because of my blogger, and I can’t believe that my blogging significant other does this posting thing multiple times per day. It’s a pretty solid format. I have enjoyed posts by Oh He Glows, Matt Eats Real Food, Mr. Hangry, and now Graduate Derek. I’m thinking Kate should do a guest post here in the near future. Both because I’m sure she’d do a good job, and because it would give me another week off from posting. A little peer pressure via comments could help make this happen.

Stock Up

Hummus - Good for hummus. It’s a true comeback story…Hummus has fallen on hard times lately, so it’s good to see hummus (both homemade and store-bought) make it to the stock up list again

Chicken Sausages - Not sure if other bloggers were eating them, but I ate enough this weekend to make them stock up

Patriotism - Blogland felt like a Toby Keith song this weekend

Green Monster Variations - Everyone seems to be adding an ingredient here, taking one out there. One of these days someone is going to come up with a combo that blows up their blender like an Indiana meth lab.

Stock Down

Store-bought Ice Cream - Everyone seems to be making their own. This banana stuff is out of control. I might give it a go, if I could also get butterfinger and oreos mixed in, like I do at Cold Stone.

Amazing Grass - It’s still out there, but mentions are down about 30% from last week

PETA Vegan College Cookbook - This was as popular as those Mushroom Ravioli things earlier this year, but haven’t seen it in blogland recently.

Alright, that’s all I’ve got. I’ll try to do better (and get back on schedule) next time.

Hi Friends. Thanks for stopping by. How was your week? Good…glad to hear it. Pretty good week here. To follow up on last week’s recap, I survived my meeting with the doctor on Wednesday. No horrible illnesses or diseases, so that’s cool. The doctor did say that he’d like to see me lose a little weight. To which I replied “yeah, me too.” I’m glad that I’m on the same page as my medical professional. See you next year, doctor. Enjoy the $25 copay.

I’m sorry to report that I won’t be posting next week. Actually, I’m not sorry at all. Kate and I are heading to Cabo for the next 10 days or so. I’ll have limited access to phone, email, and sobriety. Hmm, maybe I should put that as my out of office message. Nah…probably not. Might not have a job to come back to if I did that. Anyway, I doubt I’ll be spending a whole lot of time reading blogs in the next week or so. I’ll be back with my weekly recap on the 26th, as long as I don’t end up with Swine Flu or something.

Alright. One sort of funny story and then we’ll get to the blog review. Kate spent the last couple of evenings googling Gilbert’s dog breed (in between looking at all of your blogs, of course). Searches included: Shar Pei Rat Terrier, Rat Pei, and Shar Terrier. Then she’d find pictures of similar looking dogs, and would show them to Gilbert. Usually saying things like “Gilbert, come look at your sister.” Then she mentioned that she wanted to find Gilbert’s family so we could have a reunion. So totally joking, I recommended that she check out ancestry.com to find Gil’s relatives and then I went back to watching bad television. About ten minutes later, Kate says “I don’t think this is going to work…it’s just stuff about people and their ancestors.” Apparently she thought I was serious and had looked for Gilbert’s ancestors online. That was probably the highlight of my week. Okay, now time for the blog review.

Kelsey from Bites and Bowls has taken the top spot away from Hangry Pants, which means I got some free shiz. Kind of, but not really. Kelsey jacked one of my Smart Ones on Saturday night/Sunday morning, which you can read about in this post. To repay me, she brought over a box of Twilight-Inspired Conversation Hearts. They came in a box with the dreamy Edward Cullen on the package, and the hearts said things like “Bite Me” and “Live Forever.” They were delicious, even though it’s four months after their originally scheduled consumption date. So thanks B+B for the free shiz. In that post by Kelsey, you’ll notice that she and I sang karaoke backup to Matt last weekend on Nuthin’ But a G Thang. I volunteered to sing the Dre parts, which I thought meant I’d just say ‘hell yeah’ in a low voice over and over again. Turns out that Dre actually has a verse. Oh, and I also found out that if there’s a ‘radio friendly’ (or wal-mart friendly) version of a song, then that’s probably the version that the karaoke guy will have. I was singing the album version. So I’d like to apologize to the patrons of the Yellow Rose for my bad language, but I think I was singing the song in the way that Dre and Snoop wanted it to be sung. Except for the whole drunk white guy in a dive bar in suburban Charlotte North Carolina part. Hell yeah.

Emily at Super Caloric Chalk Dust tagged me in this post, which appears to be some kind of chain letter/post. I heart Super Caloric, but I’m not really a chain letter responder kind of guy, so I’m just going to talk about Emily and her blog and we’ll say that I’ve fulfilled my chain letter duties, okay? That way, if this is really some kind of scam, then I won’t be considered an accomplice. As far as I can tell, the only difference between a chain letter and a pyramid scheme is that nobody gets rich with a chain letter. People just end up giving personal details (like their lack of at home pants wearing) instead of ending up with mad loot.  And for this chain blog thing to take off, they should probably include some threat of dismemberment or disfigurement. Those both seem like good motivators for old school chain letters. Like send a pair of flip flops to 10 of your best friends or else you’ll get the hiv or something.  So I’m going to make my own rules instead. By being tagged, it means I should stop eating peaches, and should go on vacation and sit on the beach for a couple of weeks. Okay…sold.

Tina at Carrots ‘n’ Cake made some dong-shaped cupcakes in this post. At first I thought this was really out of character for the C ‘n’ C blogging factory. I mean she usually does nice things like pictures of parks in Boston and funny stories about Mal, and out of nowhere come these iced dongs. But then I read the post, and it turns out that it was part of a bachelorette weekend party thing. This makes sense. Bachelorette parties are one of only three scenarios where graphic depictions of man junk are socially acceptable. The others are junior high (sex ed class) and episodes of Oprah when Dr. Oz is the guest. That damn Dr. Oz is always talking about man bits. Speaking of  sex ed…did I ever tell y’all that my dad was my sex ed teacher in Jr. High? I can’t remember if that was on this blog or another blog. Anyway, this is reason #1 why I haven’t been embarrassed since 7th grade. Nothing tops that. Nothing.

Speaking of wangs, Snackface made a pretty fantastic reference to Trey MacDougal’s flaccidity in this post. I know, this post is more than a week old, but it was probably the funniest thing that I read this week, and it’s my blog, so I’m making an exception and including it in the weekly roundup. Mostly because I’m planning on stealing this line and calling anything limp ‘Trey-Like’ from now on. We’ll see if it sticks. Cut to my favorite scene from Mean Girls when Regina George says ’stop trying to make fetch happen.’ Say what you want about LiLo, but Mean Girls is one of the best movies in the history of the world. Ever. And shame on me for just now writing about Snackface…there’s no excuse for that. I mean, she has SATC references in her posts, she attends Matt Lauer’s alma mater, and she hangs out with homegirl. How did it take me 12 installments to write about her? I say again, shame on me.

Stock Up

Amazing Wheat Grass - Really? We’re drinking grass now? I’ll take healthy eating stereotypes for $200, Alex. This is like a bad commercial for a casual dining establishment. Like the family goes to the health food restaurant and everyone is drinking grass, then the dad makes a stupid face so the family goes to Flingers for some jalapeno poppers or something instead. Ugh.

Blogapalooza References - This is pretty much the social event of the summer. I’m looking forward to this almost as much as the season finale of Real Housewives of New Jersey. Healthy Twilight Pancake had a nice post about it where she asked readers which bloggers they wanted to meet. I almost signed in under random names to stuff the ballot in my favor.

Free Shiz - Not for me, but there are some contests worth mentioning. The Professional Vegan is giving away some books…Fast Food Nation and Food Inc. I didn’t know they wrote books about those movies, but you can find out the details here. In other free shiz news, Kori at All things B is giving away some of that Amazing Grass in this post. In other news, I’m going to mow my lawn on Saturday before we leave town, so I’ll be having a grass giveaway as well if you want to come over and pick up the clippings. It’ll save me some raking.

Summer haircuts - I’d like to think that this is because I got my fro cut off last week, but I doubt I’m really a trendsetter here. Post-Graduate Meghannnn and birthday girl Jenna were among the multiple bloggers who got ‘em all cut this week. Am I really talking about the hair cutting schedules of people I’ve never met before. What the hell is wrong with me? But if I meet them all at blogapalooza, it won’t be quite as creepy, right?

Stock Down

Mean Anonymous Comments - Actually there have been way too many of them recently, but I give them a big thumbs down. If you want to be a wanker and get into a comment pissing match, go to a political or news blog or something. Anonymous mean comments on food/health blogs are just dumb. Props to Fitnestestinesstia and her pilot on the way they handled this one. Critical comments are okay. Just leave your name so we can engage in a healthy dialogue. Or so I can leave a flaming bag of poo on your doorstep.

Gluten - I really don’t know what gluten is, but people seem to be avoiding it. I could google it and find out what it is, but  I’m a firm believer that for everything I learn, I forget another thing, and I don’t want to forget anything,  And please don’t try to educate me via comments, or else I’ll forget my 2nd grade teacher’s name.

Soy - People seem to be anti-soy this week as well. I’m alright with that, as long as it just means I should avoid faux meat (like Soy Burgers and Soy Sausage). Consider it done. But don’t make me give up my soy sauce and edamame. Can we make an exception there?

Foods that end in consonants - I’m not sure why, but there have been lots of posts about foods that end with vowels. A prime example of this is Rose’s Frittata and Scone post. That’s a double word score. Keep in mind that Pat and Vanna are going to charge you $250 apiece for those.

Alright friends. That’s all I’ve got. See you in a couple of weeks. We’ll try to do better next time.

Hi Friends. I hope you all had a nice week. It has been a busy week here. Well, not really, but I’ve done some things that I’ve been putting off for awhile. 

1. Kate and I went and met the new neighbors down the street. They moved in about a month ago, and we wanted to go introduce ourselves for quite some time, as they looked young and childless. That said, we didn’t want to look like the creepy neighbors who are trying too hard to be friends. I’m convinced that it’s impossible to go introduce yourself to new neighbors without looking/acting like a complete jackass. Kate made brownies. I bought beer. I guess we didn’t even need to stick around to say hello…the brownies and beer probably would’ve told them what we’re all about. Anyway,they seem nice. We probably seem crazy. Check that one off the list.

2. I got a haircut. Things were getting pretty out of control. I think this might have been my first haircut since the inauguration, and that was like four months ago. You know you’re looking pretty good when the lady at the haircut place says “I’m guessing you don’t work in an office with other people, do you.” I’m not exactly sure what gave away my work from home lifestyle. I’m guessing it was either the lack of pockets, my 3:00 PM on a weekday walk-in, my urban Amish facial hair, or the Bob Ross style afro. Either way, I’m now about five pounds lighter.

3. I went to the doctor. I’m not sick or anything, but I haven’t been to the doctor for a check-up since the late 1990s. I wish I was exaggerating, but my last physical was in 1998. So this week I went in for the blood work, and then next week is my actual appointment. I’m going to feel like a pretty big chach if el doctor finds something that would’ve been way better to find like five years ago or something. So I’m going to make a deal right here. With blog as my witness, I promise I’ll go to the doctor every year or so, as long as I don’t get stuck with some horrible illness or disease at next week’s appointment. Deal? Cool.

Alright. That’s what I’ve been doing. I also watched The Real Housewives of New Jersey. I have been looking for a copy of Danielle’s book (Cop Without a Badge) but it’s going for $189 on Amazon. I love my housewives, but not that much.  No new inventions this week, so I’ll just get going to the blog review. 

HangryPants remains in the #1 slot this week, which means I didn’t get any free shiz this week. Anyway, Ms. Hangry is currently getting ready for her “Cleaner Life Month’ which she describes in this post. From what I understand, it has something to do with eating healthy stuff. These month long challenges are great. They seem to fly by, and then the challenge blogger talks about their progress, and I just sit back and think “what the hell did I do in the last 30 days” and it’s usually pretty depressing. I don’t think I’ll be participating, but I’ll be cheering from the sidelines (diet mountain dew in hand).  I’m going to start my own challenge. I’m not going to eat any peaches for the next month. Who’s with me? No real reason, other than the fact that I don’t like eating peaches, but there ya go. Follow me to a peach free June. In other news, Kate told me about some health food guy who said something about how you shouldn’t eat foods that weren’t around 50 years ago. I guess that sort of makes sense for things like gogurt (whatever the hell that is) and other overprocessed stuff. But I doubt the greatest generation sat around drinking vanilla almond milk either, so I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do. Alright, I’m rambling now. Next blog…  

Brooke at Homegirl Can Eat wrote a great post about a perverted teacher in this post. If you aren’t reading this blog yet, you really, really should. It’s probably one of the best written blogs out there, even though I don’t understand half the shit that homegirl is talking about (mostly because I’m old). Whenever I go to the mall and start hating ‘those damn teens’ I just think of Homegirl and her good writing, and it makes me not hate the kids as much as I did before. I do often wonder if homegirl’s principal or teachers are aware of the blog and how they feel about it, but I’m sure she has that under control.I’ve noticed that homegirl commentors like to comment using homegirl-speak. That is, they adjust their language and slang to match that of the blog they are reading. I always want to comment on her posts, but I refrain for two reasons:

1. Kate is convinced I’d come off as a creepy old man
2. I’d write something like “Great post, I love how you did XYZ” which would really stand out amongst the comments like “Yay for graduation again! You and mama cynth look gorgey-poo! ” and other comments in Homegirl-speak. So I just lurk instead.

Fortunately the same thing hasn’t caught on here on The Blogstalker, otherwise y’all would comment using my backcountry gibberish and we’d all be a little dumber. So the moral of the story is, read Homegirl’s blog. 

Alli of Green Dog Wine had a busy week. Her blog found a new home (the URL that I used), got a new logo, and it was also her husband’s birthday and she devoted this post to her husband. As I mentioned last week, I’m a big fan of photo trips down memory lane in blogland. Sure, pictures of food are great, but I would much rather look at pictures of people doing funny things. Think of it this way, I wouldn’t go watch a movie about a bowl of oatmeal, but there’s a good chance that I’d go see a romantic comedy involving a man with a mohawk singing karaoke or lifting his wife over her head. So I vote for more personal pictures in blogland. Except on my blog. Because I’m lazy and our camera is pretty lame. But everyone else…please include more pictures. And if they can be photo slide shows with sappy music, that would win you bonus points. Now get to work! Also, I’ve been reading this blog for quite some time and didn’t really know where the name came from. I had some good theories going on in my head, but never thought to look at the ‘about me’ page, which pretty much explains it. I liked my theories better. 

Postgraduate Meghannnn did a recap of the San Diego Marathon in this post. Congrats to Meghannnn and everyone else who completed some sort of distance race this weekend. We were also happy to see that the easter bunny made the trip to San Diego. What really blows my mind is that people are videotaping and twittering while running a damn marathon. I’ve run my share of marathons, but have never videotaped or used any other type of technology during the process. After mile 13, I don’t think that I’d have a single thing to say that would be family friendly - I guess you could call it exercise-induced Tourettes. Also, I think I sweat too much to carry something electronic while running. I’ll just stick to the pictures that the race people take to document how miserable I was feeling during the race. Or I can just think really hard and remember it. 

Stock Up

Graduation - I’m happy for all of the graduating bloggers, I just hope that they keep blogging. See previous post re: not a big fan of change in my blogs.

House/Apartment/Room Tours - There was basically a full episode of Cribs this week. Unfortunately, none of the video tours included classic Cribs cliches like “this is where the magic happens.” I think at least one blogger should have used that line when showing off their kitchen or something.

Detailed Exercise Recaps - Including, but not limited to: calories burned, distance traveled (down to the hundredth or a mile), music listened to, energy foods and drinks consumed, etc. I think you’re burning off calories just doing the exercise recap.

Puffins (the cereal, not the bird) - Always a fan favorite among bloggers, but really growing in popularity in recent weeks. I just can’t eat this stuff. I once saw Puffin on a menu in Iceland, and it wasn’t the cereal. So now I can’t eat the cereal without thinking about people eating the cute little bird, so there’s my excuse. 

Stock Down

Flip Phones - The entire blog world seemed to get on iPhone or Blackberry bandwagon in the last week or two. Still waiting for someone to bring back the Zach Morris brick phone as a retro smart phone

Bagels - Not sure if this is because of the high caloric content, or the fact that it’s national donut day. Mentions to donut day should probably be stock up.

Alltel’s Commercials - Chad (the Alltel guy) is kinda hot and nice enough, but those other jackasses are really pissing me off. Sorry for the bad language, but I’m passionate about this one. Their last two commercials have butchered some pretty funny bits by Chris Farley and Willy Wonka. Sorry…this has nothing to do with blogs or bloggers, but I really really dislike these commercials, especially the Sprint guy.

Drogging - Drogging (drunk blogging) references are still stock up (thanks to Caitlin Pancake), but actual drunk blogging hasn’t been happening as much (as far as I can tell). I would like this to be stock up this weekend - especially for the Charlotte bloggers who are going to dive bar karaoke with me tomorrow night. You know who you are. 

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading, and I’ll try to do better next time.

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!

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 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

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.