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. 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.

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

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

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

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

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

Places Where Spinach Should Be:

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

Places Where Spinach Should NOT Be:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stock Up

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

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

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

Stock Down 

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

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

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

P.S.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY VEGGIE GIRL!!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stock Up/Stock Down – With Commentary. Sometimes.

Stock Up

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

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

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

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

Stock Down

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

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

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

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

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

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