Versatile Blogging

I was absolutely tickled to receive the Versatile Blogger Award from the self-monikered Volleysoft at I'm Sew Cheap!!! What a lovely surprise ... :)

The rules of the Versatile Blogger Award are as follows:

Leave a comment to thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them in your post.

Did that already, but once again MANY THANKS for the ego boost!

Tell us seven things about yourself.

Award fifteen recently discovered new bloggers.

Having just moved, I'm continuing to settle in and am a tad short of time. So I'm going to still bare my soul (if not other parts of me!) and I'll award some worthy candidates, but only 5 of each to make things a bit easier all around, okay?

Here's some tidbits about lil' ol' me:

1. I love doughnuts. And now that I have the freedom to eat what I want to when I want to, I've developed a rather bad habit of making a couple of cheap (I tell myself I can only buy them if they're on sale!) doughnuts a very satisfying -- albeit very bad for me -- midnight snack before going to bed. I need to simply stop buying them; it's easier to resist them at the store than it is to shut out their Siren song late at night, when my defenses are least able to ignore it.

2. I am so happy in the new apartment and love its location near some very cool, funky shops and cafes! I live very close to Depot Town, part of Ypsilanti's Historic District ([ip-sih-LAN-tee], just down the road from Ann Arbor), which has tremendous charm and character; it hasn't been yuppy-fied with hair salons and phone stores and chain restaurants as Ann Arbor sadly has.

3. I'm looking so forward to shopping at the Ypsi Farmers' Market ([IP-see] -- short for Ypsilanti) each Saturday this summer -- it's only a half-mile's walk away ... :)

4. I am sorely peeved at the New York Times' new policy of limiting non-subscribers (a.k.a.: cheap folks like me) to only 20 online articles per month; I think I used up my quota in the first week of April! (Yes, they have bills to pay ... so do I, which is why I don't subscribe anymore. Information should be free to all.) Anyway, it's a new month, so I've got a new start. I'm trying to save myself for the Wednesday food articles ... we'll see how long I last!

5. I finally -- finally! -- saw "The King's Speech" the other night, and adored it; I think I was the last person in the Western Hemisphere to see it. And to think, I'm a Royal Family addict!!! But I'm also too cheap to pay $10 for a movie, so I had to wait for Netflix; thank you Jeremy for ordering it for me.

And now for the bloggers you should go visit:

1. Go Ahead ... Take a Bite!

2. TexaGermaNadian: My Life in 3 Countries

3. Gluten Free A-Z Blog

4. La Fotografía Efectista Abstracta

5. Sweet As Sugar Cookies

Have a fabulous weekend!!! I'll have a new feature starting next week: Frugal Floozie Friday. Stay tuned ... :)

30 Things I Vow to Do This Summer

To help ward off writer's block (yeah, like that could happen to someone like me!), I signed up for Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop which offers writing prompts. So, following down the proverbial primrose path of one of these suggestions, I hereby offer:

30 Things I Vow to Do This Summer (Or At Least, The Food-Related Plans!)

1. Make pesto.

2. Roast tomatoes and make a sauce.

3. Find ways to get Jeremy to eat more vegetables.

4. Pit cherries ... lots and lots and lots of cherries, 'cause I buy them in 10-pound boxes for several weeks in a row.

5. Shop at the Ypsilanti Depot Town Farmers Market some Saturday morning.

6. Make Panzanella with my freshly harvested tomatoes and basil.

7. Work on my gardens -- backyard and community.

8. Shop more at the Om Market for Indian groceries.

9. Work up to running to the Om Market (preferably without gasping for my last breath), which is a mile-and-a-half from my home, while Jeremy rides his bike ahead of me.

10. Eat at the new Mediterranean/Middle Eastern restaurant opening soon near my house.

11. Go back to Comet Coffee.

12. Go to Lab, a self-proclaimed "coffee + tea + yogurt experience," which serves my beloved Intelligentsia coffee.

13. Go back to Shalimar with Tom tomorrow night for a fabulous Indian dinner, just like we had on our first date.

14. Use the beautiful bottle of blood orange vinegar that I bought at Fox & Obel (an extraordinary gourmet market) in Chicago.

15. Write up posts about Jeremy's and my culinary adventures while we were in Chicago.

16. Work on my assorted and sundry sidebar projects, which have been sadly neglected in recent weeks.

17. Eat less meat.

18. Eat another Delicious Dogs on the Run hot dog ... perhaps at Art Fair.

19. Continue to look for quirky cookbooks as I peruse rummage sales.

20. Continue to look for intriguing plates and cups and whatnot while I'm at the aforementioned rummage sales, to use for photographing food.

21. Improve my food photography.

22. Try to enter more cooking contests.

23. Finish a book, particularly the one about being a personal chef on a yacht in the Mediterranean that I keep renewing from the library -- Mediterranean Summer: A Season on France's Cote d'Azur and Italy's Costa Bella by David Shalleck.

24. Make BLTs with tomatoes from my garden.

25. Make BLT pasta salad.

26. Bring a picnic to an outdoor concert.

27. Donate tomatoes to a program that feeds the hungry.

28. Make my prize-winning Ratatouille in August when the ingredients are freshly harvested.

29. Make Cherry Sorbet.

30. Make a lattice-topped Cherry Pie.


NOTE: Don't forget to check out the "thank you" post for my followers, and leave a comment at the end of it if you're interested in the gift drawing: "L'Chaim -- To Life!"