Showing posts with label Blogs I love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blogs I love. Show all posts

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Blog Love Fest Part Two

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Since it’s the day we are supposed to celebrate and show love, I decided that this would be a good time to post the second installment of blogs I love to read and tell you a little bit about each.  I hope you love them too!  (For Part One - click here.)

The Domestically Impaired Guide to the Retro Kitchen Arts (Don’t you just love the name already?) is written by kind-hearted +Kalamity Kelli Davidson who claims to be learning how to cook but I think she needs to change that tagline.  By day, she works in the public sector, advancing the cause of decent working conditions for in-home personal care assistants.  Her e-book, written from her personal and professional experience, Taking Care of Mom and Dad, is a godsend to anyone who is caring for the elderly.  In the evenings and weekends, Kelli cooks and bakes fearlessly in the kitchen for her family.  She’s a garage sale and cookbook junkie so I knew I had met a kindred spirit.  And she makes bread pudding with figs and bacon!  (I think you all know how I feel about figs and bacon.)
And she makes delicious jams.

The Om Blog is next on my list.  Author, Juls has a great sense of humor and is just starting her second semester at Leith’s School of Food and Wine in London.  When I first started reading The Om Blog, she was focused on cooking less popular cuts of meat, like sweetbreads, hearts and game, which I found fascinating.  Now that she is off at Leith’s during the week, Juls’ entertaining posts are farther apart but it’s great to hear what she’s learning so I always look forward to each installment.

Marmaduke Scarlet, written by Rachel Kelly, first caught my eye when she made Hainanese Chicken Rice for her first entry into +belleau kitchen’s Random Recipe Challenge.  Many recipes have a story of her childhood in England and Kuala Lumpur, which you know I love, and they all have an amusing introduction.  As much as I love a good recipe, and Rachel’s got some great ones, I will often read a blog, just for a funny story of cakes with stubbed toes and potential bullet holes.  It's all here.

Fourth up is City Hippy Farm Girl, which is, in the author’s own words, all about her hippy tendencies and farm girl aspirations - trying to live simply and sustainably in a city flat.  Brydie cooks for her husband and three “monkeys” doing her best to buy local, in season produce, which is something I aspire to, but seldom manage.  The first post I read, she was squaring off with beets and, after losing that particular battle her whole life, finally emerged victorious!  I love beets but I can certainly understand the challenge since my dear husband does not.  And finally she makes wonderful jams and waxes eloquent about Italy and bakes gorgeous ricotta tarts.  A woman after my own heart.


The Kitchen Maid is the personal project of journalist Lucy Corry, who writes for various online and print media but the blog, she says, is just her, making things, telling stories, taking photos and having fun.  As always, in all the blogs I like, you are probably going to get a back story with each recipe.  And she is likely to turn her kitchen disasters into triumphs and learn from her mistakes.  I love the breezy way she writes and feel as if a friend is sending me a few recipes to try.

Teaspoon of Spice is written by two dieticians +Serena Ball and +Deanna Segrave-Daly, who, as their tagline says, love food as much as you do.  Honestly, if you didn’t know they were dieticians, you would never guess by their stories or the way their recipes are presented.  I went way back to the beginning when I discovered their blog and have yet to find a mention of diet or nutrition.  Which is the right way to do it, if you ask me.  The four-letter D words scares folks off.  Their recipes are just delicious and the photographs are beautiful.


Little Macaroon is written by the very clever Camilla.  She’s Scottish and she lived in and loved Singapore for two years, both of which immediately made me like her.  And her prose about life  and food is poetry.  She’s also very funny.  And if you are a knitter, you’ll find lots of interesting posts about that too.

The last blog for today’s round up is called Appetite for China.  I discovered it when a fellow Cookbook Junkie posted a photo of a delicious dish she had just made from author Diana Kuan’s The Chinese Takeout Cookbook.  Diana grew up in Puerto Rico and then Boston, watching her family run Chinese restaurants, and eating Chinese food whenever and wherever they traveled.  She shares some wonderful, tasty recipes with, of course, stories and I want to make and eat every single one.  And she shares my fondness for chicken wings.


And that's it for this installment but stay tuned for Part Three sometime in the near future.  I hope you find a few new blogs to like in my Blog Love Fest round up!  But most importantly, thank you for reading my blog and for all your love and support.  I love you all, lovely people!

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Food Blog Love Fest 2013

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Sometime back in December, my fellow food blogger and friend, +Jennifer Field, aka PastryChefOnline suggested to a bloggers group we both belong to that we should each post about some of the bloggers that inspire us and the blogs we really love to read.   So I started making a list of my favorites.  I’d like to share some of them with you today.

Eggton – I discovered this blog in late 2011 as I started to become really involved with other food blogs for the first time.  It’s written by the very funny Katherine who left her job as an attorney in the big city of New York to move to Alabama and entertain us by writing hilarious posts about her experiences, accompanied by delicious recipes and adorable photos of her pups.   Here’s her backstory which is also the first post on her blog.  I started reading her back here and spent the next few hours reading all of her posts from the archives.  And then every post since. You should too.  Try not to snort coffe out of your nose.  After all, who hasn't done this with the hotel minibar? 

Movita Beaucoup – This one’s another blog full of humor and good recipes.  Movita Beaucoup aka Rachael Dyer is a ballet teacher recently turned baking school student whose seasonal competitions (Pumpkin carving,  gingerbread house making and birthday cake baking) have become legend.  Because of the rigors of school, her posts don’t come as often as they used to, but I always do a small happy dance when there is a new one in my inbox.  And she has the best one pot, yes: pot, brownie recipe.

Pastrychefonline  - Jenni Field is a former special ed teacher who became a pastry chef, who loves to teach.  And we are her willing pupils!  Because she is awesome like that.  Her Facebook page  is filled with happy postings of home life and kitchen shenanigans that draw friends into her world and the joy of baking and cooking.  One of her specialties is Van Halen pound cake and she often bakes these for fans!  Her website has wonderful recipes as well as explanatory videos that teach solid techniques.  On my to-do list this year:  homemade puff pastry from this video right here. 

Dear Lauren, Love Mom - Each post is written as a letter from mother to daughter and it’s the stories of their lives in food. Many of them are touching and have great family history stories but each post is like a love letter with a good recipe (The best kind of love letter, don’t you think?) and this is the blog I most wish I had thought to write. Who doesn't want to leave her daughters with a legacy of recipes?

The Skint Foodie - A good fun read from a guy who was down and out and managed to pull his socks up.  (N.B. Skint means broke.) I find his story inspiring in so many ways, not the least of which is his ability to create beautiful meals on a very frugal budget.  Some of my favorite posts are the cheese board challenges, where he commits to choosing a cheeseboard, with three cheeses, for under £7.50 (US$12) which include notes from the cheese shop girl.  I always learn so much and have added many To-Try cheeses to my list.  As a single man living alone, he cooks for one and most of his posts are for delicious recipes for one or two.  Perfect for me most of the year but easily doubled if you have a larger family.  If you like the British sense of humor, you are gonna love this guy.  And you cannot help but admire him.

One Man’s Meat - Conor Bofin is a funny, dry Irishman, with a great sense of humor, who is also a great cook. He has a way with words and cooks good wholesome food with a personal flair.   His long-suffering family eats very well.  He’s one of those bloggers that raises the game for commenters.  When the writer is so witty, the commenters feel they need to be too.  Or is that just me?  And if you are a food blogger, you’ll like this one.

The Curvy Carrot - I found this blog while looking for vegetarian dishes for when my daughters were visiting.  Shanon Lacy is a doctor, in fact, a board-certified pathologist to be exact, but except for on her About Me page it doesn’t come up and her recipes are all about being healthy and indulgent.  Sometimes I just sit and browse because her gorgeous photos are so, well, gorgeous. And she made cheese soufflĂ©s! 

And one final blog for today.  I have many more on my list so I hope to do the occasional post like this till I get through them!

Back Road Journal - These beautiful recipes and photos come to us from Karen, who lives in a 1730s house in New England with 300 apple trees and a husband who, like her, loves to travel.  The house is a feature in most posts lately, all decorated for Christmas, and, I can’t get enough of it!  It’s not that I want to live in the country, but I would sure love that dream house.  And to travel with her while she takes the back roads and enjoys the often missed good things that the freeway passes by

I hope you pay these lovely people a visit and enjoy their blogs as much as I do.  Tell them Stacy sent you.  Some of them won't have a clue, but that's okay. :)

Enjoy!

Follow the links below to see the blogs my fellow bloggers love.  And spread the LOVE!