Our First Award

Woah! I opened up my laptop this morning to discover that Giz and Psychgrad have given us the Arte y Pico award! Good Morning, sunshine!


All you veteran bloggers may scoff (ah, those silly awards, really just a popularity contest) and all our non-blogger readers may be puzzled (It's a friggin' jpeg image... what's the big deal?), but we newbie bloggers who wear our hearts on our sleeves are really touched. Someone out there loves us! Or at least finds our thoughts and our writing interesting! Validation! Recognition! It's like moving to a new school and having one of the really nice local girls (or in this case, two really nice local girls) invite you to eat lunch at their table. We feel special!

In this case, the two nice girls are actually Giz and Psychgrad, a mother-daughter combo whose blog we read daily. I've mentioned them before, specifically "It's been lovely to follow their blog since we "met" a couple weeks ago, in part to see how other duo blogs balance the two voices, in part because what woman doesn't see echoes of herself in others' mother-daughter interactions? I almost feel as though I know them, even though blogging can bring out intimate personality quirks while concealing basic identity characteristics." By now we communicate almost daily: Giz provides encouragement to Do when his wine posts scare off the rest of our readers, Psychgrad and I exchange banter over interfaith Passover experiences, etc. These ladies have shown us that bloggie-connections aren't merely a tool to increase your daily hits, but can blossom into actual, honest-to-goodness, Friendships. Thank You, Giz and Psychgrad. Knowing that you find us worth reading is a great compliment.

This award was created by an blogger-craft artist in Uruguay and is not limited to the Foodie community. These are rules that come along with this award:

1) Pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award with their creativity, design, interesting material, and also contribute to the blogger community, no matter what language.

2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog.

3) Each award-winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award.

4) Award-winners and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of "Arte y pico" blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5) Display these rules on your blog.

Interesting material, creativity, contributions to the blogger community... hmmm... After some exemplary joint decision-making negotiations, we would whole-heartedly like to extend this award to:

--Krysta, our favorite Evil Chef Mom. Like Giz and Psychgrad, we consider Krysta a Friend. Her blog is everything we aspire to: it's witty, it's sarcastic, it's whimsical, it's thoughtful... in short, it's real. Krysta doesn't pretend that everything she cooks or does is glossy magazine-perfect (how boring!), she gives it to you strait up. red stained hands, guilt-induced beet ice creams, kitchen fiascos, Krysta is the real deal. And I'm eternally indebted to her: she reminds Do not to kill himself while grilling indoors.

-- Kim at Yummy Mummy Cooks Gourmet, whose every post makes us nearly pee in our pants from laughter. Whenever I'm having a hard day, a five minute visit to Kim's blog will a) make me laugh so hard I get the hiccups, b) remind me that my "hard days" can't shake a stick at her daily routine, yet she approaches motherhood with such practical joviality... wish I could do that!, and c) help me appreciate that my coworkers aren't nearly as annoying as, say, Dora the Explorer.

-- Kate at Thyme for Cooking, whose blog was the first that I found where the writing is just as important as the food. Kate is a wonderful storyteller, sharing tales of the expat life in rural France ... complete with mice and cross-cultural book clubs and fuel outages. I feel an affinity with Kate's perspective, having lived almost half of my life as an expat in French-speaking countries. That, and I uphold her writing style as my model for blogging: it succeeds in being witty and personal and substantive while avoiding the too-common pitfalls of navel-gazing or 'jump to the food' posts.

-- Lisa of Lisa's Kitchen, who excels at Indian vegetarian food. It was Lisa's blog that inspired us to give up meat for Lent, and Lisa's recipes that got us through the six weeks while actually enjoying our dinners. I kid you not, this very morning, while menu planning for the upcoming few days, Do said "oh, I shouldn't make that Malaysian Chicken salad recipe [that he had just enthusiastically clipped from a magazine]. We should really have more vegetarian dishes this week." I kid you not. DO said that. Thank you, Lisa, I never thought I would hear such statements come out of his mouth. You have permanently changed our eating habits.

-- And Jennifer at Becoming a Foodie, an eclectic, artsy D.C. babe who shares Do's affinity for mixed drinks. She's way cooler and funner than we are: she does tastings with atypical soda pop instead of wine, and she invents her own mixed drinks with idiosyncratic names like "the Bee's Knees" or "Honey, drink this!" Jennifer is off on vacation in Paris right now, and we miss her terribly!


Thank you ladies, your blog updates make our day more delightful.