Sweet Talking

When Giz and Psychgrad chose us for the Arte y Pico award earlier this month, we newbie bloggers were so touched that the ensuing post was halfway between endearing and saccharine. Krysta, one of our awardees, has since then politely informed us that she "doesn't take compliments well"... by which she means "Puh-lease. Can we save the valley girl 'Your my BFF For-4eva!' emoticon language and pretend for one minute that we're actually adults who simply enjoy one another's company?" So I'll pretend to be veteran blogger and contain my enthusiasm for the people below.


While checking up on Melissa a few days ago over at Alosha's Kitchen, I skimmed her 'More Awards' post, to see if it was anyone I knew. Bing! Melissa, apparently, appreciates our zany food choices and the back and forth banter of a two voice blog. She appears to also be hinting that the purpose of our blog is to evangelize for male home cooking. Melissa, honey, I hate to break it to you, but that struggle took place a year ago and would have required blogging with more profanity than our current public would appreciate ("Dear. Can't you even make dinner once???? I slave away every night, etc."). All glib remarks aside, Melissa's enthusiasm for cooking and expanding her culinary horizons is absolutely laudable: she approaches the foodie blog world as a resource and it's exciting to watch her cooking style evolve over time. It also helps that she's one of the most unabashedly friendly folks out there. The sincere affability that I was talking about at the beginning? Yeah, that's Melissa.

There are three folks to whom we would like to pass this award:

-- Cathy over at The Noble Pig. Cathy is my most recent addition to my mental short list of blogs I check every day. She blogs about wine!! Do you have any idea how rare that is on the foodie blogosphere? And she does it really well: she knows a ton, but she's able to communicate to your average Joe. I guess it helps that she's working to set up a vineyard in Willamette Valley (how freakin' cool is that?? Best Pinot Noir in the country is produced there!). And I love her for calling her husband "the Wild Boar." She's fantastic, go check her out.

-- Ruth over at Ruth's Kitchen Experiments. Ruth works for the Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland, which is wickedly awesome to begin with. Some of my best friends from high school were American Protestant outreach workers posted in Geneva, so knowing Ruth feels like I've come full circle. Ruth is also recently married (with a super cute post about her one-year anniversary shebang). But the real reason that I'm giving this award to Ruth is that she's created a Food Event that I'm convinced is going to become The Next Big Thing: Bookmarked Recipes. The gist of it is that you submit a dish that came from a recipe clipping, an earmarked cookbook, or a bookmarked blog post, and Ruth posts the compilation every Monday. Now, which one us doesn't have a massive, overwhelming collection of magazine clippings, cookbooks, and blog bookmarks?? Just like everyone makes pasta for Pasta Presto Night, everyone has recipes bookmarked for Ruth's event.

-- And finally, a new friend: Molly over at A Year in the Kitchen. Molly, out of all of us, truly deserves this award because her blog has an actual purpose. She created her food blog "as an exercise in discipline" and vowed to write every day. What makes her even more unique is that she successfully blogs without photos, an accomplishment that my prose, at least, would not allow me to aspire to. Molly's a great writer. Check out her hysterical posts on Rachel Ray if you need to be convinced.

All right ladies and gents, go frolic and be merry. We have one of our best friends from college coming out to visit us this weekend, so we may be sporadic over the next few days. I hope not, but you never know. In the mean time, I'm off to clean the scum out of the bathroom and stash the dirty clothes under the bed. I refuse to believe that we're the only ones out here that have an immaculate kitchen but a disastrous every-other-room.