You Make My Day Award

As I had reported a few days ago, Lynn of the blog Colorjoy awarded me a You Make My Day Award for blogland happiness. Lynn is the most committed blogger I know, and her blog is so interesting with such a nice variety of subjects. If you aren't into knitting, you will find music or food or art or other topics of interest. So it is an honor to be in her list. So, now I will follow-up and provide a list of a few of the blogs (besides Lynn's of course) that I have found inspirational. Not all of these are vegetarian, and a few are art-related:

• First, I would like to salute Karma-Free Cooking. Madelyn and I met at a culinary class in Southern Florida almost a year ago. Now that she has a blog too, I have stayed even more connected to her despite our geographic distance. That is priceless! Madelyn's passion for cooking and healthy vegetarian eating is contagious, and that's a good thing!

• Before I started my own blog, I really hadn't visited many food blogs. Maybe that is strange, but that's how it is! I'm really quite new to the world of blogs in general. But Kitchen Space is one of the food blogs I have followed the longest. Ana truly is happy and friendly, as her profile states!

• The Great Big Vegetable Challenge is fantastic. I do not have any children, but having 18 nieces and nephews, I am quite impressed by this woman's tenacity at serving her children such a wide array of vegetables. It is truly jaw dropping. I think I was a one of the very rare children that actually always loved vegetables. True story: when I was a child I would pass up dessert, especially if it was pie, to eat all of the leftover veggies...

• As a big fan of breakfast, Simply Breakfast is a blog I really appreciate. The photography is illuminating. I think of it more as an art journal.

• This blog is in Spanish, Verduras Para Todos. Many people contribute recipes to the blog, so there is a little of everything, but it is all vegetarian. Reading recipes in Spanish comes second nature to me, as my Mexican mother-in-law has been giving me scores of recipes over the last 15 years. Actually, it was by reading recipes that I first started learning Spanish...

• Here is another blog with breathtaking photography, Lucy's Kitchen Notebook. Her blog focuses on the Lyon area of France where she has moved from the US with her French husband. I have a soft spot for France in general, having been an exchange student there more than once...

• This one art-related, and it is one of my favorite blogs, On My Desk. It's a wondrous peek into creative spaces.

• Maybe this shouldn't count, as it's not a blog technically, but it is similar in concept to the above blog, and I truly love it: http://www.flickr.com/groups/artstudio/pool/. It's one of my favorite things on the Internet right now. I can't even begin to add the number of hours I have spent there... And since I otherwise wouldn't have an opportunity to shout about how wonderful this site is, here was my chance!

• This also is probably not technically a blog, but it at least features glimpses of blogs. I go here just about every day, and that says a lot, as I am truly not a very loyal website follower. There are few websites (are there any except email?) that I visit on a daily basis. I wander back now and then to some sites, but usually not daily. However, I somehow find myself here more days than not: Tastespotting. There are some truly beautiful and also some truly frightening things highlighted there. You never know what you'll see.

• And, now, for my tenth, I'll go back to listing a real blog. This one is another art-related, and it is also in Spanish. I do not know exactly why, but Ximena Pan enchants me! I even love her name. The attention to detail to each of her collages is amazing. She actually recreates the items in her scenes, makes little dresses out of fabric, etc. Just look, I can't explain it justly. She is the mother of Ximena Maier, who writes the wonderful food blog Lobstersquad (gotta love it: a food blog with drawings!).

Anyway, it was fun putting together this glimpse of where you can often find me out in cyberspace.