Featured Blog: The Confounded Cook and Giveaway!!

My next featured blog again is not a book blog, per se, although he does sometimes talk about cookbooks and books.  Greg is a friend of mine from the Barnes and Noble where I work.  He is one of those blogs that has kept me going as well.  Reading his blog, and wanting to keep up with mine and do as much with my blog as he was doing, well, my competitive side needed that to keep going sometimes.  Greg got a new job a while back, and it has slowed down a bit his blogging, and it took him away from the bookstore, and I really miss getting to talk to him on the nights I'd come in after teaching all day, and he'd be there for a half hour more before his shift was over.  Okay, without further ado, read about The Confounded Cook!

Sharing Our Blogoversary (While Cooking With Mortal Instruments)

Could it be three years already, Lisa?  Lisa and I started our little blogs in the same month of the same year and here we are still workin’ it.  We wrote about our passions: in Lisa’s case, it’s fiction mostly of the young-adult variety; in my case, it's life with a food theme….every variety of food.  I started my blog, The Confounded Cook with the intention of documenting my frequently knuckle-headed attempts at becoming a better cook.  Lisa started hers by featuring her favorite books.  Three years later, my blog has turned into more of a personal blog; a roller-coaster of emotional highs and lows down life’s highways and byways that feature cooking, restaurants and food.  My blog has suffered a bit of an identity crisis, but it reflects my ever-chaotic life.  I still love food and blogging though and will never stop, but watch out for my frequent outbursts of ridiculous randomness.  Lisa, however, has remained laser-focused on her books as well as bettering her blog and the results (and number of followers) show it. I couldn’t be happier for her or more in awe of her as a blogger.

Lisa and I share this love of literature and have been out and proud bookworms our entire lives. We worked together at a chain bookstore for several years and it was she who turned me onto young adult literature.  Lisa sometimes winces at my more adventurous palate with food and by the same token, I don’t always share the same taste in books with her.  For instance, as I am a guest on this blog I loathe admitting that I didn’t care for a certain uberpopular young adult series…let’s just say I’m on Team Not-A-Fan.  That said, I totally dug the Hunger Games and Rick Riordian’s Percy Jackson series.  The most recent series that Lisa guided towards was the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare.  I was enthralled with the adventures of Clary, Jace, Alec, Magnus and Simon. I loved the dialogue and the characters and in this day and age when everyone and their sister is writing paranormal teen fice Mortal Instruments series is utterly refreshing. One of the reasons I reveled in this series was due to it being anchored in present-day Brooklyn and the cool, hipster lifestyle that Clary and Simon lived; complete with some trendy food settings.  For Lisa’s blogoversary, I cooked up a little chicken salad from East Village Ukrainian eatery and coffee shop Veselka; a little joint that pops up in the fourth book in the series The City of Fallen Angels.  The recipe is from the Veselka cookbook and is featured on another fun blog Cooking With Veselka.  Go here to my blog for the recipe…

Happy Blogoversary, Lisa!  Here’s to many, many more!  

Thanks Greg!  And it's okay if you aren't a Twilight fan, yeah, I know that's what you're referring to.  :-)  And if I can get enough entries, I will giveaway a copy of the first book in the Mortal Instruments series, City of Bones.  If I get at least 10 people to enter in the Rafflecopter below, I will choose a winner on August 31st, the last day of my month long 3rd Blogoversary celebration!  So whether you're new to the series and want to get started, or just don't own the first book in the series yet, please sign up below!  One rule, you must live where The Book Depository ships.  Check this page to see if you can enter!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Follow Friday #13

It is time for this week's Feature and Follow Friday, hosted by Parajunkee, and Allison Can Read. This is a blog hop that expands your blog following by a joint effort between bloggers.
This week's question is:

It's Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., so we want to know what you are thankful for - blogging related, of course! Who has helped you out along the way? What books are you thankful for reading?

First I am thankful for all the years I have been employed by the Barnes and Noble book company. It is through them that I got my first ARCs. I also met my friend Charlotte, who has her own blog: Charlotte's Web of Books and kind of inspired me to start blogging about books. Along my journey, I've learned lots about book blogging from people like The Story Siren, and even Parajunkee. Even non-book bloggers have helped, like another of my friends from the bookstore, Greg at The Confounded Cook, inspired me with his consistency and dedication to his blog. So many authors that I've met and talked to online through Twitter keep me going too. I also am a big fan of Netgalley.com, another site I learned about from my friend Charlotte, that helps me get to read egalleys of books. And finally, I have to once again thank my bookstore job, as they allowed me to have a table in the store this past summer and fall that had my book recommendations as well as a sign advertising my blog. So that was really cool! And I want to thank Parajunkee for letting me be a featured blogger, and helping me to increase my blog following. I'm thankful for all the great bloggers I meet who share new book titles that I may not have heard of before.

So, what are you thankful for in your book blogging world?