Hello My Name Is...

Welcome to A Cook and Her Books! I'm making new friends this weekend at FoodBlog South and want to show off my blog a little bit. Kind of how I straighten up my house when company comes - the mixer and the food processor get pulled off the counter and put in the pantry. The shoes get lined up neatly by the door and coats pulled off the backs of chairs and put away in the closet. (A warning: if you visit my real house, whatever you do, don't open the door to the laundry room.)

Now to my little blog, which is three years old now (first post: Jan. 18, 2008, not that you really need to read it). For the past year, I've written for the Salon Kitchen Challenge, a weekly contest with no actual prize other than being singled out and placed on the food pages of Salon.com (with 5.8 million unique monthly visitors!). I completed every challenge in 2010, and because I have trouble letting go, I've posted two more this year, on tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.

In the past year, I turned out more than 50 stories for the Salon Kitchen Challenge, posting whenever there was a contest, even while on on vacation. My favorite stories from the challenge are about breakfast with my four-year old, a chocolate and mint cake for "green food" week, mango mojitos with Marcus Samuelsson, peach ice cream "Baked Aleutians" cupcakes, homegrown tomatoes, eggplant, apple dumplings and rutabagas. I also wrote about the Laughing Girl from an old family photograph, above, going on a picnic. Along the way, I entered the Georgia State Fair and won a blue ribbon for my Morning Glory Muffins. Take a few minutes, put up your feet and and read through my stories. You may even sit on the rocking chair on my front porch. I'll bring cookies and iced tea out in a jiffy.

- Lucy