Five Fun Things on Friday (3-4-11)

Happy Friday everyone!  It’s interesting how even when you are “retired” and work at home, Friday feels a bit different than any other day.  It’s been a month since I’ve shared one of my lists of Five Fun Things, and this week I found some great ones, so read on and get ready to smile!

If you read many food blogs, you may have noticed I work hard to keep my blog focused on the food.  I turn down lots of requests to promote books for other bloggers, but in this case I have two fun reasons for telling you about Chocolate & Vicodin, the latest book by blogger Jennette Fulda. I started reading Jennette’s blog in 2006, and I was captivated by her writing and the story of how she lost over 200 pounds on the South Beach Diet.  When I attended the 2006 BlogHer Conference, I met a book editor who asked if I knew any good writers who might want to write a book.  I mentioned Jennette and that ended up being the connection that led to a contract for her first book, Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir, which I also talked about on my blog. 

Fast forward a few years when Jennette has quit her job to create Make My Blog Pretty, a web-design company, and last year I hired her to re-design Kalyn’s Kitchen to create the look you see now!  As you can probably tell, I think Jennette is ultra-talented, and wish her all the success in the world with the new book.   Not everyone could write an entertaining book about a chronic headache, but I’m reading the book right now and enjoying her writing at the same time I’m wishing her darn headache would just go away!  (Blogger disclosure:  I bought this book myself and Jennette didn’t ask me to write about it on the blog.)

You may know about this because it’s really been making the rounds (and now has over 6,000,000 views on You Tube), but if you haven’t seen this video of a baby laughing while the dad rips up a job rejection letter, you must watch it immediately!  I’d say bookmark this page, and watch that video every time your spirits need a little boost.

I spotted this video on Facebook of a group of girls aged 6, 7, and 8 singing The Star Spangled Banner at a basketball game in Texas, and every time I’ve listened to it I’ve gotten goosebumps!  This is another complete mood-booster and not to be missed!  (And can someone explain to me why these girls are not singing The Star Spangled Banner at the Superbowl or at least on national TV somewhere?  Let’s hope we’ll be seeing that happen soon!)

My own experience taking food photos is sometimes frustrating, but in a completely different way than  what Katy at Thought for Food describes in How to Take a Saliva-Inducing Photo for Your Food Blog.  Even if you’re not a blogger, I think you’ll get a laugh out of this and be duly impressed with the great shots she’s able to end up with.

I get a lot of PR e-mails about new food-related internet sites, most of which I just delete quickly and forget about.  However, recently I got an e-mail letting me know about FoodFacts.com, a site where you can enter the name of a food product and get a list of all the ingredients it contains, nutritional information, and even a FoodFacts “health score” ranking the product on a scale of 1-10 for how healthful it is.  I had fun looking up a few of my favorite products here; let me know what you think!