I won a Stylish Blogger Award...

... from the inspiring Angela Hirst at the good soup. I've been following Angela's blog since I first started The Hungry Writer project in October 2010. She's a cook, writer, researcher and teacher who completed her PhD, Eating the Other, Levinas's Ethical Encounter, in 2005. She says this about herself :

I love to write. It feels like dragging myself out of bed from a very very deep sleep each time I do it, but once I start, I don’t want to stop.

I love it when people cut through the romantic illusions of what makes a writer and tell it as it is. And I love writers who love to cook and eat!

Because blogging is all about learning and sharing The Stylish Blogger Award requires me to pass on the award to 15 other blogs I admire (and because, as Angela says, my blog stands at the edge of an almost dimensionless sea of food blogs there will be a few blogs that are rather more loosely linked to food) and to share 7 things about myself. So: 

1. I hated to eat when I was small. I used to sit in front of my dinner plate for hours, staring at it, unable to comprehend the process of moving such a pile of food from there to me.
2. I have dodgy pheromones. I attract cats, children under 7 and old men over 70.
3. The first time I tried an oyster, in 1988, was before I knew you could chew them. I tipped one into my mouth at the Toronto Oyster Festival and it was so big it took two swallows to shift it from mouth to stomach. I still shiver at the memory.
4. I met my husband on a blind date. We got engaged 20 days later and married 23 years later.
5. I have children by proxy - step-grandchildren, nieces and nephews, a great-neice and nephew - and I like that situation very much.
6. I cooked my first 3 course meal from Robert Carrier's weekly recipe magazines. I've never seived so much stuff in my life!
7. Most days when I wake up I ask myself, What's for breakfast? or Shall I stay in bed and read?

Some of the blogs below are Very Well Known and really do not need any endorsement from me but they have all inspired me in very different ways and I wanted to acknowledge them:

Rhona McAdam's Iambic Cafe. Rhona's a writer and an eater who believes we should spend at least as much time learning where our food comes from as poets do placing commas. She can be a little scary at times but the world needs people who give us a shake and make us really look at things.

Christina Wenger's A Thinking Stomach and her linked Recipe blog. She also grows her own food. An inspiration.

Anita Breland's Anita's Feast where food meets travel. She says: My mother still wonders how I developed such a food-centric outlook. After all, she reminded me recently, “For your entire childhood, you wouldn’t even eat your peas!” Yep, I've been there too!

The English Kitchen that proves that the UK has some very fine food, and that's written by a Canadian, who quotes Baudelaire at the top of her blog. Food, poetry... what more can a Hungry Writer ask for?

Suzan Colón whose book, Cherries in Winter, I found and read and adored while on holiday in Florida in January. An absorbing story of food, family, love and honesty.

Jamie Schler's Life's a Feast blog. Her latest recipe combined panna cotta and Grand Marnier. If I knew where she lived I'd buy the house next door.

David Leite's blog on Leite's Culinaria. He's so funny, and forget about buying the house next door, I'd rent his understairs cupboard to eat some of the food he talks about.

The perfect fried egg

Shannalee's (pronounced like Shauna-lee) Food Loves Writing, a literary food blog about food and everything else. What isn't there to like?! Shannalee also likes a good fried egg on toast and so do I, as this photo proves.

Monica Bhide's A Life of Spice whose latest post, Dare to be Different, talks about writing what you care about, not just about what you know.

And here are my remaining Stylish Blogger Awards that are more loosely, but still sincerely, related to food:

Deborah Lawrenson is a British novelist and journalist who lives in the UK and Provence. Apparently, one critic complained about an excess of food references in her novel, The Art of Falling. How weird can you get?!

Tamar Yoseloff's Invective Against Swans is a diet of poetry and art. She is one of those rare people who loves to eat as much, and as often, as I do.

Patricia Debney started her Waving and Drowning blog after her son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Patricia's a friend and I know how her life, the whole family's life, was turned upside down and inside out by the changes this diagnosis insisted upon. Food here is a very different animal, it both saves and threatens, and her posts are smart and inspiring.

Clare Grant's Three Beautiful Things because food, unsurprisingly, is often one of her beautiful things, and occasionally sneaks in as a minor character too.

And here come The Rules if you'd like to continue paying this forward:

• Acknowledge who gave you the award, that's ME
• Tell your readers 7 things about yourself
• Pass on the award to 15 food blogging loves (you can stretch that rule, as I have, or even change it)
• Tell the award recipients you’ve done it