I am sorry to respond so late to several blogging award nominations. First, thanks to Transplanted Cook, an American living in Britain, who nominated me for the Versatile Blogger award. Her blog — one of my favorites — is an exploration of expat life through food and cooking.

To accept this award, I’m supposed to list seven random facts about myself, which I did when I accepted the Very Inspiring Blogger Award  back in May. I’m afraid my readers will get tired of all this randomness, but here goes one more time. I’ve decided to make this one more food-oriented.

1) I would have accepted this award sooner, but I cut my finger (on a very non-colonial kitchen gadget) and couldn’t type easily for a while. So the first thing I’ll share is that I’m accident-prone. I never had this problem until I became a mother, which suggests to me that the real issue is multitasking.

2) I was not interested in cooking when I was little, although I did like my Easy Bake Oven. (They opened in the front in those days; what’s with the new side-entry design?!)

3) The best cook in my family is my brother Greg, who took cooking classes when he was about ten years old and learned to make dishes like Chicken Cordon Bleu. He’s the one who should be writing a food blog.

4) I learned to bake from my grandmother. She made hundreds and hundreds of wonderful cookies every Christmas. Tragically, my grandfather preferred Oreos.

5) My first really fancy restaurant meal was at Le Cirque back when it was on East 65th Street. I still remember my entrée: Paupiette of Sea Bass, wrapped in potato slices. Ahhh…

6) I’ve taken just one formal cooking class, at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. The subject was cake baking, and I learned a lot (including that some baking students can be really competitive). But my Holy Grail is King Arthur Flour’s baking school in Norwich, Vermont.

7) My Korean mother-in-law is a superb cook. She keeps trying to teach me how to make kalbi tang, or short-rib soup, but I can’t seem to replicate hers. I know she’s not telling me something, I just know it!

Now here are my nominations for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award. No pressure to accept, but if you do, please post the award image above, share seven random facts about yourself, and nominate up to 15 bloggers. Finally, be sure to notify your nominees.

My nominees are:
The Quirk and the Cool
British Food: A History
Stef McDonald
Joy, Lovely Joy
Ancient Foods
Memories of a Nonya Kitchen

I’d also like to thank Aneela from The Odd Pantry blog, who nominated me for the Liebster Award and the WordPress Family Award. Aneela is from India but lives in San Francisco; she is a wonderfully creative cook and a much more prolific blogger than I am! I will officially accept her awards when I can come up with some more nominees. I’m particularly holding off on the Liebster as some of the questions are too much for me in my current frazzled holiday state. For instance, “Describe yourself in three words.” Let’s see: “irritable,” “tired” … okay, I think it would be best if I do this when December’s over. 😉