The Versatile Blogger Award

And now for something completely off topic...

The Versatile Blogger Award was given to me by Meg Appleby the author of the Do Good blog. Meg rocks and so does her blog, if you haven't checked it out yet, then you really need to GET ON THAT NOW!

Thank you Meg for giving me my first ever Blog Award!!

So, here are the rules:
- Thank the person who gave you the award!
- Share 5-7 things about yourself.
- Pass the award on to up to 10 other versatile bloggers.
- Let those other bloggers know that you gave them the award

Things About Me:

1. While teaching I was the adviser for many clubs: the Math Team (of course! ...want to buy a t-shirt?),  the Video Game Club, the Anime Club, the Asian American Awareness Club (we took a trip to Chinatown), the Hindu Awareness Club, the Animal Rights Club... I fear I am forgetting one.
2. I once got a zero on a math test in the seventh grade. I answered every question. I got every single one wrong. (One of my favorite things to tell my math students).
3. My mother gave both my brother and I French middle names to honor the fraction of French in our genes and in hopes that one day, one of us would open up a restaurant with a fancy French name. Mine would have been Nicole Dominique's or something like that. (She also secretly signed me up for all types of info from Culinary Arts schools when college choice time came around!).
4. I LOVE Hayao Miyazaki's films. 
5. I once beat my brother in a game of Star Wars Trivia Pursuit by being able to translate what Greedo said to Han Solo in the Cantina from memory. (My brother nearly died!)
6. I have an irrational fear of spiders, E.T. and most aliens.
7. I have a huge crush on my husband :)

My Nominated Versatile Bloggers:

• Margot, more widely known as The Damsel in Dis Dress the author, and my distant teacher through the Old School - Self Reliance 101 blog.
• Gigi, one of my buddies I met through StumbleUpon, who entertains and educates me with her Kludgy Mom blog
• Lishie, avid reader by day and posting all types of tasty treats and meals she shares with her family by night on DeLish! for all of us to enjoy
• Shelley, a special needs mom with a background in Interior Design and Landscape Architecture who is the hostess with the most-est of the current run of the SITS Girls 31 Days to Build a Better Blog - if this woman isn't versatile, then I don't know who is! Shelley's blog is called I'm Still Standing - and Lord knows, with all she has on her plate, that is an appropriate name!

 It is time for me to tell the nominees of their great honor and then go get myself ready for another awards ceremony tonight! (You didn't forget that tonight is Oscar's night, did you?!)

Searching for Sustenance - In My Own Words

Some of you may have heard of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog project by Darren Rowse. I am doing this with the SITS blogging community and I was working on my first assignment today (while I had a completely different post planned for you) and I got a little carried away. In short, the first assignment, called "The Elevator Pitch" is an attempt to get you to define your blog. I always have great difficulty doing this in print, but I can talk to someone about it without a problem. When completely stumped, I came up with a ridiculous writing assignment for myself. I asked myself a question and then gave myself time to just free write on it. Here is my question and answer, for any of you who wonder what my motivation for this blog is.

Question:
 
Nicole, I don't have the Internet, but I hear you write a blog called "Searching for Sustenance" what is that and why do you do it?

Answer:
 
Searching for Sustenance is a blog that I created when I realized that I was eating without thinking. Once my eyes were opened to all of the things I was missing - all of the horrors - I, being a teacher at heart, wanted as many other people to know as possible. I began to tell my friends, my family, and even started slipping things into my high school math lessons to try to shine a light. However, it never seemed enough, it never felt legitimate. Those conversations were always distracted within some other context, and people found a way to forgive themselves, forgive me and take us all off the hook for all of the things we WEREN'T doing to make it better. I couldn't force the issue in those arenas. I needed to find another way.


I decided to create a blog. A blog where I knew, at least in the beginning, I could wax philosophic until the cows came home and believe, or in fact, know, that no one else would be reading but me. However, in the depths of my soul I hoped and wished that eventually I would find like-minded souls. People, who upon reading all these things I kept finding out, would decide this IS something we ALL need to be talking about. This IS something we ALL need to be THINKING about. Food is serious, eating is serious - we can love it and adore it, but do we APPRECIATE it?! 


Searching for Sustenance has two roles - to learn and to teach. I write about the things that I learn in hopes that if I write something wrong, someone out there will find it and comment right away so that we all learn together. And in that way it teaches. I have been a teacher for 12 years, but I never enjoyed the whole idea of "I have all of the answers, here they are for you," that is simply impossible no matter what you are teaching, no matter how long you are doing it. My style is more about, " I enjoy learning about this. I have figured out a lot of different places and resources we can go to in order to learn together. Here is what my experience is telling me might be right in this situation. What do you think?" That's how I roll with this blog as well. I am learning about food, the food industry, ways to eat better and healthier, resources to tap into in order to accomplish that goal and I am gaining more experience with it as I go. I am NO expert, by any means, but I'll share what I know and what I am really curious about is: WHAT DO YOU THINK?




That's it. It helped. I wrote a new About This Blog page and a new About Nicole page. So... um... WHAT DO YOU THINK?