Sichuan Orange Chicken and Awards to go around!

If you click here, you'll see that cook's Illustrated (aka America's Test Kitchen, Cook's Country) have decided it's not ok for us bloggers to post their recipes. Even if they can't copyright a list of ingredients, and you write it all up in your own words. Especially if you make modifications to the recipe! God forbid you try to mess with one of their "perfect" recipes! They test each one 100 times and "don't allow modifications." WTFever.

From what I've seen, most cookbook authors are cool with bloggers making and blogging about their recipes. They embrace it, even! I have bought at least 3 cookbooks lately because you guys blog about them, and I think "Hey, I want more--I'm getting the book!" I know others that have done the same thing.

Cook's Illustrated is like Fight Club, but for recipes, I guess. And I also guess they like PR--who doesn't? But guess what? People are talking about them today, except they don't have anything good to say. That's what happens when you have a "team" that scours blogs and makes offending bloggers remove their recipes.

So I'm being proactive and removing this one. If any of you have bookmarked it, please email me and I'll send it to you. Because that's not intent to distribute publicly. It's one friend emailing another friend.

And I'm not doing any more of their recipes. Or on second thought--maybe I will, with modifications, and not name them as a source, hehe. Because they don't want any good things said about them. And you know, it's Fight...I mean Recipe Club and all. shhhh.....





Easy. Faster than ordering take out. Better for you than greasy take out. Full of flavor.
Did I get you hooked in yet? No? Then take a look at this:



This one is delicious, a bit spicy (which you can control), and addictive. Like "keep picking from the pan" addictive. I'm not saying that I did that, of course. My husband did. :) Seriously! But I would have, if I wasn't already full.

Served simply with brown rice on the side. And yeah, yeah, I know--there's no green veggie on that plate. So sue me, hehe. But hopefully anyone upset that there's no green will forgive me when they taste this. It's just packed with flavor! There's fresh OJ, which isn't completely necessary, I suppose, but it's so good in this. Also some orange zest and hoisin sauce. That's the sauce for this dish--just three things! Did I mention quick and easy?

No, I'm not a freaky super-juicer. But my KitchenAid food processor with juicing attachment is. There is NO juice left in those!

Sichuan Orange Chicken

AWARDS!

Pam at For the Love of Cooking has bestowed upon me the "Arte y Pico" award. I love her blog--her pictures and recipes are constantly making me hungry! Thanks for the award, Pam!



Passing it along to:

VeggieGirl at VeggieGirl
Patricia at Technicolor Kitchen
Rhyley'sGranny at Tea and Wheaten Bread
Kathy at Panini Happy
Meryl at Inspired Bites


LyB at And then I do the dishes has awarded me the "I Love You This Much" award! Thank you, LyB! If you haven't checked out her blog yet, get your butt over there and prepare to get hungry! I'm feeling the love...



This award goes to:

HoneyB at The Life and Loves of Grumpy's Honeybunch
Sarah at Homemade
Lori at Made Healthier
Nikki at Canarygirl.com
Tiffany at Life After Gluten

And last, but certainly not least, Farida at Farida's Azerbaijani Cookbook has passed the "Yum Yum" Award along to me. Thanks you so much, Farida! You guys want yum? Go check out Farida's blog!



And my recipients are:

Garrett at The Flavor of Vanilla
Shaye at Smarter Than Pancakes
Renae at Renae du Jour
Katie at One Little Corner of the World
Amy at Delicious By Nature

All of these blogs are wonderful, so go check them out!

So is every other blog I read regularly! I think every single one of you deserve an award for all of the hard work, creative writing, photo taking and eating cold (I know because I do, too!) you do nearly every day.

So I've created a new award, and it's for each and every one of you! It's the "Hard Working Food Blogger" award. And every single one of you guys deserve it. It's created for all of you because you take care in what you post. You stop during cooking to take step by step photos. You set up shots and take 20 or 30 (or maybe even more) photos to find the one that's just right, which means you often eat cold food. You upload, edit and post photos that you secretly pray Tastespotting or Foodgawker or any of the others will publish. You try to write interesting and witty things about your food, and sometimes have no clue what to write. Then you hope that your readers will like what they see. I know all of this because I go through it every time I make food and a blog post.

So take this award and post it on your blog if you like. Pass it along to anyone you want to. We're all hard working food bloggers and we are all deserving of a pat on the back.


Another quick note--summer is keeping me very busy. So keeping up with all of the blogs in my reader can be difficult. There's a lot in there, hehe! I am reading all of your posts, and can't always comment on each and every one, but I'm trying. By the time I finish going from the top of the list to the bottom, it's time to start all over again! :) Just didn't want anyone to think I was forgetting them. You guys are all very important to me. xoxo