Extra! Extra! Read All About It! Announcing.... TWO for TUESDAYS!

This Tuesday marks the start of the Two for Tuesdays! Blog Hop Carnival.  Two for Tuesdays is the brainchild of Alex from A Moderate Life.  It began on her site as a day to link up one (or two) of your blog posts that featured REAL FOOD.  Recipes, anecdotes, stories, photos, reviews...anything your blogged about featuring REAL food.  What is REAL food, you ask?  Think: slow food, traditional food, hand-prepared food, nourishing food...food that is NOT processed....food that doesn't come from a package...food that your great-grandmother would have made &/or eaten.  REAL food is homemade. REAL food is from scratch.  REAL food has recognizable ingredients.  REAL food is made from traditional ingredients.  REAL food is food you make with your own hands...from food grown, milled, raised by you or by people (not machines).  Think family farmer.  Think farmer's market.  Think garden.  Think local grain mill.  Think REAL.

This doesn't mean you have to have a blog that focuses ONLY on REAL food.  But the post that you link up on Tuesday, should!  I'm the first to admit that I was raised on a mostly Western diet.  I've eaten my fair share of mashed potatoes made from flakes in a box.  I've eaten corned beef hash that plopped out in the shape of the tin it came in.  Crispy, fried spam wrapped in soft white bread still kinda makes me drool just thinking about it.  Twinkies aren't a food group?  You get the picture, right?  Fortunately, to supplement my tinned, boxed, bagged, deep-frozen diet...I also had a grandma who made her own jams and jellies from fruits and berries in the orchards surrounding her home.  I grew up eating and making homemade cookies more often than the ones in the cookie aisle.  We couldn't afford to eat out all that often, so most days were filled with the scent of meat roasting in the oven or simmering in the crockpot.  I had two parents who worked and like most American families in the 80's, we fell into the ease of toaster tarts, brightly colored cereal with marshmallows and a diet riddled with high-fructose corn syrup.  While I know it'll take me a while to go totally REAL food, I'm working in the right direction!  I have classic withdrawal symptoms from "fruit" snack deprivation.  I own a dehydrator and I am completely capable of making REAL fruit snacks. 

I'll cut the ramble short and continue my announcement.  Alex decided to turn Two for Tuesdays into a Blog Hop Carnival.  This means that it will be featured on more than one site!  Betcha can guess that girlichef is joining in the carnival...along with FOUR other fabulous blogs, Health Food Lover (Michelle) and BethStedman.com (Beth), Rendering Lard (Butter Powered Bike), Frugality and Crunchiness with Christy (Christy).  Are you wondering what a blog hop is?? It's facilitated by a linky generator...and it allows links that YOU have added to a site (say girlichef) to show up on several other sites at the same time (say... A Moderate Life, Health Food Lover, BethStedmandotcom, Rendering Lard, and Frugality and Crunchiness with Christy).  Pretty cool, huh?  Quadruple exposure.  So, if you want to participate, you simple add your post URL to the linky because on any one of our sites and it'll show up on all of our sites.


As we grow, we will be working on a list of participants, to include blog links and Twitter addresses.  We will try to give further exposure to participants through Tweeting (using #24T) your entries, Stumbling, Digging, etc.  When you participate, you will automatically be added to the blogroll.  You can also leave a comment (including your blog, email, Twitter handle...whatever you wish to share) on this post (or any of the other hosts intro's) or email any of  us directly.  My email address is girlichef at yahoo dot com. 


I'll add updates to this page as we figure more stuff out and questions come in, etc.  Please feel free to email me or leave a comment with a question/concern...I'll get back with you as quickly as girlishly possible.  Also, if you have a quesiton, it's likely someone else did, too...so don't be afraid to ask!  Check comments section for answers and updates, too!

*Please...

~be sure to add a link to one of the blogs hosting the event on each post you are submitting.

~make sure your post is about REAL food...while we are happy to have you participate, this blog hop is about sharing, learning about, preparing, and eating REAL food.  If you have a question about a particular ingredient, feel free to email any of us and we'll get right back with you!

...while we don't want to exclude anyone, if these 2 simple requests aren't included, your post may (okay, more than likely WILL) be deleted from the carnival.  Thanks for understanding...it's only fair to those people who DO take the time to link-up and play nice.  It's understandable if you don't have a post that fits every single week.  Just join us when you do!!*

And once you've linked up, why not take a few minutes for visit another link or two from the carnival...I know everybody would be happy to receive input and you never know...you might learn something or discover tomorrow's dinner.....