I’m changing things up a little bit this week!  I usually do the Blogger Spotlight on Friday, but tomorrow, my blog is celebrating a big day, so the Blogger Spotlight is coming to you one day early!!

A big welcome to today’s Blogger Spotlight – Julie from Table For Two.  I’ve been following Julie for a couple of months now, and I love her infectious personality.  She is so full of life, and I love how outgoing she is!  And she seems like she’d be a lot of fun to be around!  Julie has a beautiful blog.  All of her food looks wonderful, but some of my favorites are the take out favorites that she has made at home.  If you don’t know Julie, you need to check her out!

Julie Chiou is the author behind the growing food blog, Table for Two, where you can find at http://www.tablefortwoblog.com. She shares her love for food and being in the kitchen. She blogs numerous original and adapted recipes and restaurant reviews, as well as everyday life with her fiancé, Jason! She is a self-taught cook and she found her passion in the kitchen after being immersed in it at a young age helping out her mom. She loves to photograph food wherever she goes and she loves to share her journey in and outside of her kitchen. Come along for the ride!

 
What inspired you to first start writing your blog?
I’ve always been writing a blog, just not necessarily a food blog. It was more of a life blog where I documented my life and what I did, I turned it into a food blog (and changed the domain & branding) in 2011 when I started to get more and more requests of, “where can I get that recipe?” or “how do you make it?” I figured I might as well just put it all online so my family (which most are all overseas) and friends can easily grab them. It’s turned into more than I’ve ever imagined!

What kinds of posts are your favorite to write? What do your readers seem to like the most?
My favorite types of post to write are the recipes that just formulate in my head out of nowhere and that turn into a successful and flavorful dish. I love showing the trial and error in the kitchen. My readers seem to like comfort and dessert dishes the most!

Where do most of your recipes come from?
Everywhere: Family favorites from my mom’s cooking, my own concoctions, magazines, cookbooks, other food bloggers’ blogs.

Do you plan a weekly menu? If so, what inspires your menu?
Yes, I do. I don’t really have an inspiration for my menu, it’s just really whatever sounds good to me at the moment and also what Jason might be craving or would like to see on the menu.

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I’m super excited for today’s Blogger Spotlight, and can’t believe it’s taken me this long to ask her to share here!  Today we have Jenny from Picky Palate.  Jenny started her blog not long after I started mine, and I’ve loved reading her blog over the years.  It’s one that I’ve been following the longest, and one that always makes me leave wanting to get into the kitchen to cook or bake something up.  And although we’ve never met in real life, (when are you coming to Salt Lake, Jenny? ), I’m happy that I can call her one of my friends.  Welcome, Jenny – and thanks for sharing with us here today!

Jenny Flake is the author of the family friendly food blog titled Picky Palate that you can find at www.picky-palate.com. She is a self-taught home cook and an on the go mom to 2 little boys and wife to her high school sweetie. Before Jenny started writing Picky Palate she participated in cooking contests all over the country. She’s been on Food Network’s Build A Better Burger, The Ultimate Recipe Showdown, The National Chicken Cook-off and The Pillsbury Bake-Off. Creating original recipes and capturing food photography is Jenny’s new passion and she loves sharing her journey with her readers. Jenny is thrilled to be writing her first cookbook that will be available September 2012.

What inspired you to first start writing your blog?
After I was done doing cooking competitions I wanted a place to share the recipes I was creating.  I started a little blog back in October 2007 and never imagined Picky Palate would become what it has.

What kinds of posts are your favorite to write?  What do your readers seem to like the most?
I love cooking and baking, but I love photographing and creating fun desserts best.  My readers definitely seem to like my desserts too

Where do most of your recipes come from?
Since 2004, I have been creating my own recipes.  It’s what I love to do.

Do you plan a weekly menu?  If so, what inspires your menu?
I am more of a spontaneous cook, so no weekly menu planning for me. I rarely know what I will be cooking or baking until I wake up in the morning.

What is your favorite recipe posted on your blog?

Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have so many favoritesbut my most popular recipe is my Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

Where to Eat at Disneyland

I also have been loving my “Where To Eat at Disneyland” posts. It’s been so much fun eating and reviewing our way through Disneyland.
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Today, we have our very first male Blogger Spotlight!  I’ve been following Kevin’s blog – Closet Cooking – for years now.  In fact, I think we both started blogging around the same time!  I love how diverse all of the recipes are on Kevin’s blog.  You will find everything from Mediterranean to Korean to good old comfort food.  You can tell he is very passionate about food, and it shows!  Welcome, Kevin, and thanks for sharing with us today!

I had never really paid all that much attention to food and eating was just something that needed to be done. That all changed a few years ago when I came to realize that my meals were boring and that I had been eating the same few dishes over and over again for a long time. I had had enough and it was time for change! I dove head first into cooking and the world of food and to my surprise, I found that I really enjoyed it! Since then cooking has become my passion and my obsession in my quest to never eat a boring meal again! Now I spend my free time searching for tasty new recipes, concocting my own and making them in my closet sized kitchen. I share those recipes with you on Closet Cooking as I chronicle my adventures with food in search of flavour. (from Closet Cooking)

What inspired you to first start writing your blog?
When I realised that I had been eating the same handful of meals over and over again for years I started looking for recipes online and stumbled across some food blogs. The photography on those food blogs was amazing and I realized that the authors were just regular people and that anyone could do it if they wanted. After that I started photographing the new meals that I was making and after a few weeks I started my own blog to chronicle my adventures in food. I quickly found that I enjoyed food blogging and everything took off from there.

What kinds of posts are your favorite to write? What do your readers seem to like the most?
I like to post about recipes that use seasonal ingredients and I like to try to keep things on the healthier side. My readers seem to prefer things like hot cheese dips, grilled cheese sandwiches and desserts.

Where do most of your recipes come from?
My recipes come from a number of sources including writing my own recipes from scratch, inspiration from other food blogs, food sites, magazines, restaurant menus, etc. When writing recipes for dishes well known dishes I tend to look at a lot of different versions of the recipe and make my own using bits and pieces from a number of them and then I add my own customizations.

Do you plan a weekly menu? If so, what inspires your menu?
Yes, I plan a weekly meal. I like to have all of the next weeks meals planned out down to when I am going to finish off the leftovers and I like to have the recipes all written out so that I can get all of the groceries on my weekly grocery run. My menu is often inspired by what is in season locally or by what I have on hand that needs to be used or by special events.

What is your favorite kind of food to make?
I am all over the place here and it is constantly changing. Right now I am obsessed with grilled cheese sandwiches and not to long ago it was Korean cuisine and before that, Greek, etc.

What is your favorite recipe posted on your blog?
That is a really difficult question as there are so many that are my favourites. Off the top of my head I would have to go with some of these:

Jalepeno Popper Grilled Cheese Sandwich

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First off, I have to thank today’s Blogger Spotlight – Jackie from La Casa de Sweets for jumping in as the spotlight today. The original blogger I had scheduled for today had a family thing come up, and I went to Twitter yesterday morning and called out for a volunteer. Jackie was the first in line! (And another huge thank you to all of you who were so willing to help – I hope to feature you all in the future!!) Welcome, Jackie – I’m so happy to have you here today, and to get to know you better!

My name is Jackie, and I’m the recipe creator and food photographer behind La Casa de Sweets. I love to bake, anything and everything! Chocolate is the best (a Spanish invention, of course!), but I love all sweets!

I’m a charity fundraiser baker.  What does that mean, you ask?  Well, it means I bake and blog to raise money and awareness for a very special cause: childhood hunger.  I work with companies and people to raise money to fight childhood hunger in America and around the world.  Raising money for groups like Share Our Strength and ADRA is what keeps me a happy baker and blogger!

I’m a busy wife, mother, daughter, sister, middle school teacher (taking a break to raise my daughters!), Seventh-day Adventist, child of a loving God.

I’ve got the most loving, talented husband (my high school sweetheart!), and the two most precious little nenas (ages 2 and 1)–our dream come true!  They keep me busy, along with my spirited Puerto Rican family.

What inspired you to first start writing your blog?
I’ve always loved to bake. I’ve been baking since I was in middle school, and I never seem to stop! With so many people asking me for recipes, I thought the best way to do it would be to start a blog. And it’s been such an exciting first year as a food blogger! It’s so great to connect with people! I’m a charity fundraiser baker and blogger, which means I bake and blog to raise money for charities that fight childhood hunger in America and around the world. During my first year, I worked with companies and other bloggers to raise money for the famine in Africa, and for Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry. It’s so inspiring to know that what I’m doing is helping hungry kids everywhere.

What kinds of posts are your favorite to write? What do your readers seem to like the most?
I love writing all kinds of posts, but my favorite ones are holiday posts. There’s something about reaching out to people and sharing your favorite food memories, especially during the holidays. Christmas recipes are my favorite to eat and blog about!

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There are a few blogs out there that I absolutely love because they are full of food that I would make over and over again for my family. Today’s Blogger Spotlight – Stephanie from Plain Chicken – is one of those blogs. I would love to follow behind her and cook pretty much everything that she makes! She makes real, down to earth food, and that is my favorite kind of food. I’m so glad that she is here sharing more about herself today with us!

My day job is as the Controller at a telecommunications company in Birmingham, AL (a.k.a The Ham), but my passion is cooking and baking. In addition to the blog, I also write a weekly food column for the Birmingham News.

I met my husband in college at Auburn University. He was my downstairs neighbor our Freshman year. We’ve been married for 16 years and have three beautiful cats – Sherbert, Jack and Fluffy. They make weekly appearances on the blog. We love to travel; I can’t stand to be at home too long. We love to eat, drink and shop and pick our travel destinations accordingly. Our favorite places are Vegas, Orlando, Chicago & NYC. We hope to travel to Italy soon. We spend our weekends in the Fall going to Auburn football games and watching an unhealthy amount of college football. It’s a way of life in the South!

What inspired you to first start writing your blog?
It all started a just a way to keep track of recipes. Friends would ask me for a recipe and I never could remember where I got it from. I started the blog to keep track of everything, and it just grew from there.

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I have another fairly new to me blog as today’s Blogger Spotlight today – Caroline Edwards from Chocolate and Carrots. I came across Caroline’s blog a little while back, and have been hooked ever since! Gorgeous photos and foods made a little bit better for you – what else do you need? I’m so happy Caroline is sharing here with us today!

I’m Caroline — a food blogger and photographer from South Carolina. I’m 25 years old, married my high school sweet heart and we’re expecting our first child in May 2012.