Great Writers Steal: Seven Links from the Archives

I was tickled when Chrissy tagged me for the seven links meme.  Just tickled!  I like memes, but I am rarely tagged because I’m not a very social blogger.  On-line me is like real me: I have a handful of good friends, but otherwise I’m rather hermitlike.  At least I’m not as bad as Nigel Slater, who said,

"I understood that if ever one wanted to live with someone you cooked for them and they came running. But then it is my idea of hell these days, living with someone. The idea of sharing your life with someone is just utterly ghastly. I know why people do it, but it's never a good idea.”

Yikes!  You’d think that a hermit like me would appreciate his sentiments, but I’m not quite jaded enough about the people I love to describe our time together as “ghastly.”  Yikes.

But I digress.  The seven links meme is a look back into a blog’s archives to name blog posts that fit seven categories.  As I was thinking about the years I’ve spent writing this blog, I realized that my posts tend to fall into one of two categories: the food-focused recipe posts or the reflective personal posts.  There’s a lot of overlap, of course, but lately I’ve been doing a lot of personal writing in which food makes appearances but is not the primary focus.

Given this bifurcation in my writing efforts, I’ve decided to do two versions of this meme: a personal post version and a food-and-recipe post version.  Today we’ll start with the personal posts.

* My most beautiful post is Two Tales of One Soup.  That soup, and that post, were the beginning of something really special, and they both came straight from the heart.  Matt’s graciousness in allowing me to write about him, and us, is something for which I am very grateful.

* My most popular post is, according to StatCounter, On Bravery, Wine, and Romance.  But I’m giving the second-place prize to Where the Apple Trees Grow, an essay about Michigan and my family and which received a whopping eight comments!  (Okay, four of them were from me.  Don’t judge.)

* My most controversial post is Saturday, with Generosity, Hope, and the Color Green, in which I mouth off about marriage and declare myself queer.  At the time, I wondered if the post would alienate my readers, but my hope was that it would spark a dialogue.  My readers were silent, so I have no idea what effect the post had on people who know me only as a blogger.  With other friends, I’ve been lucky enough to have some deep and meaningful conversations about relationships and reproduction.  In the year or so since I published that post, I’ve arrived at a softer, more nuanced position with regard to marriage, but I maintain my blissful ambivalence about having children of my own.  It might be enough for me to be an auntie and good friend without being a mother.  Though my niece Lydia did once say to me, “I your bee-bee!”  I can live with that!

* My most helpful post is…helpful to whom?  I do not know how to answer this question, especially with a readership as quiet as mine.  (It’s okay, quiet readers, I still like you.)  If I have to make a choice here, I’d say that Sexy, Messy, Homespun Love is a helpful post for anyone interested in making cooking a part of a stay-at-home date night routine.  For me, on a very personal note, Where the Wooden Spoon Rests was a good post to help me come to terms with my friends becoming parents.  It’s not always easy being a friend to parents, but I think it’s worth the effort.  It’s also worth the effort to cultivate friendships with non-parents so you don’t go insane after watching too many episodes of Thomas & Friends or Wonder Pets!  [Caution: noisy links!]   

* A post whose success surprised me is One Piece of the Puzzle, a post that was written as part of the Tandem Posting Project with my friend Ammie.  We were writing about gender that week, and after the post was published, a friend of mine sent me an e-mail to tell me that the post was “universally appreciated.”  We live in a world where gender is often used as a weapon, and it’s really unfair and unfortunate.  If my post touched just one other person or helped one reader feel a little more at peace with the gender issues in his or her life, then I feel I have done one good thing with this blog.

* A post I feel didn’t get the attention it deserved is Circles.  That post was a good-bye love letter to Chicago, the Midwest, and my family as I got ready for my new adventure in Texas.  The fall of 2009 was a sad season for me, a season of endings.

* The post I’m most proud of is the next one that I’ll write!  What an impossible question.  Even after four years of blogging, I still feel that writing is its own reward, and whether the end product is good, bad, or boring, I can never regret the effort behind the blog.

Following Chrissy’s lead, I’m going to tag some of my blogging friends to see which seven links they’d choose.

1)  My lovely friend a of still life.  a has been on a blogging hiatus for a while, but she’s an incredible writer and I’d love to read her thoughts on (can it be?) eight years of blogging.  Wow.

2)  Shannon of the ever-creative, ever-cooking Tri to Cook.  Corn ice cream?  Wasabi truffles?!?  Shannon’s kitchen adventures are unbelievable.  I’d love to be invited to her next dinner party!

3)  Raquelita of Historiadora on the Run.  Raquelita’s posts are fun, inspirational, yet down-to-earth.  She runs multiple long-distance races a year, keeps lots of balls in the air as a busy academic, and somehow finds time to keep writing her blog.  Kudos, Raquelita!

4)  (I would tag Kate O. of Effing the Ineffable, but Chrissy tagged her first, and Kate posted her seven links here.  Go read ‘em!)

Have a good week, everyone!

PS  Want to join the seven links fun?  Consider yourself tagged, and leave me a link so I can check out your blog!