There's a party in my tummy, so yummy, so yummy!

I like to eat. I don't have a particularly refined palate. My favorite places to go are barbecue joints, probably because I grew up eating Louisiana Cajun and soul food. In fact, when I received the mind-bending email that my book got picked up a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated by hitting Yelp.com in search of a new rib joint and driving out to try it. Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives? Yeah, if they show one in a fifty mile radius, we're there. Probably even a hundered mile radius.

Anyway, I do have an adventurous palate, even if it's not refined. I love trying out new cuisines. One of our recent new favorites is an Ethopian joint that serves some fierce doro-wat. I don't much care what country it originated in; if it's got meat and killer spices, I'm down to try it. Or if there's bread involved. I'm a sucker for good bread. Or if there's a cream sauce. You can sign me up for that. Oh, and a great pulled chicken. Wait...I lost my train of thought.

Oh, okay.

I like to cook nearly as much as I like to eat. One of my favorite recent purchases is Comfortably Yum by Luisa Perkins who I had the delight of meeting in April. My husband and I just started a hard core eat light plan today so I have to wait a month to try some of her recipes, but I have a very good eye for recipes and I already bookmarked my copy for what I want to try.

Of course, I also have favorite food and recipe blogs I like to go to. I figured today I'd share some of my favorite food related things. If you're a kitchen dabbler, you may want to check these out. My friend Jen (we trade meals twice a week so I KNOW what I'm talking about) is a great cook and she's especially good with tasty, healthy stuff. I'm linking you to her Southwest corn chowder recipe on her Skinny Habits blog, one of my favorite things she makes.

My friend Emily is also a great cook. She hasn't been cooking up her usual storm lately, but I really like her homemade macaroni and cheese. She's a fellow Louisiana girl so it's hard to go wrong with the stuff that comes out of her kitchen.

And I always find good stuff from Scribbit and Mama Manifesto, like this great easy recipe for ginger lime chicken from a couple of weeks ago. We tried it and really liked it.

So today's giveaway is simple again. I'll send you five of my favorite recipes for a soup, bread, chicken dish, side dish and dessert. None of this goes together but it's stuff I really like.

And I figure I'll give away some of my favorite treats: Hershey's 100 calorie chocolate covered pretzels, pecan praline fudge (homemade), mint chocolate fudge (homemade), a can of Tony Chacere's creole seasoning, and I'm sure there are a million other things I could think to give away but then I would have to camp out at the post office to keep up with the packages and my postal clerks are super nice, but not THAT nice. Not "I want to camp out and mail stuff all day long" nice. Probably that really would make them go postal.

So same rules apply: just enter by commenting and that's it. Enter every day because you can totally win more than once. In fact, since lots of my regular readers are missing from the blogosphere lately, you have a GREAT chance of winning more than once. Easy-peasy, it's all about the party!

Yesterday's winners using the random number generator:
Becky: Austenland
Kristina P.: Birght Blue Miracle
Heidi Ashworth: Previously Engaged
Don: In Her Good Name
Linda: the lipsticks!

Woot! Send me your regular address via email at writestuff dot jacobson at gmail dot com and I'll get your stuff out to you. Books will go media mail so give them a little extra time to get to you. And thanks to everyone who's dropping by to say hi.