One of my favorite aspects of food blogging?  Making friends.

I never thought that when I started posting a few recipes and restaurant reviews all that time ago that I would soon connect with such talented, supportive, and genuinely awesome human beings.

None of us have actually met (a small technicality, really), but I truly consider them my friends.  And today I want to celebrate a few of my buddies.  And I think you'll want to celebrate with us, because we are giving away a $200 Amazon Gift Card!

Melanie over at Carmel Moments is celebrating 1 year of blogging!  Can we all give Melanie one huge, collective high five?

To celebrate her 1st Blogiversary, she got together some of her blogging buds and we're doing this mass giveaway for you 🙂  I mean, c'mon, how cool is that?  It's her blogiversary and she's giving you a gift!!  A $200 gift!

Here's my fellow food bloggers that are participating in this giveaway.  They are all pretty awesome, so if you get the chance, check 'em out!

Baking a Moment

Brunch Time Baker

Carmel Moments

Chelsea's Messy Apron

Cooking for Keeps

Cooking on the Front Burner

Flavor the Moments

Five Heart Home

Jessiker Bakes

Kleinworth & Co.

Life Made Sweeter

Runnin Srilankan

Shared Appetite - Oooo, hey, that's me!

Spicy Southern Kitchen

Yummy Healthy Easy

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Giveaway: Eligible to one (1) winner residing in one of the 48 contiguous states. Must be 18 years of age to enter giveaway. Starts 12 am 6/20/2014 (EST time) and ends 12 am 7/4/2014 (EST time). To enter the giveaway, you must participate in at minimum, one of the listed entries in the widget and an email address must be provided. Winner will be announced via email and must respond to the subject line: “Congratulations! You’ve Won Carmel Moment’s Amazon Gift Card Giveaway” from carmelmoments@outlook.com within 24 hours of deliverance. Failure to respond will forfeit your chance in winning and a new winner will be chosen. I will send the giftcard electronically to chosen winner. Please be advised items may appear different from the photo shown. Carmel Moments and its owner are not held responsible for missing/broken items received by the winner. Good luck and thank you for your entries. There will be more fun recipes, as well as giveaways coming soon! See more at http://carmelmoments.com

Wandering Blog Tour.

Wait.  We're not done celebrating yet.

Put back on that party hat and be happy, darnit.

Stop complaining!  This is a celebration!

That's better, thank you.

Us food bloggers like to give each other recognition from time to time.  It's just the kind, generous, good-natured type of people we are.  That's how we roll.

My super awesome dude blogging buddy David from Spiced Blog invited me on board this Wandering Food Tour (thanks David!!), so here's the deal...

I'm going to answer a few required questions below about myself and behind-the-scenes Shared Appetite stuff.  Then, I'm going to invite 3 of my other food blogging friends to get in on the action.  They'll then have to answer these questions next week and invite 3 new people.  Get it?  Good.

1.  What am I working on?

I have to admit.  I've been wearing myself a bit thin lately.  My actual job has been pretty nuts lately.  I'm a full-time elementary music teacher (I teach band, to be exact) in a public school.  May and June are our 2 busiest months with concerts, music festivals, recruitment, and collecting/cleaning instruments and doing inventory and ordering for next year.  Luckily today is the last day of the school year!  Can I get a woot?!

Beside the whole regular job thing, my super good buddy Tyler + I created an engagement and wedding photography business that we are really excited about and proud of.  It's called Ashe Photography Studio.  We've been booked solid every weekend with engagement sessions and have a pretty great lineup of weddings booked for this summer already.  Weeknights are typically spent editing photos for our clients.  And hey, shameless plug... it would be great if you followed us on Facebook and Instagram! 😉

Asheley + I are also in the process of moving.  We sold our house at the end of May and our new home will be ready to move in by the end of July.  We are currently crashing my parents house.  Big thanks to them!

Oh yea, and Shared Appetite.  That little thing.  Tyler + I just finished our redesign not to long ago.  Right now we are working on optimizing ads and doing better at SEO, and of course... creating new content.  It's been a slow go on that front lately just because of my crazy schedule, but now that summer vacation is here, I'll be cooking and photographing up a storm!

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Honestly, I don't have a specific niche.  Some of my recipes are dude food.  Others are gluten-free.  Or vegan.  Heck, even some paleo-friendly stuff.  I cook what I feel like making.  What I want to eat... and sometimes what I know Asheley will want to eat 😉

The biggest thing that probably sets me apart?  I'm a dude.  Plain and simple.  There aren't many of us, but we're hiding out there in the vast interwebs.  Case in point.  David.  Mike.  Sean.  Bill.  Hey fellow dudes!

3. Why do I write what I do?

Sometimes I like to just fill you in on what's going on in the life of Chris.  Sometimes I want to get people excited about a recipe or a new nerdy kitchen gadget I picked up.  And honestly, sometimes I try (a little too hard) to make people laugh and to be as witty as possible.  Unfortunately, I'm still working on that last one.  I'm not that funny.  Just ask my wife.

But above all, my goal is simple.  Share a love of food with others.  The favorite part of my day?

...besides seeing my wife, of course   ::ahem::

The favorite part of my day is when someone lets me know that they made one of my recipes for their loved ones and it was a huge hit.  Like, that makes me smile every time.  What's better than knowing your food made someone else happy?!  No seriously.  Tell me.  What's better?

4.  How does my writing process work? 

It usually goes like this...

Wow, I have 10 free minutes.  Let's write.  Oh crap, I have nothing to say.

...check facebook.  instagram.  twitter.  pinterest.  facebook again.  

Ok, let's try to write again.

repeat.

And then, at like the weirdest hours, I get all my writing done.  It's when I feel the most creative for some reason.

I wake up every day around 6/6:30am.  Yup, I'm one of those super annoying morning people.  I don't drink coffee.  I'm just naturally caffeinated.  That gives me a solid hour before work to catch up on responding to comments, writing posts, etc.

When Asheley has to work (she's a PA in a hospital ER), she works until midnight... which means she gets home at 1am.  I try to wait up for her.  That means I have a lot of time to write.  And check facebook.

I don't sit down and write an entire post all at once.  It takes several days and many, many hours.  A typical post, including creating the recipe, photographing, editing photos, and writing the actual post takes about 10-15 hours.  Yep, I'm serious.

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Wasn't that fun?  Now it's my turn to pass the torch.  Here are 3 food-blogging friends I would love for you to meet.  They are going to do the same exact thing next Friday... answer the above questions and invite 3 of their blogging friends to the party!

Christine @ Cooking with Cakes

Christine is awesome for several reasons.  First, she lives in NYC.  Automatic coolness factor.  Second, she's the first food blogger that consistently makes me laugh out loud.  Like literally full out laughter.  She is incredibly witty and the stuff she comes up with are mind-blowingly funny.  She's got a knack for coming up with crazy-awesome sounding recipes too... Boozy Queso Blanco Dip or Bourbon, Bacon, and Brown Sugar Monkey Bread anyone?!

Nicole @ Cooking for Keeps

Nicole and I have a serious connection.  We both LOVE all foods Mexican and Tex-Mex.  Like, I thought I was the only one that loved Mexican food this much.  It makes me happy that she not only shares in my obsession, but quite possibly takes it to a whole new level of awesomeness.  Case in point... these Fajita Chicken Sliders with 3 Ingredient Poblano Queso and this Guacamole with Shrimp, Pineapple, and Bacon.  She also has the amazing talent of lightening up tons of mouthwatering recipes so we can all be a little bit healthier without sacrificing flavor.

Ashley @ Cookie Monster Cooking

Ashley.  She shares the same name as my wife.  She has cookie monster in the name of her blog.  She's got an adorable puppy.  I could keep going, but bottom line... Ashley is super cool.  I always look forward to her new recipes.  She comes up with such creative stuff that makes me slam my head against the wall and wonder why I never thought of it first.  For instance, she just posted this Watermelon Salad with Sriracha Vinaigrette.  Or what about this Roasted Sweet Potato and Brown Butter Flatbreads?!  Uhm... yum!

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So there you have it!  Tons of celebrating today!  Did you enter the $200 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway?!?!  I hope so.  It's Amazon!!!! You can literally buy like, anything you want on Amazon!