my 7 links.. and wishing everyone a FUN weekend!

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in my hotel room in Johannesburg coming to grips with the insufferably selfish and materialistic life I lead. I’d seen some poverty and spent time with a family of elephants. I was humbled, to say the least, and as I was sitting in my hotel room contemplating life outside of central heating, I received a message from Laissez Fare basically asking me to talk more about myself.

I semi-agreed and then parked it.

But now look at me, look at me! I’m back in the first-world-ness that is Sydney and though I haven’t forgotten my pledge, I’m back to being utterly able and willing to talk about myself at the drop of a hat. And so back to Laissez Fare’s message, and subsequently, the same message from Ute of Hungry in London.

They’ve tagged me. I’m it. I’ve been nominated to take part in a little bloggedy initiative called “My 7 links“, hosted by Tripbase. I suppose the idea is no deeper than any chain mail type meme (what is a meme?), but what I like about this is that aside from getting me to think about my own blog, I began reading about what other bloggers thought were their most beautiful or interesting posts and that was kinda interesting.

So without further adieu, here are my 7 links:

My most beautiful post

I’d like to think that my most beautiful post is this one, about my “ah-gong” and memories of Chinese New Year back in the day. As we bustle through each day of our busy lives, we lose sight of priorities and somehow making some deadline at work becomes the most important thing in the world. The be all and end all, the mood changer, the mood winner.

But it shouldn’t be like that. As I get older, I appreciate my family more and more every day. Sure I have the largest extended family in the history of everything (this is for another post) but my immediate family. My parents and my brother, his wife and baby girl, who by the way, I get to meet next month and I’m So Excited I Could Pop.

Nothing matters more than family and if all you have are memories, you’d better be hanging onto them. And that’s why I loved this post.

My most popular post

Well, this is rather objective and boring. I checked out my Google Analytics (which I don’t very often and actually it’s very interesting, especially the search words that are used to get to my site!) which told me that my most popular post of all time is none other than the Matcha Madness results!

I’m not really surprised because even before checking my Analytics, I was going to tag this post as being the one whose success surprised me most. As y’all know (and if you don’t, you don’t know me at all…) I’m a teensy weensy bit obsessed with matcha. So I started a competition in conjunction with teapigs to see if anyone would submit matcha recipes.

And we got 38. Frizzackingly. Awesome. Matcha. Recipes.

I was startled and deliriously happy about the number of matcha lovers out there! At last, I was no longer alone… 😉

My most controversial post

This is a bit meh, but I think my most controversial post is from when I went to St John’s and OH MY GOD I didn’t like it. I mean, what? I didn’t like it!

I got some stern talking to from fellow bloggers and especially from blog veteran Fat Les, but you know what, whateverz. I am totally entitled to my own completely un-food-educated opinion.

Granted, I did not have the madeleines. I mean, a good fresh set of madeleines could have totally changed my mind, right?

My most helpful post

My very most helpful post was when I introduced all my lovely readers to the benefits of matcha! I also gave them all a discount code, which actually is probably the really helpful part.

Go right ahead and click on that image to make it giant and you will see with your own eyes, bespectacled or not, that matcha whoops ass when it comes to packing some antioxidant punch.

Plus it tastes good. And makes your baked goods “healthy”. Yeah.

A post whose success surprised me

Hm, this one was kind of tough because aside from the Matcha Madness post, I haven’t really had any other successful posts. True story!

I guess my post on Vintage Patisserie was successful but sadly not as a result of my own brilliance. Around about the time we went for afternoon tea, Angel, the founder of Vintage Patisserie, was up on BBC’s Dragon’s Den, pleading her case for some investment.

So you know, people watched the show, googled Vintage Patisserie and found me! Yay!

A post I feel didn’t get the attention it deserved

This one’s easy. My post on Momofuku Ko in NYC, you bastards, because I actually put effort into writing that post (no photos allowed in Ko, but I managed put all ten courses into words)! Actually the post did get a fair bit of attention but I wanted more! MORE!

The post that I am most proud of

I am most proud of this post for a couple of reasons. The main reason being that look! I documented how to make mud crab noodles with a ginger and shallot sauce!

This post also represents a personal achievement for me. I’d overcome that surgery, spent about five weeks at home recuperating and just before I left, my dad made this for me, a celebration of my health.

And I know I sound like an old fogie here but people, your health. Look after it.

There you have it, my seven links. My contribution to another (hopefully not so pointless) meme floating around the interwebs. Part of the deal of participating in My 7 Links is to also dob five more bloggers in and so… (I’m sorry if you don’t want this!)…

I’m nominating some of my favourite bloggers, not all food related, believe it or not!

1. ScandiFoodie
2. Worship at the House of Blues
3. Not Quite Nigella
4. Karen Cheng’s Fashion and Life
5. Mowielicious