Cookbookaholic

There’s Been Some Excitement Around Here

About a month or so ago, I was contacted by Hope Yancey, a freelance writer who contributes to the online version of Our State magazine. If you’re in North Carolina, then you recognize the magazine as a great resource to highlight amazing getaways—vacations or day trips, restaurants, recipes and just about everything appealing in North Carolina.

Until recently, I didn’t realize they had a column that highlighted local cookbooks!

Our State magazine also has an online presence with an “Our State Eats Blog”—that’s where Hope comes into the picture. She was interested in doing a story on Betty Feezor and people who collect vintage cookbooks. I was tickled pink that she found me, so we arranged to meet for a quick meeting.

I took the day off from work and I put together an interesting mix of cookbooks from my collection. I brought Betty, of course, (actually, I brought two Bettys & some original mimeographed recipes used on the show that would be mailed out upon request), The Old North State Cook Book (an old Junior League of Charlotte from the 1940’s), two Moravian church cookbooks (Joyful Seasonings from New Beginnings Moravian Church and Little Church on the Lane’s classic cookbook) and The Carolina Housewife (the one I got on eBay from the antique bookseller in the U.K.). All I need to do is to get to the interview on time.

Now, trying to get to that meeting? A total disaster on my part. The GPS took the address I typed in for the Starbucks and converted it into something completely different. I arrived a few minutes ahead of time—only I arrived to a parking lot of that was not a Starbucks. And I have absolutely no clue on how to get to the address I typed in. I’m just not familiar with the area and my noggin wasn’t working on using my smartphone to find addresses of nearby restaurants.

After a few calls, we decided to meet at a restaurant that was in the middle. We had a nice long conversation about cookbooks and Betty. I hoped that I sounded intelligent—but I can never guarantee that!

A few weeks later, she emailed to tell me the story had been posted online! It took a few days, but I saw a nice bump in page views. If you have come to my site via that Our State Eats Blog article, thanks for checking out the site. If you’ve been coming here since my Bob & Sheri days, then thanks for coming along for the ride—and here’s a link to the article: http://bit.ly/14LdcvB

I Got Proactive

Okay, so not the acne treatment ProActiv but the actual got-off-my-rear and did something “proactive.”

When I’m lucky enough to get a new cookbook in the mail, it’s usually through a company called Open Book Publicity. It’s run by two great publicists named Emily and Leslie. They were very early arrivals to the Cookbookaholic party and have kept me on their mailing list. I’ve had some amazing cookbooks come my way thanks to their efforts.

Recently, I got a wild hair and rang up the good folks over at Cision. They gather contact info on all tv/news programs, radio shows, newspapers, magazines and bloggers. If you’re a publicist looking to contact media outlets for your clients, Cision can probably help you put together a list (for a nice price). I spoke with a couple of very nice people in their Internet/blogger department and within half an hour, they emailed me a copy of my blog’s listing! It’ll be added to their system with all the other thousands of bloggers out there…

Who knows how long it’ll take to get more publishers to look in my direction? I’ll never know unless I give it a try…

 

Only Fifteen Away...

From maximum bookshelf capacity? Hee-hee! No, just kidding. Well, maybe...

Actually, I just checked the stats for my blog. According to them, I am only 15 pageviews away from reaching 25,000 lifetime pageviews. That's a lot of clicks for the past two years! Well, for me anyways.

Okay, it's not knocking down the doors of any internet viewing records--but I don't think that's too bad for one gal's misadventures during Saturday morning garage sales, on eBay and banging around the kitchen.

If you've been a frequent visitor to my blog--I thank you for coming around! I've been hitting a few garage sales here and there since January. I just may have some interesting tales (and cookbooks) to share with you!

So, please keep clicking on over!

 

Back on the Homepage!

Thanks for your emails! Marsha was the first to send me an email looking for the link to the blog on Bob & Sheri's homepage. When Frank and I first added the link to the "Check This Out" section, we set an "expiration" date for almost two years into the future.

Well, November 30th was that expiration date. And I totally forgot about it!

We went back into the system and reset the expiration date for sometime in 2013. Can someone remind me of this in about three years? Thanks--

Anyway, my Cookbookaholic link is back and "linking" away, as it were. On a side note, I really appreciate the very kind comments that were sent my way. I'm so glad you enjoy checking out my misadventures and treasure hunts. Sorry for upsetting anyone with the missing blog!

I Knew Something Was Up…

Whenever I feel froggy and check the stats on the blog, I usually see one thing consistently. I seem to get a good number of hits from Google Images on a really old post. Apparently, people seeking out images of "Pink Lemonade Cake" tend to click on that one specific blog post. Interesting, isn't it?

But yesterday, I noticed that I had multiple views of the post on the debut of Archway’s Holiday Wedding Cake cookies. This was not just a few people catching up on their reading, this was multiple views from unique visitors. What in the world was going on? Something’s up…

I went over to the Archway Cookie Facebook fan page and found that they had made a comment about my blog post and linked to it as well! Yowza! That was a really nice surprise!