winner and a week off

We have a winner!

Kathy only submitted one comment, on the last day comments were accepted. Although she mentioned three recipes she liked, she only added a comment to the grilled fresh figs post and therefore had only one entry. Here is her comment:

Submitted on 2014/08/28 at 12:16 PM

I just made this on Saturday and it could not have been easier or more delicious. This is my first blog reply even though I’ve followed you for 3 years. I’m torn between the Watermelon shaped rice Krispy treats that got me some major wow points (not before my friend’s Labrador got to them counter surfing during the 4 th of July party). Or the Best Broccoli ever – as I struggle for easy good vegetable dishes. I love your blog!

Her comment and her win confirm my long-time belief that you only need to buy one lottery ticket to win the lottery. That being said, I appreciate each and every one of you who commented and participated in this contest whether with one comment or with all five!

A total of 23 of you played along.
There were 76 eligible comments.
Nine of you submitted 5 comments.
Seven of you submitted just 1 comment.
The remaining seven of you were somewhere between one and five comments.

winner draw  (CLICK ON THIS LINK)

Above is a little video of the Trader Joe’s Crew member, Akeem, drawing the winner from the stockpot.

The great news is that although Kathy is the grand prize winner, all of you are winners! I will be sending each of you a prize. I would greatly appreciate it if you would email me at [email protected] with your mailing address so I can send you your prize. If I don’t hear from you in the next week, I’ll email you asking for your address.

Speaking of the next week … tomorrow I am going to Rancho La Puerta with Barb Fenzl and Kim Howard for a Saturday to Saturday trip. Barb is teaching there and is graciously and generously taking Kim and I along for the ride. Yes, we are lucky girls! The photo below was taken on November 3, 2008, which was the last time the three of us were together at Rancho La Puerta… looking forward to more good times!

During that same week, my website is being worked on by a professional who will be moving it from its current server to a bigger server (I have the lucky problem of my site getting up to a possible 1 million page views before the end of 2014!) and fixing some bugs (such as the current inability to send comments via cell phones and other issues I’ve had.) There may be some intermittent downtime during the week, hopefully not too much but during the move and fixes, it’s best that I don’t post and risk losing content … so I will be taking the week off.

Once again thank you and please email me with your snail-mail address if you participated in the contest. If you fail to do so, I’ll hound you until I can send you your well-deserved prize!