Blog Roll! or Ellen Wants to Help You Waste Time

I’m sure you all are expecting to hear about my CSA this week, but first something a little different. I have recently been asked what blogs I read and had a couple people tell me they were clicking through the links to find out where I found recipes so I thought I would share which blogs I subscribe to. I use Google Reader so I can flip rapidly through all of the blogs and decide what I actually want to read in detail, but having said that I do look at about 80 posts per day. I didn’t really realize this until I looked at my trend report from Google, some information, I just didn’t need. I usually flip through some while eating lunch at my desk and then some when I get home and need to relax before dinner (yes, I’m trying to justify this to myself, but seriously I only look at some of the posts for two seconds ). So these are some of my favorites divided up into the four main types of blogs I read:

Food Blogs
101 Cookbooks Focuses on natural, vegetarian cooking with really gorgeous photography (the author is a photographer by trade) . I love this blog so much I bought her cookbook.
Bitten New York Times food writer Mark Bittman writes and curates this blog with tons of great ideas for quick, simple food. There has been a run of guest posts lately from a woman at the Times who is learning to cook and it has been endearing, hysterical, and inspirational.
Healthy Eats A blog from the Food Network that points you towards some of their healthier recipes (Paula Dean rarely makes an appearance) and has a lot of helpful tips.
the apartment kitchen My dad pointed me toward this blog by the daughter of a friend of theirs who just finished culinary school. Her recipes are inexpensive but fantastic. My favorite thing is that she tells you the “Leftover Potential” of all the dishes which is important when you are only cooking for one or two.
Smitten Kitchen Gorgeous pictures, yummy food. I really like this blog, although she has a pretty heavy bias towards sweets. She made a wedding cake once, it was insane.
The Wednesday Chef Really classic dishes with a twist. Classic foods like the tomato soup, blueberry buckle and such. Yum.

Craft Blogs
20x200 This isn’t actually a craft blog, but a great attempt by a gallery to get original art to more people. A couple times a week the work of a few artists are featured with limited edition prints available of their artwork. 200 small prints are sold for $20, 20 medium prints for $200, and 2 originals for $2,000. I haven’t bought anything yet but I have thought about it and then decided I would and they were sold out!!
Craft Gossip A ridiculously over the top (27 posts per day) compendium of links to crafts of every sort (including many things I don’t do like polymer clay, beading, fused glass) from all across the web. It keeps me from having to trawl all those other blogs.
CRAFT Magazine I should probably subscribe to the actual magazine, but their blog is pretty great to. Lots of links to other projects with a high proportion of them being really great. Such a high proportion that there is no chance I will ever get to make even a fraction.
Crafting a Green World This blog is focused exclusively on reusing material where you can and buying eco-friendly materials when you can’t use what you already have. They have a lot of cute stuff to do with kids.
CraftStylish Lives up to its name - it is original, stylish craft ideas and I’m a huge fan. I have adapted many ideas from this blog for projects for the upcoming bridal and baby showers that I am throwing. There will be more on those soon, but I don’t want to ruin the surprise.
Design*Sponge Not a lot of crafts, per say, but some really great design inspiration for those with a house of their own and some money. Oh to dream.
Diary of a Crafty Chica It’s glitter-mania, that is all I can say. But she has such a fun, infectious spirit that I can’t resist her, even if my style is a little more subtle.
the purl bee So they are really trying to sell you some really fine but expensive yarn, however to do so, they put together some really great knit and occasionally crochet patterns
Weekend Designer This one is for those of you more fashionable and talented than I, but I love that they show you how to sew really great, fashionable things.

Science Blogs
FemaleScienceProfessor Not a blog about science so much as an ongoing discussion of what it is like to be one of the less than 15% of science professors who are women.
Olivia Judson New York Times blogger about science. She always offers a really great take on unusual research (well, unusual to me since I don’t work in those areas). Always thought provoking.
Xkcd.com and phdcomics.com are both nerd comics that I quite enjoy.

Friends’ Blogs
A Whisper on the Wind This is my friend Jen’s blog about her live in San Antonio trying to finish her dissertation while running a household of four children, a husband, cats, and two of the largest dogs I have ever seen. I stole the idea of posting my weekly menus from her.
Cerises a l’etranger Cherries Abroad is my friend Summer’s blog about traveling which she used to get to do more (I was deeply jealous until she let me come stay with her in France), but now she has an awesome new job helping undergrads get to travel abroad.
Philanthropology This is my friend Phil’s blog. Phil is a post-doc in San Antonio and husband to Jen so sometimes you get to read the same story in both of their blogs which always entertains me. Phil is pretty much always getting more work done that me, which I find very depressing.
Yann Klimentidis’ Weblog Yann is a collaborator of mine who writes about genetic anthropology.
Wow, that is a long list, but I’d still love to hear you all’s suggestions on blogs that you read or if you have a blog I’m not reading, it’s probably because I don’t know about it!