Blog Nosh Magazine is a virtual buffet of blog content. However, we are more the kind of buffet you might find at a casino: neither Italian, nor Mexican, nor Creole, nor American. We are better for you than a dessert bar but more sinful than a salad bar.

And like most buffets, the majority of our fare has been festering in the back of the kitchen for a while (harhar, a joke meaning our content comes from your blog archives, sans mold). We just happen to have a knack for freshening it up before offering it to the early-bird crowd.

Perhaps a metaphor involving wine would have been more appropriate? After all, we are highly selective. Noted.

The most important thing to remember when sampling what we place on your table is that we don’t ask that you always like what we are serving, just that you try it.

This week has been a fascinating week at Blog Nosh. Here we are, noshing left and right with posts about homosexual marriage, body image, lost and found love, finding our place in the right church, making the most of the day we are given, adoption and abortion, homeschooling with flavor, and poking a bit of fun at men and their egos… when all of the sudden we slip in a (gasp!) favorable post about George W. Bush.

You’d think a rat ran through the kitchen.

After a succession of glowing posts about President Barack Obama and not a peep of dissension slipping into the comments, one post bidding farewell to Bush brings on the mad cow disease. Not necessarily only in the comments, though. Bleeding onto twitter and kirtsy and beyond: Blog Nosh Magazine has gone mad. We posted something conservative.

Simultaneously and seemingly independent of that backlash, I am asked on twitter if Blog Nosh is just another liberal magazine.

And then I was pretty sure I was the one with mad cow.

We are neither liberal nor conservative. We are neither… ah. Why bother?

But I should know better. The Internet has a desperate need to label label label. If you can’t be fit neatly into a box, then you are too confusing and generally better off ignored.

Certainly you are a momblogger? A tech blogger? A gossip blogger? Okay then, a liberal blogger? Ah, no, you are a conservative Christian blogger? Um, entertainment blogger? Foodie? Help?!

The blogosphere is large enough for a larger community. It sorely deserves one. One far less compartmentalized.

{Originally published on The Belly Project.}

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59 years old, 1 pregnancy (baby given up for adoption 40 years ago)

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22 years old, 0 pregnancies

The nature of blogging is temperamental, as the nature of bloggers tends to be willful and unpredictable. The really enthralling ones, at least. You see it in your favorite blogs: wildly passionate daily posts one month, barely connected erratic ramblings the next.

Blogging, for the most part, is best enjoyed when you can afford focus and energy, on both the parts of the writer and the reader. No one really enjoys those “I’m too busy to blog” posts, but bloggers usually have “real” jobs and responsibilities that result in our being “too busy to blog” occasionally. What to do… what to do?

I’ve always been a big fan of the unplanned hiatus, personally. My friends say it is because I prefer a sense of mystery. I say I just loathe those “I’m taking a break” posts.

Therefore, rather than plate a pile of misshappen half-baked cookies for you the last couple of months, Blog Nosh Magazine has been on a bit of an unplanned hiatus. We kept thinking we were going to update, then we got busy. Life. Who knew?

More precisely, 2008… Seriously, who knew?

The end of 2008 has come and all of us at Blog Nosh Magazine are looking forward to an energized and focused new year in 2009. Our resolutions? The return of daily featured posts, new NoshTube videos, and the launch of the promisingly tempting channels Race & Ethnicity, Travel & Expats, Personal Finance, Military, and more. We are finally revamping our Editors page and sprucing up the “About” information you all crave when considering submitting your work.

In the meantime, I am insanely proud to introduce you to one of our new Politics Channel Editors: Mr Lady from Whiskey in my Sippy Cup. Now that we see how well Blog Nosh Magazine can work, we are actively fleshing out the channels with as much diversity as we can get our hands on. Naturally, the flip side of the political coin was at the top of our list. Mr Lady’s post, What a Dream I Had, Pressed in Organdy, is the ideal introduction and hint of what finds you may expect from her.

Look for delicious daily posts beginning again January 5th! Until then, nosh on!

Nosh Notes by Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Megan Jordan from Velveteen Mind

{Originally published on Truth Is Freedom.}

A daily ritual for 40 years, the door swinging open on creaking hinges. At first that noise had bothered him, but now it was a comfort. Something familiar. Step, shuffle, 12 steps with the right leg and 11 shuffles with the left foot. The distance hadn’t changed, but the numbers had slowly increased through the years. The door closed behind him, a creak followed by a thump and then the snick of the oiled latch springing home.

The rows of faded post boxes covered the rear wall of the foyer; many were empty now, holding only memories. The labels spoke eloquently of times when hope and promises filled the room, but that had changed as the world forgot the sacrifices they all had made. The key ring dangled from his right hand as he reached his destination, and with gentle chimes his gnarled shaking fingers slid the worn brass key into the lock. A turn, the door opened, and the letter was revealed.

He tilted his head to one side and caught his breath. Was this finally the one? He reached in and withdrew the envelope addressed to Occupant. A clink and the post box closed, and he dropped the keys back into his pocket. He turned, step, shuffle, six steps with the right leg and five shuffles with the left foot as he made his way to the table bolted to the west wall. There was a clunk as he hung his cane on the edge, 8.5 inches from the right end; the silver eagle’s head was worn, but the engraving, 41st Regimental Engineers, could still be seen on the band.

He set the letter down, three inches from the front edge and directly in front of him. He fumbled for his reading glasses and hooked them over his ears, left side first, then the right. With his left hand, he withdrew a penknife from the inner pocket of his overcoat and turned the letter over until it rested perpendicular to his waist. He flicked open the blade, the shimmering cover said congratulations on your retirement; the sharp steel made a soft hissing noise as he slit open the cream colored paper from bottom to top.

Welcome to the relaunch of Blog Nosh Magazine! The site has been redesigned from top to bottom with your needs in mind.

What’s on the menu, you ask? Allow us to give you a little tour:

• Top horizontal navigation tabs! Too much scrolling to find the channel you were craving for on the old site? It’s all right here in top navigation tabs, easy to grasp in a glance, a special order for you!
• Search box– Wanting to find posts on a specific topic, but one that might span several channels, and want to find them now? A handy “search” window is in the upper right corner.
• Not sure what is covered in each channel? Hold your mouse over the channel name and you’ll find a handy list pop up, including some of the more popular topics covered in that channel.
• Daily YouTube featured video, submitted by you! Find something you loved and have to share it? email us or send it our way via twitter. You’ll get credit for the find in our weekly roundup Nosh Notes, so be sure to include your blog URL!
• Each day’s two featured posts are even more highlighted, in the top two featured post boxes
• Want to see what we’ve featured during the last week, but don’t want to wander around too much to do it? You can see all of the week’s post at a glance at the bottom of the page, right above our delectable advertisers, highlighted by channel. Sample them all, we promise they are all delicious!

Our tasteful dinner party here at Blog Nosh Magazine has been crashed by Hurricane Gustav!

We’ll be back up and running shortly… In the meantime, use this time to digest all that we’ve delivered so far, catch up on some of your favorite channels, and get to know our editors.

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