Did you see this?

It’s an article in today’s LA Times Food Section. It’s about the ethics of food blogging, written by Elina Shatkin.

It’s timely and very interesting, I’d even say newsworthy.

I have given a lot of thought to the ethics of SippitySup. I don’t really do restaurant reviews. Which is the focus of this article. But I might someday. Still many of the points in this article are quite relevant to so many of us, and may be worth a little soul searching.

Every time I post a recipe I think about its accreditation. I am not sure I have ever run a recipe that was absolutely someone else’s (except my mother’s and brother’s). I often find recipes I love from a variety of sources. But I tweak them to suit my tastes and cooking skills. I then say it was adapted from a source. I will often say that a chef or cookbook inspired a recipe when I took a broad concept and made quite a few changes.

But after that there is some gray area.

Well, big news at SippitySup. First things first. It's Monday and we have Scott here for more tips and encouragement for all of us TomatoManiacs.

Just in time because my harvest is starting to come in. I have quite a few small orange cherries from my Jenny plant. I even have one beautiful green-shouldered black tomato called, Nyagous. I picked it the morning I left for Sonoma and decided to let it sit and sweeten on the window sill a bit more while I was away for the long weekend.

You can imagine how excited I was to get back here and slice into that beauty and have my first real taste of a big juicy summer tomato.

But life, she is a bitter muse. Because she dealt me an irony that is almost epic in its comic proportions.

I broke my jaw in Sonoma and have had my jaw wired shut. It may be closed tighter than a tin can for the next 6 weeks! Can you stand it? A food blogger that can't eat! I would be laughing right now if it did not hurt so much...

I have spent countless weeks attempting to grow perfect tomatoes and now I can only look at them. This photo from the first of my harvest is going to have to satiate my tomato appetite.

And before anyone asks about the mysterious circumstances of my accident. Let's just say it involved 7 kids and one foolish adult in a game of tag. Because what happens in Sonoma stays in Sonoma! GREG

You know I have been a fan of StumbleUpon for several months. But like so many of these social networking tools I have come to find that I was not really taking advantage of all it has to offer. I want to pass along a few things I have learned in order to encourage you to use and benefit from the community building aspects of StumbleUpon.

In the food specific blogworld, sites like FoodGawker, Photograzing and TasteSpotting can indeed drive traffic to your blog. They are great at helping you build brand recognition, but their format actively discourages the reading of your material. So they really only service food-blog lovers, and only one type (albeit, a very important type) of food-blog lover.

Facebook is great for bragging rights and announcing new posts and reconnecting with your high-school BFF. But it can only go so far towards bringing you new readers. Which (for me) is what blogging is all about, readers!

Twitter is at least for “readers”. It is a lot of fun and can quickly make you a twitterstar, which will undoubtedly help your blog. But it is time consuming and a destination all its own for most of its users.

To me StumbleUpon is an amalgamation of all these social media outlets. It is great way for enhancing the image of your blog, it encourages cross-pollination of many types of blog lovers (not just foodies) and it’s unmatched in building an audience.

Nancy Silverton and Dahlia Narvaez I was lucky enough to be asked by FoodBuzz  to cover a very exciting event here in Los Angeles. The event was the 21st Annual Share Our Strength’s Taste of the Nation.

Share our Strength is a national organization that raises funds to help end childhood hunger in America.  According to the L.A. County Children’s Planning Council, “25%, or 1 out of every 4, children in L.A. County 17 years and under are living in poverty.  Furthermore, over 4,000 children 5 years old and under are homeless on any given night… More than 12 million children – 1 out of every 6 or 7 face hunger in America.”

50 restaurants and 30 beverage venders participated in this event. So the choices were mind-boggling!

Chefs Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger of Border Grill and Ciudad led the event. They steered the crowd through a host of speakers, demonstrations, an auction, and even a mole tasting contest. It was a lot of fun but these women also knew the greater purpose behind these festivities.

Here we are. Another ManiacMonday. You have come here for your weekly fix of TomatoMania. In fact you may be expecting more great advice from Scott on growing these perfect jewels of summer. But we are giving him a week off.

You also may have been expecting me to post Sups! version of one of the contest winning recipes today. But in truth, I am dragging my feet a little bit because I know those great tomatoes of summer are right around the corner. I figure with just a little more patience I can make these recipes using the very best tomatoes. Maybe even tomatoes from my own backyard!

So I am choosing this Monday to give you an update on my tomatoes. Which have not only started to flower, but they are beginning to fruit as well.

As I have mentioned in weeks past am growing my tomatoes in pots because I do not get a lot of sun in my yard.  But that has not stopped my little seedling from growing HUGE!

I think I am having so much success because Scott helped me pick varieties suited to my conditions.