Vote for Casa Mia!

As you may know, in the spring of 2015, I co-launched a new travel website called Casa Mia Italy Food & Wine.

We offer interesting food, wine and cooking experiences and inform our followers with regular updates on our blog.

After coming in "runner up" in the Best New Blog category of the Italy Magazine 2015 Blog Awards, this year Casa Mia has been shortlisted for the Best Travel Blog category!

Needless to say, we couldn't be prouder.

Want to help us win?

Vote for Casa Mia!

Easy, you don't even need to register, just click on the banner below.

PS: You helped Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino win Best Food Blog in the previous edition, so I'm asking you to work your magic again this time.

Thanks!

Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino for the win!

First of all I'd like to say a big THANK YOU to all who nominated and voted Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino as Best Food Blog in the Italy Magazine Awards, and to the wonderful blogging community here in Italy and abroad, that has been inspiring me for many years.

Secondly, yay!? Very happy for the win, and doing a little celebration dance. I'll spare you the video, but know that my moves are on.

On that note, I need you to picture another thing, and when you do, bear in mind my showbiz background.

The Italy Magazine Awards are like the Golden Globes, a prize celebrating excellence in film and TV bestowed by a group of journalists and photographers that report on the entertainment industry activity and interests. And it's a great honor to be awarded by a community of your peers.

Then there's the Oscars. An annual competition for outstanding achievement in film, awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The SAVEUR Blog '15 Awards is the Oscars of food blogging.

"SAVEUR is a magazine for people who experience the world food first. Created to satisfy the hunger for genuine information about food in all its contexts, the magazine emphasizes heritage and tradition, home cooking and real food, evoking flavors from around the world (including forgotten pockets of culinary excellence in the United States). It celebrates the cultures and environments in which dishes are created and the people who create them. It serves up rich, satisfying stories that are complex, defining and memorable.

SAVEUR is the definitive culinary and culinary-travel magazine of its generation. It has been honored with four American Society of Magazine Editors awards (including one for general excellence) and 17 James Beard journalism awards."

Like every year, SAVEUR is now accepting nominations for food blogs in a number of categories.
Would you like to see little Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino win the "Oscar" of food blogging?

Nominate it!

It's easy. Go here: http://www.saveur.com/article/contests/blog-awards-2015-nominate
and nominate Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino – you'll be asked to specify the URL, which is http://www.aglioolioepeperoncino.com
Nominate my blog in as many categories as you see fit: I like 'Best Writing' but you can choose among Best Culinary Travel Coverage; Best Special Interest Blog; Most Delicious Food... you decide.

You can add a motivation, or leave that space blank. You'll be asked your name and email (which won't be shared), and you're done.

Nominations close on March 13, so I'd really appreciate if you could spread the news and tell your friends to nominate the little blog that could. Use the #savblogawards hashtag on Twitter too, if you like.

***April UPDATE***

I ultimately did not get nominated, hopefully next time. Thanks for taking the time to cast your nominations, I greatly appreciate it.
Do swing by the Saveur.com website anyway, register an account and vote for this year's worthy nominees!

Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino nominated Best Food Blog!

I knew it was the flu coming. Those initial aching symptoms, head, bones, eyelids... everything starts aching. It was past the day of my blog's 6th birthday and I couldn't find the energy or desire to celebrate. That gloomy morning, all I wanted to do was just lay in bed, and feel very sorry for myself.

Lazily checking my blog reader I chanced upon the Italy Magazine Annual Blog Awards post, and eager to find out this year's fortunate nominees, I clicked through to the shortlist.

My heart skipped a beat. And it wasn't the flu.

Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino has been nominated for Best Food Blog!

Yes, it has! If you've been reading this blog for the past 6 years, or have just arrived here, you need to know this is a very big deal for me. Blogging has changed my life, and Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino, a crazy long name with an impossible URL, is the butterfly cocoon.

Italy Magazine is a platform on all things Italian: food, lifestyle, language, culture, art, fashion, accommodation, travel and more. Every year the magazine gathers nominations for a number of categories honoring the best in food, travel, art & culture, fashion and living in Italy. My little food blog – started on the rainy night of January 24th, 2009 – is now in very good company, nominated along with 9 other great blogs in the running for Best 2014 Food Blog. I still can't believe it.

Want to help me win, and appropriately celebrate 6 years of happiness? If you're an Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino fan – PLEASE VOTE!

It takes a few seconds and there is no registering required, all you have to do is click on Vote for Best Food Blog under Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino, and you're done!

Here, I'll provide the link for you: http://www.italymagazine.com/blog-awards/2014?field_blog_category_tid=44499

I really appreciate your vote! If you think anyone else might like to vote for me too, it would be great to share the news with them ;-) Voting closes on February 27th, winners will be announced March 3rd.

And if I win, there will be pizza and bubbly for everyone ;)

Until then, GRAZIE and buon appetito!

Awards and recognitions

DISCLAIMER: Last week I was awarded with 3 very important recognitions by fellow bloggers. I have waited until now to post about them because I finally have had time to actually sit down and calmly talk about them and the prestigious trophies they bestowed.

The past days at work have been quite stressful, long hours and tediously hot on the sound stage. I guess the sleep deprivation from the past weeks of work, personal issues involving my son's schooling and general yard-long concerns of red-taped nature, have all piled up on each other. Each little problem, big or small, has contributed to this delay. For that I apologize.

Drumroll, please.

This award was personally handed to me by one of it's worthy initial recipients, Ces of Ces and Her Dishes. This award was created in honor of Renee, one human being who has made such a difference in the lives of many just by being. Her honestly, wit, intelligence, and grit are a tremendous source of inspiration. She can elicit raucous laughter and guffaws in her banter, and then turn right around and offer the most heartfelt, gentle words of wisdom and emotional support. She is a spreader of love, simple and true. And her love is infectious.
This is a brand new award, and I have the pleasure and honor of continuing to spread the seed, watching it grow. I hope it finds its way to those who are like Renee: the acorn, a small package becoming a tall and sturdy oak giving more acorns, becoming tall and sturdy oaks, giving acorns…"

This is why I love blogging because I meet brilliant, gifted and talented people. So I am happy to give this award to oak trees, whose acorns spread copious love, words and exquisite thoughts:

Rosaria of Sixtyfivewhatnow
Nihal of CrossRoads
David McMahon of Authorblog
Maryann of Finding La Dolce Vita
Edoardo of Clouds and Silvery Linings

- & -

The second award I was given was from sweet Distracted By Shiny Objects of A Tidings of Magpies and it "goes to fellow bloggers who visit frequently and raise spirits with their kind words of encouragement, their beautiful images and their wonderful outlook on life. They make blogging a positive experience and continue to make life richer."

Distracted says,"Please feel free to pass this award along to your friends. I ask that you do name them but you don't have to link to them. Just stop by their blogs and let them know you've given them this award."

I pass this acknowledgement on to ALL my blog friends, you know who you are. I will not list them all in order to end this post in a timely manner. Just feel free to browse my blogroll...

- & -

My third award this week was kindly handed over by Eddie Bluelights of Clouds and Silvery Linings. It is the prestigious Premios Dardos Literary Award. I was highly honoured to receive this award "for services to literature, requiring deep thinking, innovation and taking risks whilst writing." I am humbled by Eddie's generous gesture and his kind words of praise.

I am pleased to pass on this award to a delightful blogger whom I have known for a while. She writes exceptionally well, involves her readers with her soft spoken posts, and superb writing, triggers emotional response, is a fabulous photographer, an excellent mother, a delightfully generous blogger, and a dear friend.
I am happy to present the PREMIOS DARDO LITERARY AWARD to Lori Ann of Lori Times Five. She will be picking this up when she returns from her African adventure. Read all about it next week...

ciao my friends, blogging changed my life...