My “staff” pulled a Howard Hughes, so PWMF has been on indefinite hiatus. I figured it was time to come out of semi-reclusion after being nominated for the Liebster Blog Award by Crash Test Vegetarian. It’s a peer recognition award, and Izzy delivered particularly high praise, saying that this is a site her husband reads, too. Thank you, Izzy, truly – I don’t think there’s any shame in admitting that most bloggers thrive on recognition, especially by other bloggers.
Here’s the lowdown on how the award works – Liebster is German and translates into English as “dearest” or ”favorite”. A Liebster Blog Award is given to talented bloggers who have less than 200 followers. So, in a way the award not only recognizes these bloggers as amazingly gifted in their own right but also as your very own personal favorites.

How to participate:
-Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog.
-Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you.
-Copy and paste the blog award on your blog.
-Present the Liebster Blog Award to 5 blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve to be noticed. (Some say just 3 or more blogs of less than 200 followers each)
-Let them know they have been chosen by leaving a comment at their blog.

I spend less & less of my own time online, ’cause my job requires me to be on there enough as it is. So the few sites that I follow are big ones. But here are 3 of my favs that I think fall under the “200 followers or less” rule.

A Life Vegetarian – ALV is everything I’d want my blog to be if I didn’t collect toys. Sarah’s a machine when it comes to posting new material, so there’s always something interesting going on. Her writing style makes even this dude read a post about cosmetics. I appreciate that she finds a wide range of ways to look at animal-friendly topics outside of the kitchen.

Cadry’s Kitchen – This site has a variety of fun and easy recipes. I love the clean, colorful photos. But what made it stand out to me initially is that Cadry often brings it all back to her compassion for animals. It’s loving and playful, never preachy. Her recent video about smoothies with Gulp the claymation dinosaur was too charming for words – check it out!

Don’t Eat Off the Sidewalk – Okay, first off, great name (The Cramps, yeah)! Second, how can a vegan who collects action figures not love a vegan site that discusses horror films?! (Really good horror films, too.) Katie first caught my eye during Vegan MoFo last October when she exceeded my powers of stretching and found a way to tie in horror movies to her fav recipes. Bravo. It’s not always about food & movies, but the variety is part of the appeal.

And just in case you thought I was gonna pass up an opportunity to show off some toys with food…

This tauntaun was happy to accept some falafel in lieu of the actual award. Tauntauns love falafel.