5 Years of Blogging Celebration, a Huge Thank you & a Giveaway!

“Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we'll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that never can end.”

~Richard Bach

5 years! 5 years of food, spice and life! 5 years of love, laughter and celebration!

Yes, today Monsoon Spice completes 5 long years of blogging. It has come a long way from being amateur cooking blog to much confident and passionate cooking blog of today! It’s been a wonderful, adventurous and beautiful journey with many ups and few lows. Who would have imagined that the blog born out of boredom and necessity would complete 5 enjoyable years! Not me!!! Never in zillion years! 

It was early autumn of 2006 when days started to become shorter and sun started playing peek-a-boo for most part of the day and the new bride in an unknown city, new country and different continent had nothing worthwhile happening in her life. She was away from her family, friends and loved ones except for her ‘much’ better half who tried to cheer her in spite of his busy work load! After spending long hours on phone calls to back home, spending some time reading books and then some more hours flipping the channels on idiot box, she was still left with many more hours of solitude and boredom! She decided to cook some new recipe that her mother narrated few hours back. The recipe was written diligently but in a hurry on a piece of paper. She remembered putting it on a coffee table or was it left on a bedside cabinet?! 

‘Never mind’, she thought. ‘I still remember the ingredients and recipe and how difficult it can be’, she wondered! Little did she know what was about to happen in few minutes!!! 

What happened next was so embarrassing that she wished she could dig up a deep hole right there and bury herself, instead of facing her concerned neighbours! When she forgot the recipe and just when she needed that little piece of paper where the recipe was jotted down, she found herself running around the house like some headless chicken, checking all the drawers and every nook and corner, while our smoke alarm made enough noise to wake half the neighbourhood! That was when she decided to catalogue all the recipes online and the rest, as we say, is history!!!

This is the real story of embarrassing and painful birth story of Monsoon Spice (previously known as Spice Corner). But the journey so far has been full of joy, lot of happiness, extremely adventurous and drenched with so much of love and support from the readers! Thank you my dear reader friends, who have made this virtual space a happy place. A place not just to share recipes and food pictures, but also to share our common interest and passion for food, spice and life!!! It’s you, my dear readers, and your love and support that has helped to shape this food/recipe blog and made me come back again and share little snippets of my life and also the food that comes out from my little kitchen. All these years of active blogging, I’ve met immeasurable number of foodies, fellow bloggers and made many good friends. Without your comments, feedback, suggestions and encouraging words, this blog would not have survived all these years!

So this thank you comes deep from my heart and I am humbled to receive this kind of love and support. As someone quoted “I would love to thank you from bottom of my heart but for you my heart has no bottom”. Thank you, once again! 

A humble request to special people: I have made many friends here and I would really appreciate the silent and anonymous readers of Monsoon Spice to break their silence, at least today, and leave their trails… Trust me, I pretty harlmelss ;)

To show my appreciation and love for you all, I have decided to host second GIVEAWAY of this month. Once lucky winner will receive a copy of Helene Dujardin’s Plate to Pixel, food photography bible for amateur or for even experienced food photographers! I just ordered my copy few days back and I loved reading Helen’s excellent write-up with easy to understand and follow instructions. You just have to google to read all the wonderful reviews of this excellent and beautiful book. Don’t worry if you don’t have a food blog as this book is for all who are foodies, and have interest in learning to capture beautiful photographs of the food. This book is for you and all who share passion for food and photography. 

This giveaway is closed! The winner is announced here.