As the year draws to a close, we are doing some shuffling of the buffet table here at Blog Nosh Magazine. The new year always brings a fresh crop of new bloggers and new blogs, not to mention new incarnations of old blogs from old bloggers. With that in mind, we are gearing up to launch the remainder of our current channels (Military, Travel and Expats, etc.) and introduce a few new sub-channels, such as an Unemployment section to our Business channel.

Interested in becoming a Channel Editor? Have some ideas for new channels or sub-channels? Start brainstorming and drop your ideas into the comments or email us with your interest. Some of our old editors will be leaving, so all channels will have room available for fresh voices and approaches. It will take a bit for us to get to all of the applications (not to mention follow-up with previous applications on-hold), so bear with us.

Speaking of having the patience of a fine aged wine, we are revamping our submissions process. If you have submitted a post to us in the last couple of months, know that we are working to streamline our review process (your submission is one of hundreds we receive each month) and haven’t forgotten you.

All of these efforts are made possible by the support we receive from writers, editors, and our sponsors. Please take a moment to check out one of our featured sponsors this month, Lamaze International and Mother’s Advocate and their Six Healthy Birth Practices videos (one of which is featured in NoshTube) and print materials. The Six Healthy Birth Practices are:

• • Let labor begin on its own
  • Walk, move around and change positions throughout labor
  • Bring a friend, loved one, or doula for continuous support
  • Avoid interventions that are not medically necessary
  • Avoid giving birth on your back and follow your body’s urges to push
  • Keep mother and baby together – it’s best for the mother, the baby, and breastfeeding

Lamaze isn’t the breathing techniques that are so often associated with it any more. You can see what their birth practices look like when lived out loud in both my own birth plan and then in my birth post. At least, my very best efforts at integrating those birth practices, as I am far from your ideal Lamaze example.

Of course, every birth is different, just as every mother is different, so in our ever-irreverent spirit here at Blog Nosh Magazine, we are revisiting one of our favorite Birth & Adoption posts by Baby on Bored. What makes our community so delicious is our diversity of voices, so be sure to check out ways to have a healthy, safe, and natural birth with Lamaze International and Mother’s Advocate and then get your laugh on with the cheeky humor of Stefanie Wilder-Taylor’s Preggo Land.

Nosh on!

Nosh Notes from the Editor by Founder/ Editor-in-Chief Megan Jordan of Velveteen Mind.

{Originally published on Baby On Bored}

Let me just start by saying if you have an ultrasound picture of your baby stuck on your refrigerator with a magnet, you’re not someone I want to be friends with. And if you have someone else’s baby’s ultrasound picture up there, well, that’s just a cry for help. I’m never sure what I’m supposed to say when confronted with this. “Wow, that’s one sexy fetus?” I got pictures from my ultrasound too but I didn’t wallpaper the house with them. Isn’t it bad enough that we have to see a million pictures of your baby after it’s born? Now we have to see what it kinda sorta looks like before it even comes out?

I knew early on in my pregnancy I wasn’t like other pregnant women. When my husband and I went for my ultrasound, (yes, he came with me: there was like a 95% percent chance he was the dad we figured he should tag along), the first thing the nurse asked me was if I’d brought a video tape. A video tape? I must’ve looked confused because she explained to me “most people want to take home a souvenir of this magic event.” I nodded and said “Yeah, I definitely won’t need that. I’m barely on board with the whole pregnancy thing as it is.” To which the nurse replied that she was reporting me to social services. Okay, she didn’t say it out loud but I could see it in her stare.

Clearly there are many many people who do opt for the ultrasound video. If you are one of them, just know – I don’t want to see it. Oh, and that goes double for your skydiving video. About the only way I’d ever be interested in watching footage of your big jump …is if you don’t make it. It’s like the world is chock full of people with no clue of their capacity to be irritating. And pregnancy just magnifies it.

Pregnant women seem to take one of two paths when they get knocked up, although — being annoying– they’d probably refer to it as a “journey.”

First there’s the woman who loooooves being pregnant. You know her. She’s so excited to join the Cult of Mommy that she’s taking pregnancy yoga before the before the stick turns blue. Anyone who revels this much in being pregnant is suspect in my book…

{Originally Published on Gourmet Chick}

The best excuse ever to eat eye popping amounts of pork is to gather together 18 of your closest friends and book a whole pig at St. John Restaurant in Farringdon in London, England. You really do need to book the pig in advance. A deposit of £320 at least a week before your meal is required to reserve the pig which we affectionately began to refer to as Percy. Yes, Percy would die for our eating pleasure however where else but St. John’s to best appreciate and pay tribute to the life of the pig. The head chef at St. John Restaurant, Fergus Henderson, is the champion of the concept of ‘nose to tail’ eating. We could be sure that every part of the pig would be appreciated in all it’s glory and used and consumed right down to the last trotter.

For the privilege of eating a whole pig our group is allocated the private room at the front of the restaurant. Just around the corner from the Smithfield meat markets, the austere white washed walls of the restaurant and the waiters clad in butchers aprons are a nod to the area’s continuing carnivorous traditions. The bone marrow served with parsley salad is St John’s signature dish so I have no intention of passing up an opportunity to sample the bone marrow despite the lashings of pork that was to follow.

{Originally posted at Resurrection Song}

Via Instapundit, I find this site that hits me as saying precisely what I want to say:

Today’s economic crisis impacts all Americans, not just those who are behind on their mortgages. Everyone shares concerns over health care, job loss, and the decimation of their retirement savings. All Americans have made sacrifices over the past year. The American taxpayer is already on the hook for mismanaged banks, incompetently run auto companies and extravagent stimulus packages. We don’t need the additional burden of paying for our neighbor’s mortgage. The bottom line – we believe that being current on one’s mortgage should not be grounds for being put at a financial disadvantage.

That is wildly deserving of an amen.

I find myself wondering how conservatives who bought into the rhetoric of hope and change, who believed that Obama would be governing from a moderate’s position, and who ended up voting Democrat in the elections are feeling about their decision right now? I’m feeling more and more that I voted the right direction: McCain.

Now, the current economic crisis isn’t Obama’s fault. There are a lot of names and administrations that can share the blame for bad regulations, overspending, and refusal to deal with the American economy as something built on money that doesn’t come from the Free Money Fairy. And then there are the people–that is, “we, the people”–who helped by demanding more government services and less fiscal sanity. In fact, we, the people, made it downright difficult for a person to be elected if they threatened our slice of the pie, a fact that has made blue hairs such an important voting block and rational conversation about the future of Social Security such a political hazard.

So, no, it’s not Obama’s fault.

But I remember watching one of the televised debates and hearing McCain promise a spending freeze followed by deep cuts in the budget coupled with a belief that raising taxes on any Americans right now would be foolish and irresponsible. Obama, in contrast, spoke breezily about cutting the budget, but thought that a spending freeze was a bad idea and an increase in taxes on the wealthy (whatever “wealthy” might mean) was a brilliant idea.

{Originally Published on Sweetney}

When I made my list of the best 25 songs of the last 25 years a few weeks back, I burned, just for my own private listening enjoyment, a mix CD comprised of those select tracks. Since that time its been on heavy rotation during the 20 minute commute to and from M’s camp each weekday — I’m lucky enough to have a kid who’s tolerant of Mommy’s need to CRANK THAT SHIT UP — and in that time she’s absorbed all the songs and picked her favorites, notable among them the well-aged Oasis tune Wonderwall. It’s a song that for all its obvious magnetism and hookiness I’ve never fully understood. I mean, what’s a Wonderwall, anyway? And what, if anything, does it mean for a person to be that to someone else? Still, questions of signification and metaphor aside, each time the spare guitar strum of that track begins to play on our car stereo I see the joyful recognition wash over M’s face in the rear view mirror, and when the lesser of the brothers Gallagher begins to sing she does too, word for word.
. . . . .

On Sunday, we finally told her about the split.

For those of you who’ve never gone through a separation (and seriously, here’s hoping none of you ever have to), the awful, soul-rending anticipation of having to break this news to your child — the tiny, blameless person who you’ve made it your life’s mission to protect and shield from all hurts and pains — is psychological torture of a magnitude it’s difficult to fully wrap your head around. Over the course of the past few weeks I’ve said to friends, relative to the crushing dread I felt about having to do this, that I now understand why people stay together for the sake of the kids (or, rather, tell themselves that’s what they’re doing — it’s probably closer to the truth to say they’re staying together for the sake of not having to deal with the anguish and guilt of having to tell the kids). It is the worst thing I could ever imagine having to do, and believe me, I can imagine having to do a lot of pretty awful things. Like having to attend a Celine Dion concert, or watch the complete filmography of Paris Hilton, for example. YES, THIS IS EVEN WORSE THAN THAT.

So Jamie came over Sunday morning with the idea in mind that this was the day. No way out but to barrel through it together, however ineptly, and hope to god we don’t have to look back on this as The Day We Shattered Our Daughter’s Identity, Crushed Her Spirit, And Destroyed Her Self Esteem For All Time. I think some of my generalized terror about this event can be traced back to having known a few very seriously broken human beings who pointed to the cataclysm of their parents breaking up when they were a kid as the hot molten core of their volcanic screwed-up-ness. And when I say “human beings” you should read “people I dated.” This is definitely NOT how I want my daughter to turn out.

{Originally Published on Artists Who Blog}

Leah Giberson’s paintings are beautiful, and how I wish I could see them in person! I’d love to hop over to Boston and have a studio visit, but for the time being I’ll have to be happy with the possibilities the Internet offers us. Leah is not only a gifted artist herself, she is also one of those artists who encourages others. It’s been great to get to know her online this year, so I am especially happy to have her as a guest this week. Leah sells top quality archival prints of her work, as well as a selection of originals in her Etsy shop. She has a blog, and posts frequently on flickr. Enjoy, and please don’t miss my questions for you, dear readers, at the end of the interview

Why did you decide to start a blog?

To tell you the truth I really hadn’t paid much attention to blogs up until last March when I opened my Etsy shop. Not only did I soon discover a world of other artists selling their work online, but I also found a seemingly endless world of inspiration on their blogs. I’ve had never had any interest in public journaling about my personal family life or reading about others quite frankly, but when I discovered how artists were using their blogs to share artistic inspiration, new work and news, I was thrilled. Then when I started getting visitors to my own blog with their clicks, views and comments I was hooked.