There is a little chain going around the blogs I read where a blogger can write about seven of her own posts that fit each category. I was tagged by my blogger friend, Liz, which was great because I was hoping to write this post anyway. I love looking back at my own posts.

1. Most Beautiful Post

I am taking the physical beautiful meaning of this, and picking our recent trip to Aspen. I like all of my posts about our travels, but think the mountains and flowers and snow was great about this trip.

2. Most Popular

This post from tagged in March by Angela’s blog Oh She Glows where she did a series of vegan recipes from around the web. My Zucchini Bread was featured that I made last Fall, and it led a lot of traffic to my site. Yay, that was a good day. I re-made the bread because I thought the photos weren’t very good, and the second version was picked up by Food Gawker, giving it also a really good day.

3. Most Controversial

I don’t really have any posts that “stir the pot” too much, but this was one of my favorites where I wrote about my opinions of Oprah’s Vegan show.

I recently wrote a post called “Remembering” about a local family at the school I work at who was in a terrible accident and the parents died and two of the three kids are now paralyzed. I posted it on my blog and posted a link on our school Facebook wall (where other tributes and messages were posted before the family page was set up), and it was taken down.

4. Most Helpful

Back when I started blogging, I liked to write “how to” posts. Then I ran out of things I could instruct others on doing. Haha. But really, one of my favorite posts on the “how to” page is “How to become a morning exerciser.” That whole realization that morning is better than after work for me was part of the journey to blogging and telling stories.

5. Surprise Success

Again, thanks to sites like FoodGawker and TasteSpotting, some of my recipe posts have gotten nice attention. I only started submitting pictures to those in February. One recipe that had a great photo shoot was my Pita Chips. They are very simple, and always at my grandparents house, but the pictures turned out really great.

6. Not Enough Attention

A recipe that I was bummed didn’t get picked up by one of the photo sites was my Strawberry Walnut Bread. I loved this bread and thought the pictures were good too, but it just got average day of traffic.

Of course, I think my Lily posts should get lots of attention. She is just so cute.

7. Most Proud

I am absolutely most proud of my half marathon and the two recaps I wrote for it. That was such an accomplishment, and I hope to one day run another half. Since running that race, I have pretty much quit the sport. Oh well! Good memories.

That’s it! Are there any posts you remember that I wrote that would fit in these categories?

If you’d like to participate, you’re it!

How about something a little different for today…These are my kitchen confessions/quirks. 

• I refrigerate my bananas, apples and tomatoes.
• We have no ketchup in our house. It’s not allowed.
• I rarely wash knives in the dishwasher unless I used them for meat. I fear the sharpness will dull.
• I don’t like to eat foods that take work to eat, like artichokes or peeling my own shrimp. I have gotten better at cutting my own cantaloupe.
• I rarely wash pots and pans in the dishwasher unless they get very dirty or I used them for meat. Or if I’m too lazy to wash and dry, I’ll let the machine do the work.
• I don’t wash my berries. I fear they will mold too soon.
• I always have cookies in the freezer. I know you know this by now. But there are none in my pantry.
• I grocery shop every Sunday, whether we plan to be in town the whole week or not.
• We have four jars of opened peanut butter. One for Lily and for baking (generic organic creamy store brand), one Dark Chocolate Dreams, one Biscoff Spread, and one White Chocolate Wonderful.

 Tell me a kitchen quirk of your own. Sharing is caring.

**This post is way too heavy for a Friday, but it’s important to remember.

On Wednesday, I went to a double funeral for a husband and wife I did not know.

Robin and Josh Berry were parents at the school I work at with three elementary age children. On Saturday night, while I was laughing with cousins at dinner at the beach in Florida, they were tragically killed on a car trip back from a family vacation in Colorado. They were hit by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel and crossed into their lane. Their three children survived, but are in serious condition.

This family was like so many we know. They were a young couple with three vibrant children. They were runners. He owned a small business. She was an event planner. They vacationed in Colorado as a family and were on their way home, just like I was in Colorado one month ago with my family.

To make it worse, Josh lost his father eight years ago in a car accident, and Robin lost her father in her early 20s tragically too. His brother said he thought their family was immune to tragedy. Bad things don’t happen to the same person more than once.

Our rabbi said we can’t ask “why” or think “what if” because there is no answer. We remember, we help the children remember, and we help them thrive.

The three children will come back to Houston to rehabilitate and live with their cousins/Josh’s brother. Their family of four will now be seven. They have to grieve the loss of their oldest brother and care for the children at the same time.

I didn’t even know this family, but now we all can’t stop thinking about them.

They will be Bar Mitzvah’d without their parents, and start high school and move into college without them too. It’s just too much to think about the sad, so we remember that they have loving aunts, uncles, and family friends to help them.

The light of this story was the four moms who flew to Lubbock early Sunday morning to care for the children. In the hospital with major injuries and no one there for them, they needed advocates. These four women, all moms at our school, left their families on the holiday weekend and loved and cared for those children as their own, all while grieving for their best friends.

Our school and Jewish community has banded together over the summer to memorialize this family, with 1,000 people coming to the funeral.

I didn’t even know this family, but their story has touched our hearts and made us remember to be grateful for every day we have.

More information on making a donation to this family can be found on the Beth Yeshurun website.

The Jewish Herald Voice has done a great job at telling the story.