As if I wasn’t busy enough already, I decided I needed more obligations and things to do. And so I became… an examiner. For those of you who’ve just woken up from your winter hibernation, or landed from another planet, or for whatever other unfathomable reason never heard of WWW.EXAMINER.COM, here it is. Take a look, make yourself at home, suck on your your welcome candy, and try on the house slippers, as I hope you will come back often. It’s more than just a website. It’s a golden well of information of all kinds, your reference guide, “to go” web address whether you’re into cooking, gardening, scrap-booking, eating out, yoga, celebrity stalking or even if you’re on the market for a new pet. (Note to self: search the examiner.com for info on pet rescue, which has been on my mind for a while now!) In other words examiner.com is your modern day Delphi sans the trans and constant high.

I must admit, my ego was pleasantly tickled when I finally saw my own page on examiner.com this morning. Also, WHAT-HAVE-I-DONE? question dipped in fear torpedoed across my skull. How will I find the time to feed my blog AND a column on examiner.com three to four times a week each? I guess I’ll figure the dirty details out later. I like this too much.

You may consider this cheating, but to my excuse I have some writing to do, then lots of cooking, more cooking, then research and planning, and designing, and then some cooking again, and writing to do later. Hence, I’ll just give you a link to my virgin article on examiner.com with a brand new recipe for delicious summer treat of HONEY-DEW MELON SOUP WITH MASCARPONE.

The very first time I had this chilled soup, I was in heaven. However, upon the second taste it seemed a tad too creamy and rich for my liking. Hence, I tweaked the original recipe, forgone all the cream involved, and substituted it with light coconut milk and non-fat greek yogurt.

I made the amalgam for one of the monthly gatherings of my fellow Los Angeles Food Bloggers, described by Lynne on the pages of her blog (www.CookAndBeMerry.com) back in July. She’s also the author of the below photo, and trust me it does not give justice to her photographic talent you’ll see on her website.

HONEY-DEW MELON SOUP (Photo by Lynne Hemer)

Having said all that, I invite you to check out examiner.com. Show me the love by visiting my page as often as you want/can, by leaving comments and then sharing the link with other peeps through your Twitter/Facebook/StumbleUpon pages, or what-have-you. I will grately appreciate such affection and will reciprocate with more hopefully useful tips and yummy ideas.

And know, it’s not about the money. The examiner.com people do compensate their writers… in pennies. Really. For me it’s all about sharing the joy of finding and cooking with fresh ingredients, whether you live in Hollywood (Hi, neighbor!), or other parts of the U.S. It’s about encouraging one another in our efforts to create a better and healthier way of living for ourselves and our families. It’s about outsmarting the system and giving our hard earned dollars to the local farmers, or farmers period, rather than the mass producers of food-like products with unpronounceable ingredients. Maybe they’ll finally hear our demand, thus improve the quality of the food they put on the market, and the food recalls we hear about every week will become just sad history. Are you with me on that?