Friday Quickies #25: Foodblogging Love, 5-Year-Old Gourmet Party, Ingredients Sale, Free LA Mill, Staying Fit and "Disappointing Pancake"

Eating your way to love: Maybe there's something to the adage 'the best way to someone's heart is through their stomach', that certainly was the case for the new engaged Jeni (of Oishii Eats) and Dylan (of Eat Drink and Be Merry) who have cooked, dined and shared about it all through their respective foodblogs for the past two years! Much congrats to you both, you two deserve each other, especially with such mad cooking skills and a wicked enough sense of humor to do a Hometown Buffet Valentine's dinner (with wine from a box to boot)! Here's an e-toast to many more blog entries of your collective foodventures, high-brou and low-end, in and outside of LA. *clink*

Last chance for 5 Year-Old Gourmet Party: I've already got my ticket for the event, and much thanks to Caroline on Crack for saving me $15 with her goldstar tipoff. While Goldstar's discount is already sold out, you can still get 10% off the $60 price by checking out this Thrillist deal. Hope to see you there, messy faces and all!

Ingredients Sale: The other place you'll find me this weekend, the Ingredients store close-out sale tomorrow from 10 a.m. to noon, with gourmet foods, cookware and other dining accessories going from 50-75% off. Thanks to Lesley of Eater LA for the heads up.

Free Coffee @ LA Mill: I knew there's a reason I subscribe so many of those darn daily emails (yes, even after Racked LA made the courtesy of condensing all of them every day) -- RareDaily dropped the word that LA Mill is commemorating their six-month anniversary with free coffee all day long on Tuesday, June 24. Since you're getting free delicious joe, might as well tip nicely and heck, check out some of the delicious looking grub there!

How to Stay Fit & Continue Loving Food?: Let's face it, as passionate as foodies are about all things edible and potable, most of us aren't blessed with the uber-hyper metabolism of say -- Food Marathon, Teenage Glutster or a certain Top Chef judge who "ate like a rock star and looks like a super model" , yours truly included (I swear some days I can just look at a blog post of a tasting menu and instantly bloat up!) -- FM & TG, only calling you out on your furnace-fast calorie-burning fury 'cause you've admitted to it before... grrrr ;)

Of course, that spells trouble for folks who have to dine out for a living (grrr again) and Newsweek chronicled their quandary of how to get and stay in shape while "eat[ing] more calories in one sitting than most people eat in an entire day," including some things I've already done since taking up this foodblogging hobby: workout like a madperson, eat healthy when cooking "ordinary meals" at home and doing tastings instead of eating the whole sha-bang ... 'cause I definitely look forward a few additional disease-free years of trying out even more eats and drinks.

Finally, only tangentially food-related... I'm so digging Lisa Loeb's "Camp Lisa" album (and bought my first CD in 2008 @ a Barnes & Noble because of it) ... great mix of traditional camp songs, folky covers and original stuff. I only say tangentially-related because there's "The Disappointing Pancake" track on there. A few full tracks from that album, along with her ever-so-popular breakout song "Stay (I Missed You)", available for free listening here. And yea, totally disregard this CD is geared towards kids... because we're all young at heart, right? ;) Now I wanna make s'mores and sleep in a tent. P.S. too bad her Food Network show was rather short-lived.