The last week has been kind of amazing for this little blog. Lots of good things happening that make me excited for what Thyme Bombe has become and where it’s going. Let’s start at the beginning…

On Thursday I hooked up with Laura, Carol, and Carol’s sister Anne to see Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen at her book signing at a local Atlanta bar. We had a great time listening to Deb’s entertaining stories about transitioning to blogging as a career and her long struggle to make a cookbook she could be proud of.

During the Q&A session, I asked Deb what she had learned about the publishing process that surprised her and was delighted to hear that her answer very nearly matched my own! She also struggled to meet deadlines and vastly underestimated how much time and effort it would take to make a product she was proud of. For her, she explained, making something excellent was much more important than making something on time. While I haven’t had the chance to delve into her cookbook yet, it’s clear that she’s put an incredible amount of work into it and I really respect that she took the time to make it perfect.

So speaking of cookbooks…I received my very first royalty payment for The Japanese Pantry! It’s really not much, but it feels so so good. I plan on hosting a giveaway for a signed copy soon, so if you haven’t gotten yours yet you may have a chance to win it!

And that leads me to some more exciting news… Several weeks ago when I announced the release of my book on my blog Facebook page, it caught the attention of a local photographer! Jimi of Jimi Filo Photography offered to do a collaboration with me so that he could take pictures of me cooking food for his photo blog that I could also use in a post. He and his wife set up at my house Saturday morning and snapped away in the dining room as I prepared 2 recipes for the blog – cold soba with hot duck soup for dipping and matcha bars with strawberry jam filling. I snapped a few pics too while I was waiting for things to cook.

Hopefully Jimi will have his images ready in a week or two so I can share them with you all, along with the recipes for the delicious food I made. Seriously, those matcha bars were incredible.

Last bit of awesome news is that I had not one, but two, recipes accepted to Tastespotting this past week! This may not seem like such a big thing, but this news comes after submitting content to them for nearly 3 years and being rejected every time, so to have 2 recipes in a week finally accepted is just indescribable. I was floating all day when I found out. I’ve worked very hard to improve my photography skills over the last year, so having my work validated by such a notoriously picky site feels really good.

So that was my week!

What’s the best thing that happened to you in the last week?