“Donna Hay is one amazing Australian “home economist”. She started out scoring her first job in the Australian Womens Weeky test kitchen after completing a home economist course. Donna went on to become the food editor at Marie Claire magazine and this was where her fresh take on food styling and simple but stunning recipes really took off. Her styling and fuss free recipes so adored, it wasn’t long before she soon had her own magazine and had published several best selling cookbooks internationally. Some people have referred to her as Downunder’s answer to Martha Stewart, however, Donna doesn’t like to be thought of as a celebrity chef, but just one of the girls who always has time for food and fun in the kitchen.”  written by Bron Marshall.

I fell in love with Donna Hay a few years ago after spying her book, Modern Classics.  I love the simplicity of your recipes, so fresh and so simple.  When I started blogging a couple years ago, I stumbled about a lovely site, Winos and Foodies , I was delighted to learn that Barbara had a Hay Hay its Donna Day (HHDD) food blogging event.  I participated whenever I could.   Life becomes busy and we reach obstacles that unfortunately prevent us from doing the things we enjoy at times and in 2008, Barbara passed this event over to the talented Bron.  Now, I am pleased to say, this baton has been passed down to Chez Us.  We hope and strive  to do an outstanding job just as Barbara and Bron did, by keeping it “Special Made Simple”.  Please read more about the previous event here.

If this sounds like an event you would love to enter please become familiar with the following rules.

Rules of Entry…

1. Hay Hay it’s Donna Day is open to all food and wine bloggers.
2. Entries submitted for HHDD must be made specifically for the current round of this event, although photos may be submitted to photo competitions such as “Does My Blog Look Good In This.”
3. The host will select, make and post an original Donna Hay recipe without any changes. Participants may make that exact same recipe as is, or put their own spin on the recipe by altering the ingredients whilst remaining with the theme. Or if they prefer participants may share a well loved recipe within the same theme.
4. Entrants must include a link to the host and the facilitator (that’s us – www.chezus.com) in their entry post.
5. Entries can be made at any time once the event has been announced, but must be posted and emailed to the host by the closing date.
6. The host then assembles all the entries together into a roundup, from where the participants of the round vote to elect a new host for the following event.
7. I am going to try to keep this event going on a monthly bases, with an announcement of the theme on the 22nd of the month and the closing date the 15th of the following month.  This will give the host a week to post the entries and to let the voting begin before the next theme announcement.

I will be adding a HHDD page to our site this week – which will have more details as well as logos, Twitter, etc…

In the meantime, without further a-do I am pleased to announce the hostess of HHDD # 27, Priya of Akshayapaatram.  Priya has chosen Salad as the theme.  Donna has many fresh and inviting salads in all of her cookbooks, let your creativity take over!  Please visit her to site to obtain any further details.  As well remember to  submit your entries to Priya, by the 15th of August at akshayapaatram@gmail.com with HHDD #27 in the subject line, in your email to her please include:

• The Name & URL of your blog
• Your Name
• Your Location
• Name of your recipe
• The URL or the permalink to your entry.
• A photo of your recipe if you have. You do not have to re-size it, but it should be less than 1MB.

We cannot wait to see your entries and to keep HHDD going!