I’m thrilled to announce that my 1 1/2-year-old blog, Food Gal, snagged second place in the “best food blog” awards category of the 2009 Association of Food Journalists competition.

In this case, Goliath did trump David. But if I had to lose out to first place to another blog, I can’t think of a better one to be edged out by than the one written by the mighty Michael Bauer, the San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic. His “Between Meals” blog on SFGate.com took the grand prize.

Third place went to Florida food journalist, Jan Norris, for her JanNorris.com blog.

The awards were announced Thursday night at the annual food journalists conference in New Orleans. To see a full list of award winners in all the other categories, including newspaper food feature writing, restaurant criticism, and food photography, visit AFJ.com.