Napa or Bust - up to you!

Napa is closer than ever!

And we are back!

And we are doing the happy dance.

Remember when I asked for your votes for a chance to win all-expense paid trip to the Culinary Institute of America in Napa, where I get the chance to attend their culinary bootcamp program?

And I asked you to ask your friends, and coworker and everyone you know to head over to the Pacific Natural Foods site to be click-ty happy on my behalf and vote for my submitted recipes?

Well, your efforts paid off, because not one, but BOTH of my submitted recipes have made the cut to the final voting round.

YES!

People, you guys are AWESOME! Actually more then AWESOME, is there a word bigger than AWESOME? Oh, maybe TREMENDOUS! Or GRAND!

You guys are just … ASTOUNDING.

I could not have done this without your help – and I thank you so much for taking the time to do this for me.

But, oh yes, there is but…

It’s not over.

See this is the final stretch, the brass ring people.  I now need your votes again – more so than ever, because this round is the ONE… these are the votes that will get me to Napa baby!  

The top-vote-getter in the final challenge wins the grand prize.

And now I know how those people feel, to have it right there… so close!, I just need all of you guys to push me a little bit closer to grab it!  Because, I got some really tough competition out there.

So head over to the Everyday Chef Challenge Finalists Gallery and be click happy!  Click as you have never clicked before.  You can click today and tomorrow and every day until it’s over.  In fact I will even make it easier.. Just click the pictures below of my submitted recipes and press VOTE at the end of the page.  That’s it, pretty easy right?

 

And tell your friends, family, co-workers, facebook, twitter – heck! Tell everyone you know!  

And come back over and over again and vote!

Send me to Napa!

New Savory Club Launched and Winner!

As you all may now know, about a month ago I wrote a post about wanting to start a savory cooking club.  I wanted to find a way to cook more savory dishes and in order to do so, I needed a bit of a incentive.  So I wrote a post explaining all about it and calling all cooks to come and join me.

Along the way found a co-host - Jenn from Knitty Baker, and soon 5 more join the flock.

At that time I had not decided on an official name for it so I also asked name suggestions. And boy did we get great ones, well over 30 names!  Great names, weird names, funny names all with the spirit of what all of us were seeking, a fun way to collaborate together and share our experiences from our own kitchens all over the world.  (and know that all of us were going to be doing dishes together, at least once a week.)

And as everything in life goes, out of 30, only ONE could become the winner, which at the end was submitted by Stephanie from Strech.

So say hello to our new Savory Cooking Club: The Gutsy Cooks Club.  We got 6 members (7 including me), from all over the US which are all very excited to GET.THIS.PARTY COOKING.STARTED from our chosen book, The Kitchen Bible.  In fact we already have menus up for the rest of the year - what can I say, I got a dedicated group here!

So now that we got ourself a name and a cool badge. Now we need to pick the winner of our first giveaway. And to do this I decided to let it all out and put it all in video, to validate that this was all on the up and up and because I truly enjoy putting my dorky-ness out there for the whole Internet to see and laugh about it.  So with out any more delays, enjoy my full on dork:

The Gutsy Cooks Club Winner from Monica C on Vimeo.

So there you have it, we have a winner! Congratulations Shandy from Pastry Heaven.  Come on down!  Your $30 Amazon.com gift card it’s on it’s way - enjoy.

It still not to late to join us, you can click on The Gutsy Cook Club in my navigation bar where you will find out club rules, forum (only for the Gutsy Cooks members), Menu Schedule and our roll-call, where you can meet our Gutsy Cooks and link to their blogs.

So to all the new members, WELCOME!  And to our first winner, Shandy CONGRATULATIONS once more.

So, yeah… LETS GET THIS COOKING STARTED!