"contests" news and stories

Have a great recipe for organic, locally-grown carrot tzimmes or grass-fed brisket just like Bubbe used to make? The Jew and the Carrot, a blog dedicated to food and Judaism, has issued calls for recipes for its first Rosh Hashanah dinner challenge. What to do? Send in your greenest, most sustainable recipe for traditional Jewish dishes, complete with tips and photos. The winner will receive a copy of Aromas of Aleppo Syrian Jewish cookbook; top three winners will have their recipes featured on the blog.

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Do you make amazing grilled lamb chops with gremolada? Out-of-this-world ribs with tamarind-Jack Daniels sauce? Burgers so good your friends say you should open a concession at the football stadium? Submit your grilling recipe with a short video demonstration (three minutes max) to Mario Batali's Ultimate Grilling Challenge for a chance to win a ton of great (and some just plain weird) prizes.

Submissions are due July 30 and the contest winner will be announced in October on The Rachel Ray Show. The grand prize winner will receive a VIP weekend at Texas Motor Speedway including a pre-race tailgate party with Mario Batali and Rachael Ray at the Dickies 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race. Semi-finalists will console themselves with $500 worth of Mario Batali The Italian Kitchen products and a year's supply of VIVA paper towels (though apparently two rolls a month is a lifetime supply). Quarter-finalists receive a bunch more Mario swag, including - get this - His n' Hers Mario Crocs (AKA, the only thing more embarrassing than riding a tandem bike).
$1.00 will be donated to The Food Bank For New York City for every entry received.

The contest is intended to promote the portly redhead's new Italian Grill cookbook. The book goes universes beyond burgers and hot dogs, with recipes for grilled flatbreads, vegetables and pizzas as well as meat. Think grilled Guinea hen breasts with rosemary and pesto, grilled baby octopus with olive-orange vinaigrette. Italian grilling, as Mario explains, never involves thick, sweet barbecue sauces or salty, soy- or Tabasco-based marinades. It rarely involves more than olive oil, wine, citrus juice and herbs and spices. Though, as he admits, the recipes in the book are not pure Italian, they are somewhat influenced by America's grand grilling culture. We are, after all, the country that invented the backyard barbecue.

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Remember Hydrox? AKA "kosher Oreos?" Well, after a long hiatus, these chocolate sandwich cookies are back for a limited time in honor of their 100th anniversary. The Kellogg Company, which produces Hydrox, have launched an "America's biggest Hydrox fans" essay contest, with a grand prize of a trip to New York and a six-month supply of cookies. The contest ends July 14; see Hydroxcookies.com for details.

Personally, I'm thrilled. Growing up in a Jewish, though non-kosher, house, there was always a jar of Hydrox in the pantry. My mother, a native New Yorker, simply preferred the soft, appealingly grainy creme and firmer cookie of her own childhood snacktimes to the slightly larger Oreo. Eventually I too came on board. Now, with Hydrox gone, I sometimes try to substitute various "organic" sandwich cookies and Trader Joe's Joe Joe's. But they're never the same!

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So you think you can cook?

I can't, and I know it. But does that qualify me for world renown? Maybe, if I gather my gumption and enter the American Egg Board's second annual search for the Worst Cook in America.

Why the American Egg Board is hosting such a contest perplexes me a bit. I mean, for those of us who are challenged in the culinary arts, eggs are relatively forgiving fare. Even I can make scrambled eggs. I can make an omelet. I've even taught myself how to make a decent Tortilla Espanola (although it took many tries).

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I love to read Is My Blog Burning? so that I can stay updated on all of the contests circulating around the blogosphere. I'm usually shy about participating (though I did enter a cupcake contest just once), but I think it's great when people create dishes and posts for the sake of the blogging community, and I love to see the results. Anyway, Is My Blog Burning? alerted me today to a contest called Haiku That Blog, in which contestants write a haiku poem about a particular blog and one lucky winner receives a fabulous prize. The blog for the contest is Lunch Bucket Bento, which I'd never seen before, but it looks adorable.

The contest got me thinking, however, about haiku for Slashfood and food blogging in general. I wrote three. My favorite is this one (note: for an English major, I was never very good at writing poetry):

Read it for Breakfast,
Lunch, Dinner, and in between
Slashfood – keeps me fed

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