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The Almost-Spring Blogging Contest

(article, Kim Carlson)

Culinate members, are you ready for fame and fortune? Because we want to feature your member-page blog posts front and center on Culinate!

Throughout the month of March, we'll select up to eight blog posts from the member blogs, one at a time, to be featured prominently on Culinate's homepage — right next to the columns and articles you read each week. At the end of the month, we'll line up all the featured posts and let our readers vote on their favorite.

[%image reference-image float=right width=400 caption="Storytelling gear."] 

h3. The prizes

The winner of the Readers' Choice Award will receive $100 to spend at the farmers' market of his or her choice, plus a Culinate gift bag containing prized food books — including a signed copy of Mark Bittman's new book, Food Matters — and other food-friendly swag. Plus, each blogger who writes a featured post will receive a copy of Alice Waters' new book, Edible Schoolyard.

h3. The contest

What will make us choose your blog post? 

It might make us laugh or make us cry or teach us something we didn't already know about food and cooking. 

It might describe something you've eaten recently or something you've cooked. It could be about growing or preserving your own food. 

It might be about a food book you've read that's inspired you (or frustrated you to no end). It might be about an experience getting your children to eat — or getting your parents to eat, for that matter. 

[[block(sidebar).

h1. Need inspiration?

[[block(smalltext).

In the Dinner Guest blog, Joan Menefee writes about catching a northern pike. (Head over and check out her fish tale if you haven't seen it yet.) 

As Joan writes, "I believe we could all find one meal a week about which to tell a story — a fish story, even. And if we did, we would be enlightened or amused or frightened and gripped by that thing that we do about five times a day: eat."

Amen. 

]]
]]

Punctuation skills are beneficial, as the posts will not be edited. Photos, while not mandatory, are also helpful.

It might be about bacon. Or frosting. Or the first rhubarb of spring. 

It could be long or short. It should, for this first contest at least, be in English. 

If it catches our fancy, we'll pick it.

h3. The rules

All you have to do is post on your blog before Saturday, March 21 (the sooner, the better). No need to flag your post — thanks to our magic RSS, we see all the posts. 

The more times you post, the more chances you have to enter, although we'll pick only one post per person.

Who's eligible? Everyone! It doesn't matter if you've contributed to Culinate previously or if you've never written a story or a post here before. 

(Need help setting up a member page and blogging? It's all explained [/culinate/faqmemberpages here].)

Please, join us on the blogs!

Don't forget that you can automatically add your Culinate post, or any story or recipe on Culinate for that matter, to your Facebook page. With just one click on the Facebook icon at the bottom of the page (just above the comments section on any page) it feeds directly to your Facebook page.

h3. Congratulations to the finalists so far: 

[/user/mydogischelsea/blog/thecarrotquandary "The carrot quandary"]
[/user/Diane+Lassen/blog/localeatinginaglobalworld "Local eating in a global world"]
[/user/Marjorie+Taylor/blog/anapproachableguidetosustainablefood "An approachable guide to sustainable food"]
[/user/KAB/blog/thedirtysecretoforganicseeds "The dirty secret of organic seeds"]
[/user/sut/blog/turkey Turkey]
[/author/LindaZiedrich/blog/sweetvioletsyrup "Sweet violet syrup"]
[/user/karijb/blog/homeiswherethehamis. "Home is where the Ham is"]
[/user/weasel/blog/fortheloveofmeat...whatwouldyoupay "For the love of meat … What would you pay?"]

p(blue). The winner was chosen by our readers on March 31, read more [/articles/ourtable/lucky_laura "here"].


reference-image, l