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Judging the Almost Famous

I am delighted to announce that I’ve been invited to be a Judge at the San Pellegrino Almost Famous Chef Competition.

This is the 10th anniversary of the S.Pellegrino Almost Famous Chef  Competition and it brings together students from 73 culinary institutions across Canada and the United States to compete to be named the San Pellegrino Almost Famous Chef, up to $22,000 in prizes and a career-changing apprenticeship with a master chef.

There are 10 regional competitions and I will be judging the Canadian Regionals held on January 30th at the Calphalon Culinary Center in Toronto with:

• Chef Jonas, Lee Restaurant, Toronto
• Annabelle Waugh, Food Director, Canadian Living Magazine
• Emily Richards, Food Columnist, Metro Newspapers

Almost Famous Competition

I am almost famous.

Famous enough that people I've never met will stop me in the airport to say: "aren't you Alexa Clark?"

But not famous enough to get free plane rides.

Famous enough to have a stalker

But not famous enough that they know they are my stalker.

Famous enough to be considered as a guest judge in the S.Pellegrino Almost Famous Chef's Competition.

But not famous enough to be invited, just invited to compete.

Perhaps I should back up a little, and make this a lot less about me.

A Little Palm Pre-view

Last week, I was invited to a preview of the new Palm Pre by Jenn Evans of Sequentia Environics.

I tweeted about it, big surprise, and got deluged by questions and requests to talk about my experience.

I didn’t realize until I started talking about it that so many of the other previews and demos were hands-off.

We did get to play with the Palm Pre, not enough for my tastes but of course my tastes lean towards someone handing me a phone and me going off into a corner to play with it for a week. And then getting to keep it (not so subtle hint repeated below).

The folks at PreThinking.com asked if I’d do a Q&A about my experience with the Pre, so here is more about my experience with the Pre in the interview I did for PreThinking.com:

Palm Pre Final Models In-depth Impressions from Canada

The most recently leaked release date I’ve seen is June 5th for the US, but it won’t be here until the second half of 2009. 

And in case someone from Palm is reading this, I would LOVE to road test the Pre in Canada for you. Call me. [insert hand gesture here]

Vote, vote, vote in the Canadian Blog Awards

The Canadian Blog Awards are underway and we’ve been nominated!  In a bunch of categories, in a bunch of ways.

But, it’s only Round One and you can only vote once per category.  So we need your support to make the Final Round.

• MiniBookExpo has been nominated in the  Cultural/Entertainment category
• CheapEats Toronto has been nominated in both the Best Cultural and Entertainment AND the Best Local Blog categories
• CheapEats Ottawa (www.CEOTblog.com) has been nominated in the  Cultural/Entertainment category
• OneDegree.ca, has been nominated in the Best Group Blog – you might know them as the people I do video interviews for at all those conferences I go to.

Many of our friends and colleagues have made the first round nominations list too:

• Andrea’s blog a peek inside the fishbowl has been nominated for the Best Family Blog – you might know her as the andrea who started the Trust Project, the Candy Swap and other cool projects I seem to always be joining
• Kate Trgovac's My Name Is Kate is nominated in the Professional/Career Blog category – you might know her as the cool leader of OneDegree.ca and frequent commenter here
• Rose’s Creampuff Revolution has been nominated in Best Personal Blog – you might know her from great posts about not wearing pants, peeping her neighbour’s afternoon delight and bringing apple pie to Thanksgiving.
• BlogTO has been nominated for Best Local Blog. - And while I’m not saying CETO doesn’t deserve it… but BlogTO deserves it more!

Please take a moment and check out the great bloggers who have been nominated (I often read ALL the posts listed in Best Blog Post category. Support all the great Canadian blogs that have been nominated by voting!

Round One Closes mid-day Saturday, Nov 29th!  So vote today!

ShowYourself

Alexa Clark

Flickr/lexnger
Facebook/Alexa Clark
Linkedin/alexaclark
Twitter/alexaclark
YouTube/unsweetened
Last.fm/lexclark
Skype/alexa.clark
Upcoming/Alexa Clark
MyBlogLog/cheapeats
Blog/Alexa Clark
CheapEats/Toronto
CheapEats/Ottawa
OneDegree.ca/alexa_clark

Get your own Widget

 

Get Out Your Beer & BBQs!

I have been invited to  judge the upcoming Rickard's Griller of Glory BBQ cook off, August 28th in Yonge-Dundas Square.

So you know how I was recently invited go and meet some folks from Molsons, Rickards and Creemore (they are all the same folks, folks)?

Well, it has turned into something seriously cool!

I'll be judging alongside Phil Nyman (the head judge) of Phil's Original BBQ, and we both know our BBQ!  I've very excited about tasting what people will come up with.  Cooking with fire and cooking with beer are 2 of my favourite things!

It's a serious competition with a cook-off in Yonge-Dundas Square on August 28th (yes, that's very very very soon!!!) and the winner walking away with a prize pack including a new Napoleon Gourmet Grill.

Here's how to enter:

1. Email your grill recipe that incorporates Rickard's Red or White to grill@rickards.ca
2. Describe your recipe in 1-2 sentences
3. Create a name for your recipe, using "Rickard's" in the title
4. Submit a photo of your grilled creation

• I don't have details on the ownership of submitted recipes and they don't have a site I can point you to with more details (I hope to soon!)

So, get your recipes out, test them this weekend with Rickard's Red or Rickard's White and prepare to impress me! 

er... umm... did I mention?

That Mini Book Expo is ON?   Right now?  Over at www.minibookexpo.com. Yes this year it even has a brand new, shiny URL of its own. (Which also means this is all I'm going to say about it here.)

This year I've invited the publishers to partner with us and the response has been phenomenal!

11 books ready to be claimed, 60+ still to be released as quickly as I can (2-4 per day), and more coming in. 

There are some amazing titles on the list which, in previous years, wouldn't have made the release list because I would have kept them for myself. 

This year, however, they're ALL for you!

So if you're a reader, hustle on over to Mini Book Expo and get yourself something to read!

Launch - tomorrow!!

As I've said before, after months and months and months (and months) of working on it, the books are here and we're having a party! TOMORROW!!

The CheapEats Ottawa Book Launch & You're Invited!

CEOT Book Launch Feb 13th, 7pm-9pm at East African Restaurant in Ottawa, sponsored by Beau's All Natural Brewery. RSVP please!

I've moved almost my entire office into Rocker & Junkii's guest room and am stickering the hell out of everything that's going in the swag bags (which are actually boxes). 

We're driving all over town delivering restaurant letters (the letters to restaurants saying "congratulations you're in a kickin' new restaurant guide. Here's a poster. Put it up.")

We're contacting the stores that have carried the book in the past, but haven't placed any orders yet, to remind them that the book will be "released" on Feb 14th.

We're talking to media and trying to build some buzz... I spoke with Ron Eade from the Citizen last week, I'm on CKCU on Wednesday morning at 8am, another interviewer is coming to the launch, sent a review copy into CHUO and yesterday I visited with Gay Cook who writes the food column in the Citizen .

Oh, and this is for M.Tinto, we are driving a big-ass SUV.  Photos coming, but you can start the teasing now.

We will, we will Blog you!

From Rick Spence's Sweep! Sweep! to Rannies photomontage of the seating chart last night's adventure in National Television has been pretty effectively blogged. Add in Ryan & Adam's backstage video and you'll have the whole experience... sans the kickin' brunch with Eden & Kate, but that was just for us.

In case you didn't know.

We won!!!!

The bloggers swept the whole thing:

• Team Captain - Samantha Bee - Won.
• Team Bloggers - Won.
• Best Individual Score - Rick Spence (and co-back row rowdy) - Won.

Personally, after doing pathetically on the pre-game online Mental Gymnastic's (I scored somewhere between 20%-50% on all 5 tests), I was pretty surprised to pull off a 52/60 on the live show (unofficial score counted on my fingers).   Perhaps some of Rick's mad trivia skillz rubbed off on me as we were cracking bad jokes and starting chants from the back corner.

Met and randomly photographed some very cool folks - bloggers and non-bloggers alike.  Keep an eye on my flickr stream.   (tag "blogthenation")

 

Here's what we bloggers have been saying so far about our experiences.

Test The Nation Now With Lex, Kate & Rannie!

The 21st century: have you been paying attention? This century is only in its first decade and already there’s a test?

I know many of you don't watch television... but would you turn on CBC if you knew I was going to be on it?  What if you knew, for certain, that I'd be doing something other than shilling CheapEats? How about if you knew that you could play along and show me up for the trivia-sluggard I truly am?

Live on television, I'll be competing with 35 other Bloggers on Test The Nation: Trivia, a national quiz show where six teams compete to see how well we've paid attention to the build-up of 21st century trivia.

Test The Nation: Trivia is a two-hour television event, with viewers playing at home as they watch our six teams of Canadians compete in our Toronto studio. By the end of the test, you'll know if you’ve been paying attention to the world around you, or if you’ve been sleepwalking through the last eight years.

Play Test The Nation: Trivia on Sunday January 20th, 2008 @ 8:00 p.m. (8:30 p.m. NT) on CBC Television and find out how well you know your world.

We, the Bloggers, are competing against:

• Chefs (a couple of CheapEats celebs are on this team - Bob & Ted, I'm talking about you)
• Cab Drivers (I wonder if they got Mr. Geography, one of my favourite Toronto cabbies),
• Flight Crews,
• Backpackers, and
• Celebrity Look A-Likes   

Right now the polls have us at 26%, tied for second with the Backpackers, one point behind the Flight Crews.

Hopefully listening to CBC radio every morning will give me the edge I need, because - hear this CBC - you are my primary source of news.   Well, you and other bloggers.