You may have noticed in the right-hand sidebar a new Foodbuzz widget (along with an ad).  As one of their “Featured Publishers,” I was invited to take part in a first-of-its-kind contest called Project Food Blog.  In this first challenge, I’m competing against 1,847 other food bloggers for one of only 400 spots in the next round.  Winners are chosen by YOU, the readers, other featured publishers, and some distinguished judges after each phase (voting for this phase starts September 20).

The first challenge asks us to define who we are and why we should be “the next food blog star”.  I’m often inspired by other food blogs out there.  That’s why I started doing this–I have photos, recipes, and stories to share too!  From the beginning, I wanted to share my cooking and eating experiences with others and hopefully inspire them to try something new and different.

Too many bloggers out there promote the same ideas.  They’re falling into the “quick fix” mentality that has little in common with good food.  Sure, as my tagline says, “we all need to eat,” and sometimes you need something fast.  But why not make it something good?

Yes, Indian food can take a while to prep and cook, but if you cook in large batches and freeze portions, you can have dinner ready in the time it takes to make some Basmati rice.  If you come to an understanding of how things like bechamel sauce work, you get over the fear of “messing it up,” and you can try all sorts of variations.  I want people to learn how to cook for themselves and gain enough confidence to try something different.  I hope that people learn to love food again, and appreciate (maybe even enjoy) the time and effort it takes to bring it from farm to table.

This blog is about more than cooking, though, because I’m passionate about our local food producers and greater food issues facing the country.  I like sharing my experiences with local farms, artisans, and other businesses, and I want to help bring new resources to our community.  I’ve written about hunger, an issue that strikes in this country and elsewhere around the world, and next week, I’m taking the SNAP Hunger Challenge along with a few other local bloggers.

Image from Flatlander Fund site

I hope that people reading this blog learn something and feel inspired to try something different.  If you care about these topics the way I do, I hope you stay subscribed and get in touch through comments or email.  Since starting this blog, I’ve learned that community is one of the most important things you can find at your dinner table.  Maybe it’s just your family, or friends from down the block.  Maybe it’s Chinese take-out, or maybe you cooked something from the French Laundry cookbook.  No matter what the food is, enjoy it and cherish the people you share it with.  We all need to eat.

Whether or not I move on in the contest, I have to recognize that there’s no way I could have done all this without my family.  Whether it’s words of encouragement from my wife, taste-testing from everyone in the family, or just plain putting up with me cooking gobs of weird things all the time, I’m lucky, honored, and blessed to be able to share this with them and all of you.  Without my family and my readers, this blog wouldn’t still be here.

I also need to make a second thank you to my wife, since she ends up doing the dishes… a job that I really don’t like, but, alas, is necessary when food is being prepared and eaten.

Electrolux and Kelly Ripa are partnering with Foodbuzz to raise money for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (OCRF).  According to the OCRF, ovarian cancer is the 5th leading cause of cancer death among women in the US.  Because symptoms are rarely matched with ovarian cancer, most women (81%) aren’t diagnosed before the cancer has spread.  The OCRF’s mission is to fund research to better detect and ultimately find a cure for ovarian cancer.  When ovarian cancer is detected and treated early, the five-year survival rate is greater than 92%.

Just for writing this post, they’ll donate another $50 to the Fund.  If you want to help out, visit Kelly Confidential and build your own banana split.  For each one you do (up to one per day), they’ll donate another $1 to the OCRF.

I’m not always a dessert guy, but this opportunity piqued my interest.  I wanted to create a banana split that was a little different from what you’d get at your corner ice cream shop.  I thought about the tropics, and I thought about Elvis.  I thought about bananas foster and pad thai.  It’s not traditional, but it was tasty.

I started with the defining element: a split banana.  Some small scoops of vanilla ice cream went on top, then I drizzled the whole thing with a brown butter caramel sauce, made super simply by browning some butter, adding in brown sugar, then a little cream to smooth it out.  The wackiest element is the dry peanut butter.  I made this fluffy powder by combining some creamy, natural peanut butter with tapioca maltodextrin ().  It’s pretty cool stuff, when you put the ultra-light peanut butter powder in your mouth it instantly dissolves into that sticky, peanut buttery taste and texture.  Then, feeling a little inspiration from pad thai, I grated some lime zest over the whole thing.  The color is great, but the citrus flavor also brightens up and enlivens the dish.

I only had two bananas, so I made one for me and one for my wife.  I think if I did it all again I’d add even more lime zest… or maybe squeeze some lime juice over the top.

Some facts and statistics taken from the OCRF page.  I have not and will not receive any monetary payment from FoodBuzz as a direct result of this post, but I do have a chance to be featured in the Top 9 on Monday, July 19th.