Suggestions for Royal Foodie Joust!!

[stylish1]

Thank you and I'm sorry for your loss also. Well I hope our hips can withstand all this food since we both feel cooking is theraputic lol. I did see the ingredients, wowzers, good ones! I have an idea but I'm not sure on it yet. I may try it out this weekend.

[Queen]

Thanks. GREAT! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

[stylish1]

You know, I'm having a hard time finding tarragon. Is there a season where it's available fresh? I'm going to try another supermarket but I haven't seen it anywhere.

[spamwise]

You know, I'm having a hard time finding tarragon. Is there a season where it's available fresh? I'm going to try another supermarket but I haven't seen it anywhere.

Tarragon is usually available nine months of the year.  It's a perennial so it goes dormant in the winter time.  The best variety is French tarragon, except that it's almost impossible to grow from seed.  Russian tarragon can be grown from seed but is much weaker in flavor.  It's flavor is reminiscent of a cross between anise and thyme so if you have access to either, I would substitute them instead.

[Psychoicy]

I miss the monthly joust and I thought of an ambitious idea for foodieblogroll to undertake.  The Queen mentioned that she wants to take the joust onto the website.  How about getting some company to sponsor the contest? The extra incentive would probably help gather more interests for people to participate.  One problem I can think of is that many contests have country restrictions, limiting people from participating.

Another related idea..  One challenge with online cooking contest is that you are heavily reliant on the visual and it is hard to gage how good the recipe is unless each voter try to cook it themselves.  Instead of a voting system, what if we move onto an accumulative rating system that accounts for flavour, visual, accuracy of the recipe separately.  This might discourage voters as some recipes are hard to make, so my third idea is to have an person or a group of people who reviews the contest recipes and validate or review them, such as the forum admin/previous winner/queen/sponsors etc.  I would love to hear professional or constructive feedbacks.

[FOODalogue]

Jenn - I think everyone appreciates your efforts on behalf of the community and I think you've got some really thoughtful comments here. I, personally, like the model you've set up and the idea of having all month to create the dish. I also like the idea of 3 ingredients but the last few didn't inspire me. Perhaps we could do other themes besides ingredients, like 3 colors, 3 shapes, 3 cooking techniques on a plate...etc.

I think one problem is that people have to come to website to be reminded of the challenge. What about a couple of automated email blasts per month to members? 1) to announce new ingredients; 2) one week to go before contest ends; 3) polls up.

[Queen]

Thanks guys for all your suggestions. We will take them all into account when we re-launch it on the Foodie Blogroll website.