It was not too long ago when I stumbled upon a website known as Food52. When I first happened to come across the site, I will be honest, I did not pay too close of attention to it. I considered it just another site for the food community. Fortunately enough, I revisited the site back in late February and early March, and something caught my eye. A competition for your best meatloaf. After all, my wife is always asking me to make meatloaf, she loves it, and lets not kid ourselves, meatloaf is comforting.
So I thought, what the heck, I will go ahead and register for an account, and submit my recipe for my meatloaf with blackberry barbecue sauce. I considered this recipe delicious enough, and unique enough to place in the competition, so I went ahead and filled out the necessary form, and then I went on my merry way. A couple of weeks later, I began to receive emails from unknown people talking about how unique the barbecue sauce was, and what a great combination this was. At first I thought to myself that these comments were coming from my blog, until I clicked on the link, only to find out that I was a contender in the Food52 meatloaf competition, and people were buzzing about the recipe. I got really excited, and began to follow the buzz, especially the deadline date. There were some really great competitors and I was really thankful, and excited to be part of it.
The day came when the winner for week 39 was announced. I anxiously awaited, and as I had my Twitter stream flowing and already following @food52, my attention was all over their tweets.
The moment came, and the winner was announced. I was the winner. I had placed first out of the 40 submissions!
This meant a lot to me. Not only did I feel part of the Food52 community, but I was honored to be part of a cook book they are publishing with HarperStudio who have published great cook books such as BBQ 25, Emeril’s Farm to Fork, Emeril at the Grill, and the ever so funny This Is Why You’re Fat. Not only that, but OXO sent over some great gifts, of which I needed, and I am a great fan of OXO.
So, with all of that said, I want to give a huge thank you to the Food52 community, in particular Amanda and Merrill, and the folks over at OXO.