Hello to all you wonderful contestants. We are really getting to know you and simply loving all of your enthusiasm, hard work and general support that you have for one another. This is what we set out to achieve.
The hosts, @chefsteve, @offoodandart have full-time employment and @pandamama runs social media and other on-line work on a daily basis as well as an holiday accommodation. We are doing our best to keep this a fair and friendly competition. This is one of the biggest reasons why we introduced the "Winner's Circle" - this was to help other contestants build themselves up to eventually get that first prize and also place all those who have made it to the top to be competing with each other and thereby making it a little more fair. I hope you are all on the same page as us but we would certainly welcome any suggestions from our Cook with Us community.
Some of our competitors have suggested that we need more social media and yes, whilst this is an almost "must do" strategy, the 3 hosts are already struggling to cope with this competition and still make posts of our own. We have regular Skype meetings and believe it or not these usually take up at least 2 hours over the weekend. We honestly believe we are on the right track - mostly because of the excellent standard of work being put out by all of you. We have all been on the other side of one or other competition like this. We are loving the comments flowing from one to the other as well. What can we say - other than a BIG THANK YOU !!
One of our main objectives is to find some whale out there - or even a dolphin who would be willing to either donate to us on a weekly basis or to upvote our posts. We would love to be able to up our prizes.
SOME GOOD NEWS
We have been chatting with the marketing team of Viewly, the new decentralized video platform, and want to move into videos as well in the future. A cooking channel will be very exciting for all of us. Please submit any of your old videos that you will allow us to upload onto the alpha.view.ly - cookwithus channel. We are hoping that this will bring in such much-needed funds into Cook with Us - It's still in early stages - but we want to be early adopters and reap benefits later on.
More good news is that we have a supporter who has a prize in store that will make the contest that much more exciting. Always exciting to have something up our sleeves for you.
Please watch for news about our Discord channel. We are working on it and will let you know when it's up and running. Let us know - either here or on the upcoming Discord channel how you got to hear about us and we are so thrilled to see that certain countries are really supporting us. Once again, thank you.
Without further ado - let's mention our wonderful winners from Week #7.
Our Winner's Circle prize was won by the incredible recipe from @whattheduck. Salted caramel, chocolate and peanut shortbread cookies
Your stories, photographs and recipes belong in a Cookery Book - something we should seriously look at for the future.
Our other esteemed winner for Week #7 is cooknbake for her Crispy Cookie Discs with sweet date and nut filling:
Cooknbake is now elevated to the Winner's Circle.
Those of you who have been making second and third places, now is your chance to get to Winner's Circle.
ground2feet
loveself
foodforsoul
whattheduck
deimus
blackberryskunk
cooknbake
So, we now have SEVEN winners and soon to be Eight. This is becoming a tough competition - you are all such excellent
chefs - each week the standard is raised and the judging becomes more difficult
We are also planning to bring in a guest judge from time to time.
Also need to mention that we will be having a short break June 12th to July 1st and coming in with a big bang to see what you cooked over the holidays - and not forgetting the upcoming American Day of Independence - 4th of July.
Please check to see the mystery theme each week on the weekly "Post your Entry Here" post.
Giving teamsouthafrica a tag this week for being such loyal supporters of our competition.
