The Weekly News for January 14, 2013

Mac & Cheese Pie by Sean Neild in the FBC flickr photo group!

Happy Monday all - get out your red staplers (bonus points if you know what I'm talking about!) and let's get on with a packed news this week...

New FBC2013 Sponsors!

We're pretty darn excited to welcome Kraft Canada and Ontario Pork as Gold and Silver sponsors, respectively, of FBC2013 this April! We're looking forward to welcoming them to the event and working with them over the next few months as we gear up for Canada's first food blogging conference!

And stay tuned - tickets will be going on sale later this month. We'll be announcing more ticket information over the coming days.

Making the News More Fun with Janes!

We mentioned recently that we're very happy to have Janes Family Foods back as our Weekly News Sponsor this year and we're going to add to the fun with a little monthly prize! We might mix up the contest from month to month but for January we're going to do a random draw from our entire membership for some Janes product vouchers. We'll announce our winner in the first issue of February's news. Even more reason's to check out the FBC news and be sure to check out Janes on facebook and twitter!

Share Your Photos With Us On Flickr!

Last year we did a 365 FBC photo project - one photo a day for 365 days. We had a few hardy souls who made it all the way to the end and we've been featuring their images in the news throughout 2012. Well, we thought this year we'd make it a little easier on you all. So we're turning our flickr group into an FBC Member photo pool! Become a member of the group and share your favourite food photos (that you've taken, of course!) with the whole group! Each week we'll choose one image from that week's submissions to be the lead image in the Weekly News! Sound like fun? Awesome!

When you submit your image please note that you are giving us permission to publish your image in the Weekly News (with proper credit of course) with a link back to the original on flickr! Get snapping with your cameras. You can join the group here.

Aran Goyoaga Visits Montreal

There are a handful of food bloggers in this world that can be identified just by the mention of their first name. Aran from the hugely popular blog, Cannelle et Vanille, is one of them! And she will be visiting Montreal this coming weekend on January 19th for a free book signing event and to teach a hands-on gluten free cooking class on January 20th ($135). You can read more about both events in our Quebec Events Page.

National Cupcake Day for SPCAs and Humane Societies

We here at FBC are very big animal lovers and we wanted to let you all know about National Cupcake Day for SPCAs and Humane Societies across Canada. It's happening Feb 25th and you can register now. The idea is to bake cupcakes for your friends or family in exchange for a donation to your local shelters. You can track your progress in your "online bakery". This is such a great cause and when I think about my slobbery lovey lab Sam and how lucky I am to have him and how so many other animals out there need to find their "forever homes" it makes me all goose-bumpy! If you love to bake, it's definitely worth checking out and getting involved!

World Chocolate Master 2013 - Toronto

The kind folks at Barry Callebaut Canada asked us to extend an invitation to all our members to drop in and see all the action at the World Chocolate Masters this coming Sunday, Jan 20th at Humber College from 7:30-4:30. For more details you can visit the World Chocolate Masters website!

Coming This Week

Be sure to tune in on Wednesday for a really informative piece from Charmian Christie on working with publishers and publicists to review cookbooks. There's some great info in it.

And remember to stop by our Facebook Page and become a fan if you aren't already - we've been having some great discussions over there on the Google+, the best food book in your library, blogging goals for 2013 and more! And as always, we tweet at @FoodBloggersCA and we're plussers over on Google (if you follow us there, be sure to say hi - sometimes we don't recognize our followers by their given names and we always like to follow back!)

New Members

Let's meet them all our newest members right now and give them a big welcome!

And welcome to our newest business level member, Burnbrae Farms!

And remember, if you have anything you’d like to share with your fellow members in the news, please let us know about it. To have your submission appear in a Monday news post, the deadline is Friday at 5pm Pacific time. You can send your submissions directly to Melissa.

As always,

Melissa, Mardi and Ethan