I have been thinking of jump starting my “savory” cooking side of the blog. If you have been visiting for a while, you realized that sweets make more of an appearance than savory dishes around these parts. One of the reasons for this is the fact that I participate in different baking clubs and they keep me in line when it comes to being accountable in posting my sweets creations.

Unfortunately, the only thing that keeps me accountable in savory cooking is Tom and the fact that we have to eat dinner every night - mmm, ok, maybe every other night – for the most part we live off cereal, going out to restaurants and our level of laziness that day.

I need to change that, because just like I love baking, I love cooking just as much, if not even more. So, I have been thinking the only way to do this is to make myself accountable as well and to accomplish that (and make it fun) I been itching to start my own little savory cook-along club.

And like anything in life, the more the merrier… so I started talking to one of my fellow HCB, Jenn of Knitty Baker about it and one thing lead to another and she was interest in joining me - I guess they need to eat at their house too. Then we got to discuss how it will work and what would be the rules and how it will flow and I totally tackled her to the ground and made her convinced her to be my co-host in this little project. She totally said yes, because I can be very persuasive - even without the tackling.

And since we both like to share in the fun, I’m putting it out there to see who else would be interested in joining us in cooking up a storm.

Anyone? Anyone? STEP RIGHT UP!

Here are the rules so far (they may change, based on suggestions and input from the final group):

You must have a blog.
We will be using The Illustrated Kitchen Bible by Victoria Blashford-Snell for our fist cookbook - With over 1000+ recipes from all over the world, we will be pretty busy. You will need to purchase the book in order to participate.
This will be a weekly event. Each week you will have a choice of cooking the selected recipe for that week and then post it on your blog Sunday night.
In order to keep an “active” role in the group, we ask that you commit yourself to making at least 2 recipes a month. If you participate every week, fantastic! If you participate every other week, grand! If for some reason you cannot participate due to some unforeseen circumstances, you need to let us know. We will be perusing all of the group members’ blogs and you will be removed from the list if there are 2 consecutive months without the 2 required posts and if you haven’t notified us of your circumstances.
If a chosen recipe does not meet your dietary restrictions (vegetarian, diabetic, allergies, etc.) you have 2 options: A, Email us to let us know and you will receive a “PASS” for that week, or B. Modify the recipe to fit your dietary restrictions.
A recipe or two will most likely come along that you just cannot make for whatever reason. In the case where you just cannot bring yourself to make a recipe (aside from dietary restrictions), please let us know and we will issue you a “PASS”.
We like to keep membership to about 30-40 cooks, this way we can all share and view others blogs (if we become too big it will be a nightmare to keep track for all of us.) – So sign up fast, once we hit that 40 member mark, we will “close the membership” and start a wait list. If anyone drops off (we understand that life happens) the next person in the wait list will be a new member of the group.
If you are still with us at this point, you might be wondering, what’s the name of this cool cooking group? Well, we have some names that we have thought of, but we are still looking. We are open to suggestions as well, and if we get enough people, we may put the choices up for a vote.

So, if we have not scared you away and you would like to join us and participate in the fun, email me at sweetbitesblog@gmail.com with the subject line: “Calling All Cooks” and please include:

Your name
Blog Name and URL address
Email address
Geographical Location (where are you cooking from!).
Suggest a name for the group!
Additional rules and/or flow ideas (because more brain power dish out better results!)

We are setting a “launch date” of October 1, 2010 and as we come together, we will be sending more information as we iron out the rest of the “stuff”. And it will also give everyone time to go out and get the cookbook.

And to make it even more “attractive” – I decided it was time for Sweetbites Blog first giveaway.

After joining our group and sending me your email, come back here and comment “I WILL COOK!” For a chance to win your own copy of The Illustrated Kitchen Bible. And, if you help us spread the word around and post about it and tells us by linking back to us, you will get an additional entry.

Fine print: Giveaway will close on August 31, 2010 (US EST) and a winner will be randomly selected and announced on September 1^st.

We hope you join us in this new adventure!