Demonstrating that Bordeaux wines are especially good with food, this year the CIVB (Bordeaux Wines) is the title sponsor of the 2011 Observer Food Monthly Awards.

Now in its 8th year, the OFM Awards are a highlight in the foodie calendar with voting open between April and June for award categories including Best Restaurant, Best Place to Drink and Reader’s Recipe. Judges including Observer food writer and chef Nigel Slater, Observer food critic Jay Rayner and chef/restaurateur Thomasina Miers will decide the winners in July and winners are announced in October.

Because “Good Food Would Choose Bordeaux,” guests at the ceremony (London venue to be announced) will be served red, white and rosé wines from the famous region of Bordeaux.

Douglas Morton of the CIVB comments: “We are very excited about this partnership with Observer Food Monthly. These awards celebrate all aspects of good food, from top restaurants to inspiring reader recipes. The affiliation is another strand to Bordeaux’s food strategy and reflects Bordeaux’s association with food from good basic ingredients to stylish cuisine.”

To be in with a chance of winning a range of prizes including the top prize of a wine trip to Bordeaux, nominate your favourite foodies at www.observer.co.uk/foodawards. The deadline for entries is 24 June 2011.

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The Foodie List - Foodie stuff from around the UK

The food porn showcase – Does My Blog Look Good In This – has had the hosting baton passed on to The Well-Seasoned Cook for this month.

Each month food blog owners select one of their images as being the very best they can produce in the realm of food imaging (foodporn in short). A team of judges then rates each picture on the grounds of originality, edibility and aesthetics.

Fourty Three entries so far; showing original pictures that appeared on blogs during February. Over 100 entries is the ‘norm’ for DMBLGIT.

A SmugMug album has been created for your viewing pleasure. Our current favourites are the Brenebone Soup from Our Family Recipes in Indonesia and White and Wild Rice with Pomegranate from the Sweet Corner blog from The Netherlands.

The image here is the current winner – Kris Ngoei of Bake in Paris with Grateful. Full details of DMBLGIT are available on SpittoonExtra.
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The Foodie List - Foodie stuff from around the UK

Restaurant In Our Living Room, a programme truly designed to tickle your taste buds. This new concept in competitive dining sees culinary couples going head-to-head to create the ultimate dining experience in their own homes.

To promote the show Virgin1 together with Holler are launching a social platform to accompany Restaurant In Our Living Room, elevating the show to a mass-participation, national event that genuinely enables viewers to get involved.

The platform brings together budding home restaurateurs, local producers and hungry diners to create their own home dining nights. For the first time the UK public will be able to easily access home dining events across the UK via a postcode driven mapping system.

To maximize excitement and buzz online, the platform has been completely constructed with word of mouth recommendation in mind – enabling users to automatically integrate the experience into their own social spaces – and in the process pull their own friends and peers to the map to take part themselves.

To check out the map head to: http://restaurantinourlivingroom.virgin1.co.uk/

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The Foodie List - Foodie stuff from around the UK

The world of whisky is varied and fascinating – with the top distilleries employing centuries of exacting standards to ensure each bottle tastes like a dream. For those who know their Bourbon from their Malts, the history and provenance of their favourite dram adds a flavour of authenticity to the rich aromas and complex, smoky notes that assault the senses in such a seductive way.

This painstaking pursuit of perfection can reveal itself in unexpected and wonderful ways, like the link between Maker’s Mark Bourbon and Laphroaig. From the Ozark mountains from which Maker’s Mark source their oak to the special “air drying” techniques used in preparation of their barrels (after maturing Maker’s Mark to perfection) they are shipped nearly 4,000 miles from Loretto, Kentucky to the Laphroaig distillery on the south shore of the Isle of Islay to enjoy a second life creating the unique taste and world-class reputation that Laphroaig expressions are so famous for.

In 2007 Laphroaig held the world’s first ever live online whisky tasting in London garnering one of the highest online broadcast audiences ever, this was followed up by last year’s live broadcast direct from Laphroaig’s home on the Scottish island of Islay gaining an even larger audience.

Some of the world’s top whisky experts and Master Distillers are gathered together for Distillery Live 2009 direct from the Maker’s Mark distillery in Kentucky. Online a tasting of Maker’s Mark and a few of the different Laphroaig expressions will be hosted, exploring how they can be enjoyed in cocktails and even add their subtle flavours to food in cooking. However, there will of course be time to appreciate the glory of both Laphroaig and Maker’s Mark straight.

At this tasting will be President of Maker’s Mark Bill Samuels Jr and their Master Distiller Kevin Smith, as well as John Campbell, Distillery Manager for Laphroaig and famous whisky writer John Hansell.

Bill Samuel Jr, John Campbell, Kevin Smith and John Hansell will be live online at www.distillerylive.us.com on Saturday 26th September at 01.00 BST (Friday 25th September 20:00 EST) to take part in this fascinating story of Laphroaig and Maker’s Mark.

Click here to submit questions before the chat www.distillerylive.us.com. Anyone whose question is read out during the live show will receive a special prize.

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Beer Exposed is the first independent event of its kind to be held in London, bringing together beers and brewers from all over the world to create a unique experience designed to expose you and your friends to the incredible diversity of tastes and flavours that beer can offer. In a relaxed and informal environment and in the company of the top names in the industry sample & learn about some of the best beers in the world.

Plenty for the beer lover but what is there for the foodie? Well we haven’t been forgotten as there is a the chance to “Learn how different beers can cut, complement or contrast the flavours of your food through the bespoke beer and food pairing options presented by our ambassadors the Good Eating Company.” There are also tutorials on beer and chocolate and beer with cheese.

Beer Exposed, Business Design Centre, London
25th-27th September 2008
various ticket options ranging from £14-£28

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The Foodie List - Foodie stuff from around the UK

The UK section of the fund raising exercise, Menu for Hope, have posted details of the prizes available.

Menu For Hope, for those in the dark, is a world-wide fund raising event where various prizes are put up for auction. It was the brainchild of Pim of Chez Pim and involves bloggers and other donors from around the world each give something to be raffled off online for the benefit of the UN World Food Programme charity.

This year’s campaign runs from 10-21 December and all the funds raised will be allocated to a school feeeding programme in Lesotho.

There is a hugly tempting array of prizes for the UK section. These range from food hampers and cookery books though to Dinner for two at Patterson’s restaurant in London and a Sourdough Bread Baking Starter Kit.

Anyone can buy tickets to try for one of these prizes –

1. Choose the prize or prizes of your choice from the main Menu for Hope site. (This is the global list of all prizes donated this year. Alternatively, you can see only the UK prizes on Cooksister.) You must make sure to check the terms and conditions for the individual prizes BEFORE you bid, as some will come with restrictions regarding where they ship to or how long the prize is valid for.

2. Go to the donation site and make a donation. The hosts do not handle the cash at all – it goes directly to Justgiving to be passed on to the World Food Programme.

3. Please specify the prize code of the prize you’d like in the ‘Personal Message’ section in the donation form when confirming your donation. Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice. If you are buying more than one ticket, please indicate how you would like the tickets to be allocated. For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for EU01 and 3 tickets for EU02. Please write 2xEU01, 3xEU02.

4. If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box and fill in the information so we could claim the corporate match.

5. Please check the box to allow us to see your email address so that we could contact you in case you win. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.

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The Foodie List - Foodie stuff from around the UK

For the fifth consecutive year the WellFed Network is hosting the Food Blog Awards. While not exclusively focused on the UK – blogs have been nominated from across the world in 14 different categories – several UK blogs are in the running.

You can vote for your favourite blog in the following categories –

1. Best Food Blog – Chef
2. Best Food Blog – City – including Kristan in London
3. Best Food Blog – Drinks
4. Best Food Blog – Family/Kids
5. Best Food Blog – Group
6. Best Food Blog – Humour
7. Best Food Blog – Industry – including The Guardian’s Word of Mouth
8. Best Food Blog – New
9. Best Food Blog – Photography
10. Best Food Blog – Post
11. Best Food Blog – Rural
12. Best Food Blog – Theme
13. Best Food Blog – Writing – including The Cooksister
14. Food Blog of the Year

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One of the better UK-based food blogs – Eating Leeds – is running a fine looking competition in conjunction with Hotel Chocolat, where the prize is a mouth-watering selection of their very finest chocolates and a recipe book. The winner then competes for even more fine prizes.

“Do you have the best Christmas chocolate-chip cookies in town? Is your Christmas chocolate log simply to die for? Then why not put your recipe to the test against the rest of the country.

All you have to do is submit your recipe – the more original the better – and you could win a Christmas chocolate selection box (pictured) AND a copy of Hotel Chocolat’s 101 Best Loved Chocolate Recipes. The lucky winner of the Eating Leeds and Hotel Chocolat Christmas competition will also be entered automatically into the Hotel Chocolat Grand Prize recipe competition and could win even more seasonal chocolate goodies!

Do you think you’re the finest chocolate chef in the land? Well there really is only one way to find out … and that’s to head over to Hotel Chocolat and submit your recipe!”

Full details of the competition at Eating Leeds

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The Foodie List - Foodie stuff from around the UK

The food porn showcase – Does My Blog Look Good In This - has had the hosting baton passed on to SpittoonExtra for this month.

Each month food blog owners select one of their images as being the very best they can produce in the realm of food imaging (foodporn in short). A team of judges then rates each picture on the grounds of originality, edibility and aesthetics.

Fourteen entries so far; showing original pictures that appeared on blogs during July. Over 100 entries is the ‘norm’ for DMBLGIT.

A Picassa album has been created for your viewing pleasure. Our current favourites are the hollandaise sauce picture by The Passionate Cook and the Raspberry Dahilia mousse with Mint Choc Leaves by R Khooks.

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The Foodie List - Foodie stuff from around the UK

Does all organic food taste of dung?

Of course if you are trying to be a hip-and-amusing Londonist writer, it all does. Alternatively you could head over there anyway to enter their competition to win a £50 food hamper. Contents of said hamper are

Organic Trofie
Organic Spaghetti
Organic Penne
Ligurian Riviera Pesto
Amatriciana Pasta sauce
Sun-dried tomatoes in extra-virgin olive oil
1 bottle of Organic Extra-virgin Olive Oil
Hazelnut and Chocolate Spread
1 bottle of Müller Thurgau Alto Adige D.O.C. 2005
1 bottle of Lacryma Christi D.O.C Rosso 2005

Not bad…. and certainly not dung!

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The Foodie List - Foodie stuff from around the UK