Daily Loaf

Recycled Innovations Contest:

Eco-Innovators are those who think outside of the can to create treasure out of trash. The City of Largo’s Recycled Innovations Contest encourages innovators to make a useable creation for photo submission in their online event.

All entries must be made of 75 percent or more recycled or material that would otherwise be discarded. Contrary to a recycled art show, Recycled Innovations are items that may be reused in daily activities. Accepted entries will be functional items made of materials that can be diverted from the waste stream.

The City of Largo’s Recycled Innovation Show will give participants the opportunity to get their designs noticed across Tampa Bay and beyond. Innovative prizes will be awarded to the greatest innovators in various age categories: Tiny Innovators, Junior Innovators, Tween Innovators, Techie Innovators, and Macgyvers.
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This year, as part of our 2009 Restaurant Week, we not only offered a $25 prix fixe menu at great Bay Area restaurants, but we also added a new “server photo contest.”

We asked everyone participating in Restaurant Week to take a photo of themselves with their menu and their server to be entered to win $500 in CL Deals gift certificates for themselves, $500 in certificates for the server and $1000 ad campaign with CL for the winning restaurant.

This morning, we drew a random number and chose the winning photo. And the winner is …

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If you have been paying attention to all of the ads and the commercials on Bravo, you’ll already know that the Top Chef series is back (and we’re hoping you’ve watched). This time, there’s a twist: 24 well-known, seasoned chefs go head-to-head and compete in challenges just like they’ve put the contestants from past seasons through, all to win money for their charity of choice.

Top Chef Masters is a bit different than the original show, though. Instead of sticking all 24 of the “masters” in an apartment and make them eat, sleep, booze, and live together, four of them at a time compete in an episode. I was thoroughly surprised when I saw this – they didn’t mention that in the previews, but I can understand why this was done. (Do you really think these chefs are going to give up the reins of their uber popular restaurants and two months of their lives just for a TV show? Though I would liked to have seen a Hosea-Leah hookup scenario between, say, Roy Yamaguchi and Cindy Pawlcyn.)
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Earlier this week, NPR announced a challenge — no, not matching funds for donations — for both home cooks and famous chefs: Cook a meal for four for under $10. No matter that we did this last year (admittedly with a $20 price tag), this is still an opportunity for all you frugal gourmets out put your recipe skills on a national stage.

Tomorrow — Friday, May 1 — is the deadline for entries. You can follow the current spate of recipes in the comments section of the original story, or read the recipes provided by NPR’s guest chefs: Jose Andres, Ming Tsai, and Navy Chef Michael Edwards.

Just a quick update to the Watchmen DVD giveaway.  The winners have been chosen, and I’d like to congratulate Leah Bell and Sandra Uriostegui! Leah nabbed a copy of Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic and Sandra took home Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter.

There’s lots more over on the Fun & Free site right now, including passes for an advance screening of Obsessed on April 23. Don’t you want to see Beyonce’s new movie before everyone else? Well then, go and register already.

And keep checking back to The Daily Loaf (and keep up with cl_tampa on Twitter), as we’ll be giving away movie passes and related gear all summer long.

In celebration of this year’s Academy Awards, we’re going to be live blogging the ABC telecast and giving away a free dinner and movie in the process.

First things first: That free dinner and movie. Here’s how you win it:

1. Pick a winner in each of the following categories (for a full rundown of the categories, click here):

• Best Picture
• Best Actor
• Best Actress
• Best Supporting Actor
• Best Supporting Actress
• Best Director

2. Add your picks to the comments section of this post, along with an answer to the following tie-breaker question: At what time will the Oscar telecast end?

3. Come back to The Daily Loaf on Sunday night at 7 p.m. and follow along as we chronicle Oscar night with our usual helping of CL snark. We’ll crown a winner at the end of the evening. (Don’t worry. If you win but pass out before the show ends, we’ll send you an e-mail.)

Join us as we live blog the Oscars telecast tonight!

Sure, a plane crashes, a man gets ready for the biggest job in the land, and Gruden gets a pink slip. All big stories, but where’s the love for a pot of beans and greens, or a jab at Jasmine Thai? Here’s your chance to relive the week that was, without all that pesky news in the way:

• Creative Loafing debuts its new food section! World celebrates!
• Brian reviews Jasmine Thai’s new location and pronounces it “a safety date.”
• Taylor pens a sonnet of middling quality on the pros and cons of oak. She’s well versed on the subject.
• A waiter rants about customers — “If you were to say hello to me in your office I wouldn’t say: ‘pro forma balance sheet!’ or ‘digital rectal exam!’”
• Grapefruit Avocado Salad, plus more great grapefruit recipes.
• How do West Indian ex-pats spend a Christmas in Miami? Like everyone else, but with better food.
• Tampa wins caffeine trifecta — Most Caffeinated City, Least Addicted, Most Pain Killers!
• People get drunk at Tom Pritchard’s charity roast!
• Impromptu pasta: easy Spinach and Gorgonzola Pasta.
• North Coast Scrimshaw Pilsner helps a dark beer girl remember lighter days.
• Taco Bus to host cookbook author and Mexican food maven Diana Kennedy.
• White Bean and Kale Stew will, apparently, “warm your nubbies.”
• CL announces the first of many Monthly Recipe Contests.
• Capital Grille hires new sommelier.

It’s heirloom tomato time here on the Gulf Coast of Florida, so what better way to inaugurate our new monthly recipe contest — and our fancy new Food Section — than with a tomato showdown? We want to know how you use these sweet winter treats, if only so we can shove it in the faces of our frigid northern brethren.

The rules for CL’s Monthly Recipe Contest are simple: Read the rest of this entry »