Our little bake sale that could that left us with little sleep to live on for three weeks, in fact, made:

$7,136

Exceeding our $5K goal by more than $2,000!

WE DID IT, VANCOUVER!!! You raised all that in 2.5 hours.

In the beginning there were doubts of filling up the space and having enough bakers to provide the goodies. It was down to the wire as they signed up following strict guidelines and tight deadlines.

Everything came together in the end: we had a long line of eager sweet-toothed patrons before we could even open our doors to the public. Our bakers wowed us with a spectacular array of baked goods and treats, our generous sponsors provided their amazing services and even more baked goods and prizes to raise dollars, and our dependable volunteers put on their warmest smiles and practiced utmost patience to instill some sort of order among the 650+ strong band of supporters from the Lower Mainland.

Our initial concern of how to bring in the crowds, turned into crowd control. At the last minute we secured clickers/counters to help adhere to occupancy rules at the Roundhouse Centre. As for the food, we ended up having  to assure everyone that there is enough food by the time they get inside.

Amazing!

I do believe in the good in people. I believe that if you give the community the opportunity to help in a way that is meaningful and exciting to them, it will step up. And Vancouver…leaped! For a city that is sometimes called clique-y, we can all work together for a great common cause. A city inundated with oft petty “complainers” flocked and lined up patiently for almost an hour, in the cold, and under the drizzle of the Pacific Northwest’s spring weather. This is progress.

Vancouver, you slay me with your warmth, generosity, support, kindness, and enthusiasm. The Roundhouse Community Centre was the place to be last Wednesday and it’s all because a lot of you showed up. Imagine that.

Sweet-teeth from all ages. And there's my partner-in-crime, Melody Fury of GourmetFury.com, ready with her paper bag!

Melody and I could not be more proud. We all did it. We worked together and something good happened.

THANK YOU.

And let’s not stop here. What could we do next? :-)

[All photos were taken by Gourmeted-Dad!]

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I was still going to stay mum about these things, but there is something as human as being compelled to act in spite of one’s suffering, to help another. I’m talking about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which hit close to ‘home’ — Asia, where we have a lot of friends and family. I read and watched the news as it happened that early Friday morning, one horrifying update after another. It was during that time on Twitter that Melody ( a fellow Vancouver blogger) and I got to talking about doing something to help. Social media is a powerful thing and what better way to use it than for good? So what do food bloggers do to help? Doing what we do best and do something with the food we love: Have a bake sale!

It’s been a few weeks of planning, but it’s for a very worthy cause! We’re going to have Vancouver’s finest bakers come on board for an evening of baked yumminess. No, it’s not a reference to 4/20 (ha), but I’m talking about some real fine, freshly baked goods that warm the heart: they’re good for you and they’re good for the people we will be helping.

If you would like to join in as a Baker, check the Baker Guidelines and shoot me an email at gourmeted /AT/ gmail /DOT/ com.

If you would like to Sponsor the event, get in touch with Melody at mel /AT/ gourmetfury /DOT/ com.

If you would like to help in any other way, send either of us an email. We’ll be posting more details on the Bake For The Quake website.

You can also donate directly to our Doctors Without Borders fundraising page.

Please spread the word and get involved!
THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT, FRIENDS!

Mmm...peanut butter brownies...

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Congrats, Esi and Naomi! I’ll email you both for your mailing addresses. Cheers!

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I will post the recipe tomorrow. Right now my hands are wrist deep in cookie batter. But see? The donuts do exist. It’s just a matter of writing the recipe. :)

Thanks for staying put and have a good first week of DECEMBER. Do you hear the carols playing?

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1. Croissants
2. Turkish Delight
3. Puff Pastry
4. Oreos
5. Mozzarella Cheese
6. Other homemade Soft Cheese
7. Lavash
8. Sourdough Starter
9. Fruit Leather
10. Peanut Butter Cups (with homemade peanut butter)
11. Canned Fruit Jams
12. Ratatouille
13. Graham Crackers
14. Fortune Cookies
15. Baked Donuts (it was a fail this past January)
16. Authentic Black Forest Cake
17. Chinese Congee
18. 

    A failed attempt at baked donuts at the beginning of 2010. It was nothing close to a donut, except for the shape.

    The next items on the list are Filipino dishes and delicacies.

19. Sans Rival
20. Puto (Filipino Steamed Rice Cake)
21. Puto Bumbong (Filipino Steamed Sticky Rice Cake cooked in bamboo tubes)
22. Sapin-sapin
23. Ube Halaya
24. Bibingka
25. Pastillas
26. Bopis
27. Cassava Cake
28. Pichi-pichi
29. Sisig

This are just the ones off the top of my head. I’ll add more to this when I have time. :

Here are the things I’ve already crossed out since I’ve started this blog:

Mamon, Marshmallows, Scones, Flaky pie crust, Palitaw (Filipino boiled rice cakes), Filipino Empanada, Food For the Gods, Igado, Frozen Yogurt, Macarons, Biscotti, Raw Cake, Kinder Surprise Eggs, Homemade Pasta and Lasagna, Vegetable Stock, Roast Turkey, Neapolitan Style Pizza Crust, Wine Lollipops

Care to share YOUR Mighty Make-From-Scratch OR Cooking/Bakings lists? C’mon now. :) Maybe we can all share recipes and techniques to get through each others lists. I’d love to cross out at least 10 off mine by the end of this year!

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I couldn’t have said it better.

Thanks to Amy for leading me to Holstee, who wrote this a-w-e-s-o-m-e manifesto. Now go forth and wear your passion! Happy Monday!

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All I have for you right now, while I start to flex my blogging muscles is…

The sun rising from a golf course in Florida.

The truth is, although I have quite a number of photos to share with you, but they are still in my camera. Oh, the camera is 222 kilometers away because I (in)conveniently forgot it.

I have a lot of catching up to do! How is everyone? What did I miss? I hope you’re having a smashing summer!

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For those who missed it (whew), it all happened so fast. The next thing I knew the site was down because of an unknown database connection error and an unknown reason for it to happen (to me) because  didn’t make any change to site (front- and back-end). All I know is that for more than 24 hours, I’ve been told by my previous host to wait for them to resolve it. I’ve called numerous times during the day and I kept hearing the same thing: “We do not have an update yet, but rest assured our administrators are working on it.” Until finally I got: “The issue has been resolved.” And yet, my sites were still down. How is that resolved? I put a temporary page up to notify site visitors of the problem, and two people from the hosting company said that they see my site has been fixed. I rest my case.

I switched to another host and restored most of everything already, but if something doesn’t work, please do let me know! Oh, and one other thing…I lost all comments since March 19. That is actually a more positive prognosis than the original heartbreak I had felt at the possibility of losing all comments. I almost couldn’t continue working when I saw that my most recent database backup did not have comments. It was the worst feeling in the world. Who knew I could be so attached to comments? It was like losing some very important memento. Well, you know what, they are. You are. What would the past 2 years be without all of you?

Moral of this mishap: Back up. Back up your blog/database. Back up your files. And something to note about backing up your WordPress blog: use the Export tool (that exports an xml file) to make your life less complicated should you need to install a new WordPress on your site and restore your blog. I restored everything using my .sql backups, but it would have been much quicker if I had the xml file.

I should have known better. I got lazy at some point and thought my web hosting company could not do much harm. Alas, I was wrong. And what a costly price to pay. Lost comments, and lost sleep.

Ah, well. Lesson learned.

Back to our regular programming. And for me, time to face the tax papers.

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1. Our February-March 2010 Newsletter is out! Subscribe here to get it in your mailbox, or view past issues.

February-March Issue

2) Remember those red maple leaf mitts during the Olympics?  We’re giving away a pair of medium ones!

3) Finally, the sequel to the Secret Santa Food exchange last December: Tête-à-Tea: An Online Tea Exchange Party

Come join us for tea!

4) We have a Facebook Page now, too. We hope you’ll join us there!

5. And lastly: we are switching to partial feeds for the recipe posts. We’re doing this for two reasons: 1) To prevent content theft; and 2) To shorten the main page with the long posts. The new RSS feed format will let you read the bulk of the each post. What is behind the ‘cut’ is the recipe. Those who want to read and download the recipe can do so by clicking the Read More link. We’ve had this system on our first year, and it worked quite well. I’m still working on a way so that the continuation will appear on the same page and not bring you to another, so it will be a win-win situation.

I know some people will only subscribe to feeds that offer full RSS feed, and we respect that. We hope that you understand our reasons behind this change and really wish that you will reconsider. We’d love to keep you. :)

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We’re all about good food and living a good life, but we can’t just sit here and do nothing. As we’ve mentioned in our January newsletter, we aren’t having any giveaways this month. Instead we donated $50 to Médecins Sans Frontières Canada (Doctors Without Borders) and the Canadian Red Cross. It’s the fastest and easiest way to help.

This is the time to give. Money is tight, I know, but we have a roof over our heads, can eat when we want, and we can basically swim in potable water. Every dollar will help. Try to give.

Here’s a list of mobile and online ways for you to donate. Included are Canadian and American charities, including links at the very bottom of this post where you can verify your charities.

Anyone can donate through the following outlets, but feel free to find a local charity of your choice.

TEXT-TO-DONATE (money donated will appear in your next wireless bill)

• (Canada) Rogers and Fido customers can text “HELP” to 1291 to donate $5 CDN. They said 100% of the donations will be provided to Haitian relief organizations.

• (Canada) If you text the message “Haiti” to 45678, you will contribute $5 to the Salvation Army’s relief effort.

• (US) Text the word “Haiti” to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross.

• (US) Text “YELE” to 501501 to donate $5 toward to Yéle Haiti organization for food distribution and emergency relief mobilization.

MAKE AN ONLINE DONATION (all links go directly to the donation page)

Canada

The Government of Canada will match the contributions of individual Canadians to eligible Canadian charitable organizations in support of humanitarian and recovery efforts in response to the earthquake in Haiti, up to a total of $50 million. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) will allocate these funds to Canadian and international humanitarian and development organizations.

• Canadian Red Cross
• Doctors Without Borders Canada
• UNICEF Canada
• World Vision Canada
• The Humanitarian Coalition (Canada) accepts donations for emergencies on behalf of Save the Children Canada, CARE Canada, Oxfam Canada and Oxfam Quebec

USA

• Save The Children
• American Red Cross
• Unicef USA
• Salvation Army USA
• United Nations Foundation
• Doctors Wthout Borders USA
• United Nations World Food Programme
• Partners in Health
• CARE
• Mercy Corps

Be an informed donor and check your charity in Canada and USA.

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