F2: Happy Birthday F2

Welcome again to Friday's Feast¹. Today I'll be talking about how Friday's Feast has changed over the past year.

Participants in this weeks Feast are as follows:

• M²I @ Ca-Joh
  Here's a Birthday Cake Recipe to help celebrate.

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A little bit over a year ago, I decided I would like to have a recurring feature post. In it I would give food related topics for people to link up with. So I came up with Friday's Feast. As far as I know I have not changed the rules too much since I first conceived the idea. Here is a snip-it from that first post:

Some of you may have heard me mention that I would like to develop my own recurring feature post. Well… here is my attempt at doing something on a regular basis and having everybody join in the fun. I call this feature: "Friday's Feast".

The whole idea behind Friday's Feast is to promote all things food. The way that you can join in the feast is as follows:

Every Friday I will post a topic for the following weeks post. If you want to participate in that next week's Feast, just leave a comment and be sure to include a direct link to your post. I will then gather up the links and put them in that next post. The best part of this is that you can leave a comment at any time (even after the next week's post has been posted)— as well as linking to any post that you have written (even if it was from long ago, or in the future).

Some broad topics that I have thought of are:

• Celebrity chefs
• Cooking disasters
• Cooking shows
• Favorite and/or not so favorite foods
• Food allergies
• Food commercials you love and/or hate
• Food facts
• Product placement
• Recipes
• Restaurant reviews
• Stories about eating

… and the list goes on and on. Hopefully that will give you some idea as to the kinds of topics we will cover. I always welcome more ideas, so leave a comment to let me know if there is any other topic that you would like to use.

Originally I used Mr. Linky to capture who was participating, but sometime around May they were experiencing technical difficulty so I abandoned that and used the current method of participating which is to leave a comment with a link to your post.

Around October I started to use monthly themes. I'm thinking that this may be easier for participants to remember— as well as make it easier for me to come up with themes. Here is what I have for my monthly themes:

Month	Theme
January	Warm Dishes to beat the cold
February	Valentines' Day, Love
March	St. Patrick's Day, St. Joseph's Day, Green, Italy
April	Easter, Spring
May
June	Weddings
July	4th of July, Summer
August	Dog Days
September	School
October	Halloween
November	Thanksgiving
December	Christmas, Hanukkah

As you can tell, I don't have anything for May. I am sure that I can fill these months out better too. Feel free to suggest themes that go along with the various months so I can add them in.

Now that Friday's Feast has reached a year old, I am hoping that more people will participate. I am really struggling with how to promote this feature. I have heard a lot of people say they like this feature, but I haven't gotten too many people participating from week to week. I don't want to stop if people like this, but I would like this to be a participation style post where people join in the feast.

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This month is March— which means Saint Patrick's Day. I also hear that next Friday is St. Joseph's day. I'm looking for posts that relate to this festive time. Ways to interpret this topic include…

• "Goin' Green"— foods that are (or can be) green.
• What Irish foods do you serve on Saint Patrick's Day?
• Why on earth would they dye the beer green… does it make it more potent?
• St. Joseph is Italian… Any Italian dishes or traditions you want to share?

So… if you have anything that relates to this topic, be sure to leave a comment and include the URL so I can include you in next weeks feast. Even if you have already posted on this topic in the past— your links are always welcome.

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¹ If you don't know what Friday's Feast is all about, please read the Friday's Feast page for a more detailed explanation. If you want to join in on the feast— be sure to leave a comment and include the URL to your post so I and others can know of your contribution. Also, if you want to see a particular topic— feel free to suggest it as well (I'm always looking for new inspirations).