saltine toffee
Saltine Toffee makes a perfect hostess gift for a New Year's Eve shindig - image from Redawna of Nutmeg Disrupted as seen in the FBC Flickr Food Photography group.

This is our last weekly news post for 2014.

It has been, to put it mildly, quite a year for FBC and our members.  We haven't even had a chance to look back on it and let it all sink in ourselves.

So many of you took big steps on your blogging journeys, publishing first books (or second or third or more!), appearing on television, speaking at events, creating community events of your own, doing your first professional photography shoots or recipe development gigs...  The list is never-ending and you should all be so very proud of your achievements in 2014.  We are certainly blown away by the talent, hard work and creativity of our members every single day and it's a privilege to work with you all and support all of you in any way we can.

January-header

2014 was a year of tremendous growth for us (we surpassed 1600 members!) that kicked off with our 31 Day Blog Challenge last January and really went into high gear when we launched our new website last February.  Last spring we made a concerted effort to find a way to bring you more brand/blogger campaigns that you could participate in and that compensated you fairly.   Those finally started to come to fruition in the summer with the likes of Parachute Coffee, Pulo Cuisine and Almond Breeze, and even more in the fall like Chipits and Egg Farmers of Canada.

FBC2015 Montreal

In August we headed east to spend more time connecting with brands and to surreptitiously scope out locations for FBC2015 - yes, even before FBC2014 had taken place.  We were so excited to announce the lovely Le Westin in Montreal as the location for FBC2015 next October.

And speaking of FBC2014, we hosted another sell out conference this year, this time in our home base of Vancouver.  We still owe huge thanks to all our talented speakers and session presenters and our very hard working volunteer crew who made it such a success.

OkanaganWriters

We were also excited to announce two great opportunities for food bloggers in Canada.  The inaugural Food Blog Writing Award will be awarded in 2015 as a joint partnership between FBC and Taste Canada at the Taste Canada awards.  And, we are also excited to be working with the Okanagan Food and Wine Writer's Workshop and Tourism Kelowna to award an all expenses paid scholarship to one talented food writer to the 2015 OKFWW Workshop!

And sometimes it's easy to forget just how lucky we all are to work and play in a world where food is so plentiful that working and playing with it can be a past time.

chefcollage

In the spirit of giving back, we were once again proud to have worked with KitchenAid Canada and the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation to promote the KitchenAid Cook For the Cure Culinary Showdown, which raised in excess of $650,000 this fall!

We are also very proud to be working with the Grocery Foundation of Canada again, this time with a great group of FBC Members, to help promote their 2015 Toonies for Tummies campaign and get food into the tummies of children in Canada who would otherwise go to school with less than enough to eat.  Your toonie can go a long way!

RELATED:  Weekly FBC News for May 27, 2013

We are already hard at work on 2015 and looking forward to creating and bringing you even more opportunities to work with brands you connect with.  And as always, we're constantly looking for new ways to showcase the work of Canadian food bloggers to the general food loving public because, let's face it, y'all are a very talented group who create and curate some of the very best food content on the internet today - and we want the whole wide world to know that!

Happy New Year to all of you and thank you all so very much for your continued support this past year! We could not do this without all of you.

The Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Practical Pantry Winner

We had 128 entries but only one lucky winner of  Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Practical Pantry.  Congratulations to Bernice from Dish n the Kitchen!  Ethan will be in touch for all your mailing details.  Enjoy your new book Bernice!

Lighten Up Recipe Roundup Submissions

Just a reminder that the deadline to contribute to January's Recipe Roundup, Lighten Up,  is this Wednesday (the 31st) at 5PM Pacific Time.  You can read the submission details here.  Looking forward to seeing everyone's contributions!

New Members

A warm welcome to our newest batch of Canadian food bloggers - and our last batch for 2014.  We're glad to have you join us!

Business Members

Thanks again to all of you.  Have a safe, happy and healthy new year celebration!

And remember, if you have anything you’d like to share with your fellow members in the news, please let us know about it.  To have your submission appear in a Monday news post, the deadline is Friday at 5pm Pacific time.  You can send your 3-4 sentence submissions directly to Melissa and include any relevant links.

As always, Ethan & Melissa

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