This is the Introduction/Welcome post to the Chopped: Romance Dinner Theme Readathon. Your judges will be the lovely @OliviaTempleto6 and myself, @Plaid_Reader. If you’ve ever seen the show Chopped, this readathon will take a similar format, only ingredients will serve as reading prompts. You will have to come up with unique dishes based on the prompts we give you. The readathon will run from February 1st-28th, with a celebration on March 1st. 

Your Dishes  

How will you create dishes from reading books you ask? Your imagination, based on the books you’ve read and the food in the the prompts imagine a what a meal would look like, you can interpret this any way you like, art, writing, collage, music etc. 

The Rounds 

Like the real game of Chopped, the game will be broken into three rounds, Appetizer, Entree, and Dessert. You’re welcome to take on the rounds in whatever order you choose but we’ve built them so they get tougher as you go, so you may want to take them in order. 

Appetizers

1) Pizza

2) Strawberry

3) Milkshake

4) Leftovers

Entree

1) Steak and Lobster

2) Edible Glitter

3) Spaghetti

4) Dark Chocolate Truffles

Dessert

1) Champagne

2) Ring Pops

3) Baked Alaska

4) Yuzu

You may be asking what all these foods mean and why you’ll have to deal with edible glitter, that’s me @Plaid Reader’s fault, I’m the evil judge. Anyway let me give you an introduction to what these foods mean:

The Prompts 

The Prompts
Spaghetti	Good Friendships or Multiple Points of View
Champagne	A Protagonist with Anxiety
Steak and Lobster	An expensive book or one that looks fancy
Ring Pops	A book where someone gets married or a wedding shapes the plot.
Yuzu	A book with a sweet and tart protagonist.
Dark Chocolate Truffles	A book from a ‘darker’ genre horror, mystery, thriller.
Leftovers	A book you started but didn’t finish
Baked Alaska	A book with a surprise
Edible Glitter	A book about magic or a fantasy
Milkshake	Two people must go on a quest
Pizza	A comfort read
Strawberry	Red Cover

The Reading

We will be counting pages and there are cute digital rewards available along the way. So make sure you enter your pages and make note when you finish a book.There may be rewards along the way but however you do just remember everyone is champion no matter how many books you pages or books you read. We’re happy to have everyone here at this readathon. 

The Points 

Though everyone will get a prize for participating in the readathon. The  top 3 readers. I see you people who can take down a 600 page book like nothing, will get a special prize. So keep reading, and enter those pages in our tracker!  

The Prize 

There will be two winners at the end of the readathon, one US and one international. We will be doing a random draw for both. The US winner will receive  a signed copy of A Place at the Table by Laura Shovan and Saadia Faruqi, a lovely middle grade book about food overcoming cultural borders. While the international winner will get  $20 in Book Depository credit so long as they ship to your country. 

If you have any questions about any of the prompts not cover in the introduction or need help with your dishes please contact your judges on Twitter. We are here to help, not to critique and would love to see TBRs for this Readathon. Also check out our introduction video here.