We kick things off talking about the holiday aftermath!  Meredith is on vacation and she is sending all kinds of fun pics of the scrummy delights.  

Alison and Sheldon talk about the many bakes they undertook from pop tarts to pies, fudge to frostings.  We also talk about the fun stuff we got as holiday gifts with Alison capitalizing with her gift card to acquire some yummy concoctions like Ugandan Vanilla!  Sheldon gets some really great kitchen additions including a fantastic pan from Alison and a new ceramic bowl for the Kitchenaid. 

Then we talk about the 2023 plan!  We won't have "new" episodes for a while but luckily was have a LOT of great content available from Roku.  SO we will be starting with Season 1 episode 1 of the Original seasons.  VERY excited as these are new to us (mostly).  We will also be tackling some of the Masterclass episodes ourselves to see how we are at executing with Mary and Paul's instruction.  We will alternate seasons of GBBO with the Celebrity seasons which are also available on Roku.  The Roku channel is FREE to watch as well - available in an app or as a download on many smart TVs.

Since these aren't "new" episodes we won't be able to do the Fantasy aspect like we did with the new GBBO season, so we are going to do an individual rating system for each episode and then come to a consensus for the episode as a Scrummy Handshake official score.  Here's our rating methodology:

Before we record each episode we rate the show on:

* were the challenges worthy

* were the bakers “delivering the goods”

* did the judges get it right

* did we LEARN anything

* bonus - were the hosts on point

We each give the score based on 1-5 “handshakes” and come to a consensus on the overall episode as a final assessment of:

1 - soggy bottom

2 - claggy

3 - slightly stodgy

4 - the flavor was there

5 - worth the calories.

Can't wait to have you all join us for the journey!