As of this very moment, there are 72 members of our "little" catering group. Wow! I mean, it all started with me, Ann and Becky trying to get through the holiday catering jobs. Now we've got members all over the world, including quite a few in New Orleans, Australia and places I'm pretty sure I couldn't locate on a map.

Leapfrogging membership numbers are great, but they also make for problems of scale. For one thing, as we get bigger and more international, we're dealing with time zones that are very far apart. We've been doing a lot using the Facebook chat feature. How does that work for those of you in Australia? 

How do we even keep up to date with the new members who have joined?

And summer is coming up  - at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere - and vacations, ballgames, and needing to share the computer with the kids all will take some of us away from the online world for days, weeks or months. We'll need to figure out how to deal with that too. 

So help us out! What do you think is working really well with the way we get things done? What's not working at all? What problems have you started to run into as we get bigger, or is everything working great so far! If you've been part of a similar group, either at work or for leisure, what problems do you think we should expect? 

Please note that we are making one addition to our guidelines. (It's a simple one.) If you invite a friend into the group, please help them navigate for the first one or two catering jobs they do with us! It can get pretty confusing to figure out when to serve your gift box items, when to stop cooking, how to manage your asks, and so on. Help your newbies learn what we expect. Oh, and before you add someone, make sure he or she is comfortable cooking at least, say, five days a week and returning gift requests at least that often, if at all possible. Thanks.

 
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So, we release the website, and within two hours I start seeing major things coming down from Zynga for St. Patrick's Day. So let's talk about them.

Overall, there's a big new quest, similar to the Valentine's Day and other holiday quests this year. This one has a back-story about Peter O'Brien, a homesick Irishman, and promises a "special holiday story."

The main event is a big party for Peter, including a catered meal.

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Just like the earlier quests, this one is broken down into smaller goals, includes new recipes that are rewards for some of the goals, and ends with a catering job. Instead of the roses we collected for Valentine's Day, it looks like we'll be collecting shamrocks. (I think a shamrock is basically an RSVP to Peter's party.)

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The first goal has you making sure you're ready to serve drinks and placing the Leprechaun Fountain, which starts off as a big green pool. (It is truly big. I had to move furniture to find a place to put it.)

Your reward is the recipe for Irish Stew, which cooks for 8 hours.

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Although the main quest meter only mention two other recipes, Corned Beef & Cabbage and Irish Mince Tarts, there are three others in the cookbook. The third is a Rice Pudding. All of the St. Patrick's Day recipes are toward the back of the cookbook.

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Goal II
The second goal has you sponsoring a St. Patrick's Day parade to advertise the big party you're having for Peter.

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Goal III
The third goal has you serve up 10 glasses of Shamrock Punch, and ask for a tin of corned beef and two cabbages.

(I'd like to mention that it technically only says you have to ask for these things, not get them. If there's a difference between cook and serve, there should be a difference between ask and receive. But there isn't. You have to get them. You know that.)

But that's not all! Apparently someone at Zynga is Irish, because the delights keep coming.
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We also have new drink recipes! (About time for the Halloween ones to go away, hmm?)

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And there is a set of St. Patrick's Day collectibles waiting to be discovered in the Collections Cabinet. (Find them by cooking Irish Stew.)

Zynga hasn't released information about all the steps in the St. Patrick's Day Quest. In fact, they are still in the process of rolling it out to all players. Watch this space for more information as I can find it!
 
Here's a few of my ideas about how we could use this blog:
  • Talk about problems that are arising in the group or in Cafe World gameplay.
  • Talk about changes Zynga has made.
  • Answer questions about why we do things the way we do them.
  • Examine some of the weird/only-half-way-working things in Cafe World.
  • Advance info, like "There are rumors that next week Cafe World will introduce microwave cooking."
  • Conversations about missing features and what we wish CW would introduce, like the ability to remove yourself from catering jobs or an alphabetical list of dishes.
  • Goofy stuff, like "If you could design a catering job for CW, what would it be and what would you serve?"
  • Guest posts from group members to introduce themselves. 
Would you read a blog? What would you want to see in it? Let us know in the comments section or bring it up for discussion in the group at Facebook.