Picture Yourself Cooking With Your Kids

Sites We Love: What's Cooking

One of the joys of writing a book is the opportunity to work with some fabulous people. Michelle Stern, the owner of What's Cooking, a San Francisco area cooking school for kids, is one of those people. She was the technical editor for the cookbook, a largely thankless task that involves cleaning up after a tired, stressed writer and making that writer look good. For a book with ~70 recipes (I really should count them someday.) and almost 400 images, this is no small thing, but she does so much more:

• Michelle is dedicated to raising awareness of important issues like hunger, mixing educational efforts with direct action to benefit communities in need. She's a regular participant in events like the Great American Bake Sale and Music for the Hungry, incorporating community service into her work with kids and food.
• She can teach kids cooking classes without a kitchen!
• Healthy, kid-friendly recipes.
• Her garden has an extra row that was planted so that it could be donated to the local food bank.
• She walks the walk when it comes to the environment. Reusable school lunch supplies, homemade egg dyes from food, heck, even her chickens recycle!
• She catered the Celebrity Poker Tournament at the 2006 Emmy Awards, which just sounds like a blast!
• What's Cooking's twitter stream is full of interesting tidbits.

In what I see as a great idea, Michelle has recently started offering consulting services sharing her expertise in areas ranging from curriculum design for kids cooking classes to helping establish a "green" business (What's Cooking is a certified Green business). You can even learn how to throw a cooking party for your child's next birthday, with plans for age-appropriate food and activities, and even food-themed invitations and party favors.

The service that I think is probably going to be most popular, however, is helping families deal with power struggles and picky eaters, which are huge issues for some folks. Michelle's strategies include getting the kids into the kitchen, of course, with Michelle showing how to select recipes, tools, and so on.  I can only imagine how many parents would love a few hours of an expert's time to help them have more enjoyable family meals.

Those are just some of the reasons we love What's Cooking. Check out the site and see if you don't just agree.

Weekend fun with New World Geek

Patti Schiendelman, a self-describe "mom, indexer, editor, cook, gardener, and maker of things" is one of the many talented people I was fortunate enough to work with on the book. She is a meticulous, and infinitely patient, indexer who tolerated daily harassment email from me, mostly asking her to do something that she had, of course, already thought of. (If you are writing a book and need an indexer, you could not do better than Patti. And I am not just saying that so she will work with me on my next book. Really.)

New World Geek is where Patti plays, and it is worth a stop when you are looking for fun weekend projects to do with the kids.

Personal Pavlova Recipe

The Pavlova is one of those bits of food magic that everyone should make once. While it may look intimidating, at its heart it is as simple as strawberry shortcake. You're not afraid to make strawberry shortcake, are you? I didn't think so.

This combination of meringue, whipped cream and fruit is a classic dessert in Australia and New Zealand where it was created as a tribute to the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. (Imagine a ballerina in a white tutu floating across the stage.) There is a bit of a kerfluffle brewing at the moment over whether bragging rights for the pavlova belong to Australia or New Zealand, but truth be told, I don't care a bit. 

Pavlovas combine some of my favorite things: the lightly crunchy exterior of the meringue that gives way to an almost marshmallow center, barely-sweetened whipped cream, and fresh berries. Sweet. Simple. Perfect.

And easier to make than you may think.

Take the Great Jelly Bean Survey!

One of the kids who is in a number of beautiful photographs in the cookbook is conducting a survey about jelly beans for a project. It's only a couple of questions, so run on over and take the jelly bean survey. As her mom says, how can you resist this face?

Meanwhile on my other blogs...

Lemon mousse recipe
Fage yogurt review

Reviews: They really like us!

Books for writers often include a discussion of the importance of publicity after your book has been released into the wild. More than a few such books sit on my shelf and I have read most of them. Heck, I even bought one called Plug Your Book Online Book Marketing for Authors, Book Publicity through Social Networking. (Note to my agent: See, I do pay attention!) Read that one, too.

So I understand the theory. The practice? Not so much.

Truth be told, I am terrible at self-promotion. When it comes to friends, I am all over it. (Have I mentioned that Farmgirl is writing a cookbook?)

But me? Know the steps, don't do the dance.

So today is a bit out of character and I just want to get it out of the way. So without further ado, I present, a collection of links to reviews for Picture Yourself Cooking With Your Kids.

• Amazon (5 stars!)
• Apartment Therapy
• Joy of Desserts
• Spatulatta
• Seriously

Now that we're done with that embarrassing bit of "look what I can do!" how about cooking something? I just posted a recipe from the book: Sleepover Steel-Cut Oats at kitchenMage. Check it out.

And let's just forget I ever posted this, okay?

Spatulatta hearts our pizza!

I have always loved Spatulatta so I was thrilled to see a review of Picture Yourself Cooking With Your Kids show up there the other day.They like the book, and praised chapter, A Cook's Primer, in particular. Having fought for those pages, this made me smile. A lot! (Heck, it even made my editor dance a bit. She hearts Spatulatta too)

They even made heart-shaped pizzas with the pizza crust from the book. You can watch the video here: "I Love Pizza" I love the little red pepper hearts. So cute! It is a perfect special dinner if your valentine is a small person...or even a big one.

The girls at Spatulatta are just starting to explore yeasted breads and the pizza crust is one of their first recipes to try. They say, "It came together in a way that made yeast doughs seem less intimidating."
This comment reinforces something that I have long thought, Pizza is a gateway bread.

Read the review here

Cookbook Winner: Paging Amanda!

Amanda, who didn't leave me an email address, is the winner of the signed copy of Picture Yourself Cooking With Your Kids. (note to self: remind people to leave email addresses...)

Amanda, please drop me a note so you and your toddlin' sous chef can get cooking.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Io Saturnalia (albeit a few days late), Good Kwanzaa, and a a great whatever holidays I missed!

Adorable Strawberry Mice Treats

One of the upsides to my broken arm is virtually endless time to wander around other people's sites and see what's new and tasty looking. One of today's find is these totally cute mice that Sadaf Trimarchi whipped up for the inevitable, and often dreaded, treat day at school. Rather than give in to the temptation of sugary snacks - and in a class with 13 individual birthday celebrations slated for January alone, those sugary treats are nearly an everyday thing - she got creative with fruit.

She made mice!

A strawberry body topped with sunflower seed ears, tiny chocolate chip nose, a snip of licorice for the tail, and dabs of gel frosting for eyes makes a truly cute little critter. Each mouse was perched in a foil cupcake paper with a blueberry and a chunk of Swiss cheese to nibble. Mice get hungry, you know.

My favorite part of her story is the kids who were headed home to tell their parents that they ate a mouse at school! What I would have given to see the faces in response to that!

Read Star of the Week at Little Monkey and Friends.

Giveaway: Signed Copy of my Cookbook

Being partially moved when the snowstorm hits means that we are doing lots of improvising. My feet, for instance, are propped up on a box of books that my publisher sent me to giveaway. It's a very comfortable box and I don't have an alternate footstool so am not totally convinced that I want to give it away, but I think the nice people at Cengage might read this site and I promised I'd give the books away.

Drat!

I am going to make this particular contest sweet and simple. To enter, leave a comment here with a favorite memory of cooking with either your kids or your parents. Entries will be closed at the stroke of midnight (PST) on December 24th.

One winner will receive a signed copy of Picture Yourself Cooking With Your Kids. (I can only ship to US addresses this time but there will be other copies bound for distant shores later.)

Good luck!

It's a book!

The book is officially available! Get your copy right here! Or at your favorite local retailer. If they don't carry the book, ask them to!

I am working on a way to sell signed copies - as if someone wants that! If you are the one who does, drop email my way at cookingWithYourKids(at)gmail(dot)com and I will figure something out.

I promise actual posts soon. The broken arm is getting in the way of the original site plans...