Picture Yourself Cooking With Your Kids

In Which I Practice the Tenuous Art of Self-Promotion

Look what I made!

Pretty cool, huh?

It's going up over at kitchenMage as soon as I finish up a site redesign that has been giving me fits - though I am triumphant over an errant DIV tag at the moment, so it's a good night.(Note to self: If your RIV is not correctly floated in CSS, it will break. kthxbai) Before that, well there was this thing...er, yeah, more on that elsewhere later. Or not.

In other news: Remember Michelle, my intrepid technical editor? Well, since last we visited with her, she has landed herself a book deal of her very own and as if that's not enough, she is just back from hanging out with Michelle Obama at the White House. Yeah, I know! The White House! I am feeling all aunt-like about her success; I'm just so damned proud!

On a personal note, I do apologize for being a bit absent from these parts. Life has been rather in my face the last while - four major rounds of hospitals, ERs, surgery, and other assorted fun in the family in the last 18 months. I have plans for regular writing after the 4th of July, you do not want to know what I have planned between now and then. Thanks for your patience with me, the MIA writer.

Calorie-free Bake Sale for Haiti

Who doesn't love a bake sale? I know that I am a soft touch for kids bearing homemade goodies. All those brownies, cookies, cakes, even marshmallows...and calories. Well, you knew there had to be a downside, didn't you?

But what if you could buy all those tempting treats and not eat a calorie? Better, what if the money went for a good cause?

My wonderful tech editor, Michelle Stern, of What's Cooking may just have your answer: Buy a Virtual Slice of Dessert…and Help Haiti. (my 'contribution' is those marshmallows, recipe here: Berry Marshmallows with Chocolate recipe.

The virtual bake sale is simple. Just go to What's Cooking and click on the Donate button. You will be taken to First Giving, which is handling the donations. All proceeds go to Red Cross for their rescue efforts in Haiti.

Then go make yourself something sweet to munch. I'd share my marshmallows, but they are really hard to squish through the tubes of the Internet.

Seattle: Free Donuts for Pirates!

Arrrr, matey!

Talk like a pirate day was a few months back, but Mighty-O Donuts isn't letting that get in the way of the launch party for their Spiced Rum Cake Donut next Saturday (Nov 28th). Any child who arrives decked out in Pirate gear gets a free mini-donut of their choice. Mighty-O is close to Greenlake so grab a treat and head to the lake for some quiet time with your kids. (Pirate Day 11/28/09 7am-5pm)

Come tweet with me!

Have you heard of twitter? It's a great service that lets you share short messages with pretty much anyone who wants to read them. I have been posting there as kitchenMage for a while, and have been including information about kids and food along with everything else.

Well, it turns out that "everything else" can run to the ribald at times. Nothing really blue, but not exactly G-rated, if you know what I mean. Someone sent me a private message today saying, "I love your info about kids and food, but I hate having to scroll past the more adult tweets with my 8 year old watching." Her next message included links to a couple of things I'd written at 2am, when my friends were heading home from an evening of partying.

Um. Er...she's right.

If you would like to read my tweets related to kids and food, cooking with your kids, and other kid-friendly stuff, follow me on twitter at: cookwithkids. Hope to see you there!

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