Ready for a picnic or a hike this Memorial Day weekend? Take this tasty treat with you from Picnics by Hilary Heminway and Alex Heminway.
It's so nice outside! How about a picnic with the kiddos? Try this fun and tasty recipe from Packing Up a Picnic by Rick Walton and Jennifer Adams—one of our amazing children's activity books.
Kids and parents alike have been raving about our new book Origami Toys That Tumble, Fly, and Spin. This is not your grandma’s origami! For example, have you ever built an Origami Catapult? You can set this up in a battle with your favorite army soldiers or Star Wars characters, or if you don’t have those lying around, simply take aim at some empty soda cans! (To order a copy of the book, click the cover image.)
Today let's have some monsterous fun with a video from author Dan Reeder. His book is titled Papier-Mache Monsters -- a great book for crafty kids!
To order a copy of Papier-Mache Monsters, just click on the book cover. Is there anything better than cheese? This recipe for mac 'n' cheese is a fantastic version of the all-time classic and is from one of our newest releases, Cheese: Exploring Taste and Tradition by Patricia Michelson with a foreword by Jamie Oliver.
Mac 'n' Cheese1. Cook the macaroni until al dente, drain, toss in a little butter and place in a casserole dish. To make a roux, melt the butter over a medium heat. Turn down the heat slightly and add the flour then cook, stirring continuously, for 2 minutes until the rawness of the flour is cooked out but on no account allowed to brown.
2. Off the heat, pour a little of the milk into the roux and mix to a creamy consistency. Place the pan back on the heat, and in a steady stream pour in the rest of the milk, stirring to make a lovely thick sauce (you may not need to use all of the milk).
3. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the salt, pepper, mustard and grated cheese, mix well, and return to the stove and heat, stirring continuously, until the cheese has melted. Pour the sauce over the macaroni in the casserole, and stir to ensure the pasta is coated.
4. Sprinkle the top with the buttery breadcrumbs, and bake in an oven preheated to 400°F for 15 minutes. Serve topped with rashers of crisp streaky bacon, if liked.
Makes 4 servings
Introducing Miss Annie McRae! 
But what happnes when the grownups are too busy to cheer? Don't you worry -- Annie pulls herself up by the bootstraps and realizes that the best "hip, hip, hoorays" come from herself and caring for others. This cheerful tale is sure to land you sunny-side up!
Continuing the childrens fun during this week, we thought we'd share a favorite recipe from Pink Princess Cupcakes, the newest childrens cookbook from best-selling author Barbara Beery.
Kiss Me Cupcakes
Favorite Vanilla Cupcakes (below)
Pink, green, and yellow paste food coloring
Buttercream Frosting (below)
1 bag (14 ounces) Wilton Candy Melts
Frog candy mold
Black and pink tube decorating gels
Make cupcakes according to directions, adding enough pink paste food coloring to the batter to make it bright pink.
Make frosting according to directions. Put one-fourth of the frosting in a separate bowl and add enough pink paste food coloring to make it bright pink. Add green and a little yellow paste food coloring to the remaining frosting.
Following the directions on the Candy Melts, make 24 candy frogs using the candy mold.
When you are ready to assemble the cupcakes, frost them green to resemble a lily pad and then set a candy frog in the center. Use black gel to make the frog’s pupils and pink gel to make his mouth. Pipe bright pink frosting around the edge of the cupcake and put one star of frosting next to the frog.
Favorite Vanilla Cupcakes
1 1/3 cups unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups superfine granulated sugar
6 large eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups self-rising flour
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly spray the inside of each cupcake liner or mold with nonstick cooking spray. Set aside.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar with a hand mixer until light and fluffy.
Beat in eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in vanilla. Add flour, 1 cup at a time, mixing after each addition until just blended.
Fill each liner or mold one-half to two-thirds full of batter. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.
Carefully remove cupcake pan from oven and place on a cooling rack for 5 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pan and place back on the rack to cool for 30 minutes before frosting and decorating.
Buttercream Frosting
4 cups powdered sugar, or more if needed
Pinch of salt
1/4 to 1/2 cup half-and-half or whole milk
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond, coconut, strawberry, or raspberry extract (optional)
Paste food coloring (optional)
Place powdered sugar and salt in a large bowl and mix with a whisk to break apart any lumps.
Add half-and-half or milk and slowly mix with a hand mixer on low. Add butter and turn the mixer to high speed. Beat until fluffy. You may need to add a little more milk if the mixture is too thick or a little more powdered sugar if the mixture is too thin.
Turn hand mixer to low. Beat in vanilla and additional extracts or food coloring if using.
Makes 24 cupcakes
If you would like to order a copy of Pink Princess Cupcakes, just click on the bookcover.
Today it's time to share some great advice for girls to help combat cyber-bullying, a new plague that is running rampant throughout the country, resulting in serious injuries and even horrible deaths. Bullying does not have to happen!
Below is some advice from Bart King, the author of The Big Book of Girl Stuff.In celebration of Children's Book Week, we thought we'd share a week's worth of fun children's books, activities, features and more! And first up ... Let's learn some ABCs with a little help from Alphabad by Shannon Stewart with illustrations by Dusan Petricic.
Author of "What We Eat When We Eat Alone," Deborah Madison, was featured on The Early Show, Monday, May 10. Here is the clip from the program.
Watch CBS News Videos Online
To order a copy of the book, click here.
Cyber-bullying is running rampant throughout the country, some resulting in serious injuries and even horrible deaths. Bullying does not have to happen!
Bart King, best-selling author of The Big Book of Boy Stuff offers some fun, yet wise advice about bullying, how to avoid it, how to overcome it, and what to do when you're in a sticky situation.
From “What We Eat When We Eat Alone” by Deborah Madison with Patrick McFarlin (Gibbs Smith, 2009)
Foods for Me and Me Alone
Greg O’Byrne, who runs the Santa Fe Wine and Chile Fiesta, is not embarrassed to admit that he spoils himself on nights when he’s home alone. He doesn’t cook the mac and cheese he usually makes for his kids, but opens a bottle of wine, “maybe not a Grand Cru Burgundy, but a good bottle,” he says, and he fixes himself a thick steak au poivre. He’s likely to make his own pommes frites, too.
More frequently, though, foods intended for solo consumption tend to be modest, sometimes crude, and often downright bizarre. They’re very personal foods, that special category of edibles that are tailored by oneself for oneself, and they are not easily shared. They’re the foods that work for one individual in a deep and maybe even psychological way. Personal foods are likely to be those that simply gratify. They might have nourished us as children and now they feed us as adults, regardless of their content, because our body knows and remembers them.
Take Dru Sherrod, for example, a tall, elegant man with whom we’ve enjoyed many well-cooked meals and fine bottles of wine. Only the faintest trace of his Texas accent remains. Here was his response when we asked him what he eats when his partner, Arden, is out of town.
“Back in Dallas,” Dru says, sliding into his accent, “my mother used to serve me fried Spam with grape jelly. Well, after eschewing it for forty years, I’m beginning to find it a great comfort again. I throw slabs of Spam in a skillet. Thick units. No oil or butter or anything. Fry it on both sides. Slice some tomatoes. Spoon out cottage cheese. It’s salty, porky, strong, greasy, and delicious. A perfect meal.” And now he’s talking Texan.
Or consider Robert Brittan, a journeyman winemaker. We’re driving one morning over the winding roads of the coast range near Napa Valley, and he’s waving his arms madly as he answers our question. Fortunately he’s not the one behind the wheel.
“Fritos!” he cries. “Take chili-cheese-flavored Fritos, microwave them with grated cheese. Fantastic! Or, have them with chopped green tomatoes. Chopped, not sliced. Slicing is overrated—it implies care. You can chop these tomatoes with a dull knife—just beat ’em up.This is fantastic when you first eat it. It’s only after you’ve eaten too much that you realize Fritos are nasty and ugly. The good thing is you can drink lousy beer with them. Doesn’t matter. Anyway, it’s about what you’ve got.”
It’s hard to see this wildly gesticulating Frito maniac as the same man who meticulously crafts exquisite Pinots and Syrahs, but that’s the thing about eat-alone food: it’s not consistent with those sides of ourselves that the world, including close friends, sees. 
“It’s about experimentation,” says Robert, not yet finished with the subject. “Do you know, you can boil a hot dog in cheap beer or wine? Once I got this Hebrew National Hot Dog and cooked it in Riesling. Any Riesling will do.” But other experiments fail. “Chocolate chip ice cream in root beer makes an okay float. But beer in a milk shake? I can tell you it’s a horrible, horrible thing.”
People who don’t normally put a lot of stock into recipes can be extremely precise about their personal foods, such as how milk should look when poured over hot cereal (“It should just puddle around the edges, no more, or it will cool down the cereal and thin it out”), or the kind of bread used for a sandwich (“It must be white bread, like Wonder Bread, not a sturdier variety like Pepperidge Farms”), or the potato chips used to scoop up cottage cheese (“Only use Ruffles”), or how long eggs must be cooked (“Six minutes, not five or seven, but six”).
However strange, these foods do accomplish the work of getting a body fed.
When we began our survey with men, we secretly took pleasure in uncovering those nasty true confessions, the crude stuff, the so-called recipes that make any decent eater cringe—in short, the strange foods of the solitary eater. We got them from both men and women. Things—we can’t really call them dishes—like bread soaked in margarita mix, or sardine oil poured over cottage cheese. Who would do this, you may ask? Well, relatively normal people, it turns out. Perhaps even your own friends.
Cliff Wright, the author of many good cookbooks and one of the best cooks we know, has this tactic for feeding himself. “Sometimes when I’m on a recipe-testing roll, I end up with six
Tupperware containers filled with leftover god-knows-what. I’ll take them all, dump them in a bowl of pasta, and start tossing. If the taste isn’t quite right, I add one or all of the following: fried pancetta, butter, cream, olive oil, prosciutto, egg, or cheese.”
I especially like the flourish of “one or all” of those fatty additions, and nothing in between, like butter and cheese. Of course, Cliff has a pretty good idea of what he’s doing, so he’s likely to end up with something that’s more than merely edible despite his slapdash approach. (Not always slapdash, Cliff has been known to use an otherwise spacious Sunday afternoon intended for reading to whip up a batch of crepinettes, a sausage-like affair that involves three kinds of meat, vegetables, and caulfat—and these just for himself.)
Personal foods may not be shareable, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t good to eat or aren’t enjoyed by more than just one or two odd souls. More than a few of our respondents mentioned stirring oyster crackers, saltines, matzo, or some other crumbly dry thing into cups of tea, coffee, milk, and cocoa. In Cheri and The Last of Cheri, Colette writes about just this sort of thing, but in a way that makes you want to go right into the kitchen and try it for yourself— or at least recast the description of your own personal concoction in a more poetic way.
Take a small soup tureen—the individual soup tureen you would use for a soupe gratinée, or a sturdy bowl in fireproof china. Pour in your milky coffee, prepared and sugared according to taste. Cut some hearty slices of bread—use household bread, refined white will not do—butter them lavishly and lay them on the coffee, ensuring that they are not submerged. Then all you have to do is place the whole thing in the oven and leave it there until your breakfast is browned and crusty, with fat buttery bubbles sizzling here and there on the surface.
Finally, Colette advises, “Before breaking your raft of roasted bread, sprinkle on some salt.” Even a small trace of salt counteracts the sugar and makes everything sharp and bright.
I copied this passage from a book in someone else’s library over twenty years ago because it spoke to me, but I never thought to write down the translator, who remains a mystery still. In the attempt to find this translation, I started reading various others. A less lavish version turned the same breakfast into something so prosaic that I read through practically the whole paragraph before recognizing the raft-crusted bowl of coffee. Perhaps the tender attention to detail in the first translation is what turned a somewhat rough and personal dish into nothing less than a morning sacrament. If so, with the right words, oyster crackers in coffee might be equally sacramental.
Oyster crackers in coffee, yes, but perhaps our woman in the kitchen uses a cup with an especially wide mouth and enough cream to turn the black filtered coffee the color of ivory. I wonder if the oyster crackers cover the surface, so that they just touch one another, or not. Does she take a sip of coffee with a cracker from a spoon? Is the cracker soft below and crisp on top? As she goes along, does she add more crackers? One by one or by the handful?
I’ve never had coffee with oyster crackers so I don’t know the nature of its particular charms, but surely there would be those minute particulars that say why coffee and why oyster crackers and not some other kind, the very details that make personal foods so important.
Largely, though, personal foods are stunningly strange. The following examples are offered for your amusement only, as these aren’t things we could make into recipes, and we don’t think you should either.
Five Bad Ideas
1. Mustard Sandwich with Reworked Coffee: “Use Yellow Heinz Mustard. Slather the mustard on a flour tortilla and eat accompanied with reworked coffee, which means add a few new grounds to the top of a paper filter of morning coffee and pour in boiling water.”
2. Potato-Sesame Bread with Tequila Mix: “Toss an old loaf of potato-sesame bread on a wood-burning stove. Tear into hunks and eat with tequila mix right out of the plastic bottle.”
3. Organic Goo Goo: “Get Green Giant small whole peas and one package of any Green Giant rice mix—Asian, Mexican, and so forth. Make a small cut in the top to prevent an explosion, and microwave them in their own microwavable pouches. During the six or so minutes they’re cooking, look in the spice closet and find some less-than-a-year-old spice, a young spice. Any spice will do. Cut open the two hot pouches with a knife and pour on a plate with the rice on the bottom, the peas on the top. Sprinkle with spice. This fits right into the Asian diet pyramid. It’s a good dish if you don’t have a maid or a dishwasher, since it uses only a fork, a knife, and a plate.”
4. Leftover Spaghetti Sandwich: Usually in cooking, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Here, it is less. The day after a big spaghetti feed, a friend—who is most of the time a good and lusty kind of cook—uses the leftovers to make spaghetti sandwiches.
“I rewarm the garlic bread in the toaster and the tomato sauce and the pasta in a pan, then make a sandwich adding whatever soggy salad kind of thing I have left over, usually tomato, onion, and translucent lettuce.”
5. Farm Workers’ Food: A farmer in Texas talks about how his workers cook when they’re out in the country on an isolated farm, cooking and coping for themselves. Try to hear the slow drawl, the chili-thick accent, and a liberal sprinkling of expletives. Although it was winter when Larry Butler reported to us, I think the word “cold” means raw.
“They take sardines, cold Romas, cold onions, chop and mix, and put it on a hot corn tortilla. Or they start with some Top Ramen noodles, scramble up an egg and put it in the pot along with a can of green English peas. They also boil pork rinds until they’re disgusting and terrible looking and throw them, with fried onions, into scrambled eggs, then put it all in a hot tortilla. And they eat this stuff like it’s good!”
In self-defense, Larry, who’s a vegetarian, retreats to his outdoor kitchen. “Up front I sauté wheat berries with garlic in olive oil on high heat. Wheat berries give you something to chew on. I put garlic in all foods. Chop turnips, onions, carrots, and beets and add to the sauté, then add cold tomatoes if I have them. About the time it’s going to catch fire and explode, I put in tomato juice and nutritional yeast—the yeast gives body, flavor, and B vitamins—add more water, then cook for 30 minutes.”
To order a copy of What We Eat When We Eat Alone, click here.
is Sunday and every mother deserves a beautiful arrangement of flowers on this special day! But don't fret if you haven't ordered a bouquet, because the authors of Southern Bouquets, Melissa Bigner and Heather Barrie, have some wonderful tips for making your hand-crafted arrangement one that will delight and amaze your beloved mother. 
Divide the bread between two sheet pans. Toast in the oven until dry and lightly browned. Set aside to cool and then put in a large bowl.
Butter a 10 x 10-inch ceramic baking pan. Place the half-and-half, 1 cup sugar, lemon zest, and salt in a medium saucepan and heat just until the sugar is dissolved.
Crack the eggs into a large bowl. Slowly whisk the warm half-and-half mixture into eggs. Whisk until fully incorporated and then add the vanilla, Limoncello, and lemon juice; stir to combine.
Pour the custard mixture over the bread cubes and gently press bread to submerge into custard; let soak for 30–60 minutes.
Place the berries in a medium bowl. Toss with the remaining sugar and cornstarch and pour into mixing bowl with the bread cubes. Gently stir the berries into the mixture, being careful not to break up the bread. Pour entire contents of mixing bowl into buttered baking dish.
Place in the oven and bake for 25–30 minutes, or until browned, puffed, and set in the middle. Serve with Limoncello Topping.
Limoncello Topping
Place all of the ingredients in a medium bowl and whip until stiff peaks form. Refrigerate or serve immediately with warm bread pudding.
Serves 8
Any mother would love a break from the kitchen for Mother's Day this year. So why not give her a baking break and whip up a batch of these Rosemary Blonde Brownies, from Cookie Swap: Creative Treats to Share Throughout the Year by Julia M. Usher with photographs by Steve Adams, and surprise Mom with a delicious, dainty snack.
With concern growing over the eating habits of our nation's children, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution has become a huge television hit and a startling, eye-opening experience for parents everywhere as he point out the awful things youth are eating on a regular basis.
Stephanie Ashcraft, best-selling author of 101 Things to do with a Slow Cooker, 101 Things to do with a Cake Mix and many other cookbooks, offers these five tips for how she and her family will be eating healthier this summer:
We are counting the days until summer vacation in our house. This summer I am focusing on finding creative ways to encourage healthy eating in our household. My kids and I need to be eating more fruits and vegetables.
Here are a few of the ideas and/or recipes that I plan to use for lunches this summer to sneak more vegetables and fruits into my kids diets:
1. Cucumber Canapé from 101 Things to do with Rotisserie Chicken by Madge Baird is at the top of the list.
1/2 cup minced rotisserie chicken
2 scallions, minced to make 1 tablespoon
1/4 cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes
3 tablespoons light mayonnaise
1/4 teaspoon horseradish
pinch garlic powder
2 cucumbers
Mix all ingredients except cucumbers until well blended. Peel cucumbers and slice into 24 thick rounds (at least 1/4 inch thick). Spoon 1 teaspoon chicken mixture onto each cucumber slice. Serve cold. Makes 24 canapés.
2. Mango Fruit Salad, Melon Delight Salad, and Almond Cran-Apple Salad from 101 Things to do with Salad are all healthy fruit dishes I plan to make this summer for my kids.
3. Hummus Dipped Veggies and Whole Wheat Crackers is a summer poolside favorite lunch for my friend Jen and her family. Whole wheat crackers (they like TLC brand) and veggies such as baby carrots and sliced cucumbers are dipped in hummus. Wash it down with ice cold water with lemon and lime wedges and all-fruit popsicles.
4. Cracker Stackers are a favorite for my friend, Kendra, for late summer when gardens are producing. She purchases the multigrain Club crackers and cuts up all kinds of veggies (snap peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, etc) and cheese slices to stack on the crackers.
5. Whole Wheat Stuffed Pitas have to be one of my favorite summertime treats. Pitas can be stuffeded with tomatoes, lettuce, and tuna or chicken salad.
Here's to healthy eating this summer!
~ Stephanie Ashcraft
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