The BloggerAid Cook Book has arrived!

Not having children, I don’t feel I can speak authoritatively about the pain of childbirth and how you apparently forget about how bad it was (otherwise there would be a LOT more single-child families around…!).  But I DO feel qualified to speak with authority about the labour pains of producing a collaborative recipe book containing close to 130 recipes from food bloggers around the world, because I  have just been involved in such a birth process. And I am thrilled to announce the safe arrival of the BloggerAid – Changing the Face of Famine Cook Book with all ten fingers and toes and all recipes perfectly formed!

If the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, the journey of this cookbook started with a germ of an ambitious idea, a lot of determination, and absolutely no concept of the amount of hard work to follow (which explains our optimism and lack of fear!).  We truly had no idea of the breadth of our ignorance about the process of creating a marketable, professionally finished cookbook. The birthing process involved a team of a dozen volunteer editors, proofreaders and designers; three editors-in-chief on a very steep learning curve; hours of poring over punctuation, spelling and conversions; huge spreadsheets to save our sanity; late nights; frantic e-mail exchanges; and a disturbing amount of talk between abovementioned editors-in-chief about tequila and cabana boys ;-). It ended with a tremendous feeling of satisfaction in a job well done, a book that we can all be proud of, and a collection of friendships forged for life.

BloggerAid – Changing the Face of Famine (BA-CFF) was started in 2009 by Val and Giz and born from the idea that there is power in a network, and that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results if they pull together. They decided on a charity cookbook as their first major fundraising project and chose the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) to receive the funds generated by the cookbook because of the wonderful work this organization does. More specifically, one hundred percent of the proceeds from the cookbook will go to the WFP’s School Meals Programme, which benefits an average of 22 million hungry children each year.  Sitting in our clean, comfortable homes cooking, eating and writing about food it is easy to ignore these realities. But as a wise man once said, those who do harm are not nearly as dangerous to this world as those who look on without doing anything.

So what can you expect to find inside? Breakfast enchiladas. Pomegranate tabbouleh salad. Tomato & cheese ravioli with aubergine sauce.  Serrano ham paella with oyster mushrooms.  Shrimp biryani curry. Lentil bugers.  My very own sage and sun-dried tomato chicken breasts. Triple-layer orange-passion fruit tart.  Cardamom ice-cream.  And gorgeous full-colour photographs of many of the recipes.

Drooling yet?  So what are you waiting for – buy the book! At only $30 for 130 international, tried-and-tested recipes, it is a bargain.

The BloggerAid Cook Book is only available to purchase on-line, through the Create Space (our printer) e-store. You will not find the book on the Amazon site – royalties paid to the WFP School Meals Program are much higher if we sell through the e-store as opposed to Amazon, and every cent of the royalties goes directly to the WFP School Meals Programme.

How else can you help?

If you buy the book, please review it enthhusiastically on your blog!  It would also be great if you would be prepared to help spread the word by blogging about the book and add a little badge in a prominent position on your blog’s sidebar, promoting the book and linking to the e-store.  Please feel free to ask me if you are unsure of how to do this and I’ll try my best to help.  And if you have a local newspaper or any other publication that you think might be willing to run a story on the book, I can send you a press release and background info – please feel free to ask.  the more publicity we can get, the more money the World Food Programme makes, and the more children get fed.

Also, please remember to have a look at my latest column on Food24, all about the latest London trend of uderground restaurants and whether they would work in South Africa!