use real butter

Long-time readers will be familiar with Pim’s Menu for Hope event each holiday season. Food bloggers the world over are once again gathering awesome bid items this year for the sixth Menu for Hope. I’m delighted to be part of that group and even more excited to bring two of my favorite local food businesses into the fold. I sincerely hope you will participate and bid on some of these great items!

In a nutshell, Menu for Hope is a yearly fundraising campaign that Pim Techamuanvivit hosts each December. Food bloggers and food businesses around the globe donate gorgeous, creative, mouth-watering, fun bid items for a gigantic raffle. ANYONE can purchase a virtual raffle ticket for a mere $10 to bid on a prize of their choosing. If you REALLY like a certain item, you can buy two, five… TEN tickets for said item or a selection of different ones. The more the better!

The beneficiary this year is the UN World Food Programme‘s new initiative, Purchase for Progress, which combines support of small and low-income farmers with addressing hunger through the UN World Food Programme’s global operation. It connects local food producers with those that need the food.

The tax-deductible donations are collected by a third party organization, FirstGiving.

Bidding is open from Monday, December 14, 2009 through Friday, December 25, 2009.

Winners shall be announced on Chez Pim after the two-week campaign ends.

To learn all of the details, please visit Pim’s page.

THE BID ITEMS

I encourage you to also refer to the Master List of bid items.

***(UW23) Choice of one original photograph by Jen Yu***

Select one of four original 12×18-inch photographs shown below. Photo will be matted to 18×24-inches (winner’s choice of black or white matboard). All archival materials. Ships anywhere.

summer aspens

blue columbines

fall in the colorado rockies

golden aspens

***(UW24) $100 gift certificate to Culinary School of the Rockies***

The Culinary School of the Rockies in Boulder, Colorado offers professional culinary and pastry programs plus a full calendar of home cook classes throughout the year (they also offer corporate team-building classes). Learn to make Thai food, take a week-long vacation course, enroll in a weekend cakes class! The subject offerings will make your mouth water. I’ve taken the knife skills class (1 morning) and the pastry skills program (10-weeks). It’s fair to say a lot of that has helped me become a better cook, a better baker – just look at my recipes on the blog to see for yourself! CSR has the friendliest staff and they are SO MUCH FUN! It’s not just a school, it is a dedicated and integral part of the local community. Discover what’s fresh. Discover CSR! Thank you, CSR for your generous donation of this $100 gift certificate!

***(UW25) $100 gift certificate to SALT the Bistro***

SALT the Bistro is situated on Pearl Street in beautiful downtown Boulder, Colorado. They were recently featured in the Wall Street Journal as one of the bright lights of Boulder’s hopping restaurant scene. Bradford Heap’s SALT serves up local and organic food. Serving brunch, lunch, happy hour, and dinner. SALT: civilizing taste for over 6,000 years. Huge thanks to SALT the Bistro for stepping up to the plate and participating in Menu for Hope with a $100 gift card to your fine restaurant!

To Donate and Enter the Menu for Hope Raffle

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Choose a bid item or bid items of your choice from our Menu for Hope main bid item list.

2. Go to the donation site at Firstgiving and make a donation.

3. Please specify which bid item you’d like in the ‘Personal Message’ section in the donation form when confirming your donation. You must write-in how many tickets per bid item, and please use the bid item code.

Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a bid item of your choice. For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for EU01 and 3 tickets for EU02 – 2xEU01, 3xEU02.

4. If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box and fill in the information so we could claim the corporate match.

5. Please check the box to allow us to see your email address so that we can contact you in case you win. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.

Check back on Chez Pim on Monday, January 18 for the results of the raffle. Thanks for your participation, and good luck in the raffle!

Recipe: korean bbq-style burgers

Administrative note: The strong undertow of the holiday season is fast sucking me down to the bottom of the sea. I will do my best to answer any pressing questions in the comments this weekend, my good people!

Jeremy and I met our pal for a quick happy hour yesterday evening and there were THREE parties going on at the restaurant. I guess Office Party Season has officially begun. We had one to attend ourselves last night. It’s more of an event though. Ignite Boulder 7 – another sold out crowd at the Boulder Theater! My friends Andrew Hyde, Ef Rodriguez, and heaps of wonderful coordinators, volunteers, sponsors, and speakers pulled off yet another hugely entertaining evening of presentations, music, and prizes. AND they donated all proceeds to The Food Bank of the Rockies. It’s great meeting so many people from my online communities in real life, plus some fresh out of the blue.

ef always warms up the crowd with his sweet voice, guitar, and wit

sold out crowd

fellow citizens play the intermission

What was I saying the other day about my love of summer food in winter? Right… I can’t help it. We had some record low temperatures smacking the Denver-metro area about recently. Last weekend, I was flipping through my copy of Jaden‘s Steamy Kitchen Cookbook. I know, everyone has already seen it. It was part of the schwag bag from the after party at BlogHer Food 09 and I had emailed in for my free copy a few months ago. I waited and waited. I saw tweets and posts from everyone and her sister raving about the book. I waited some more. Then one day, I whine-tweeted online that mine had yet to show up.

Then Jaden, aka Busiest woman on the Planet, said she’d fix everything. And she did.

i love this book almost as much as i love jaden

For as long as I have been aware of food blogs, Steamy Kitchen has always been one of my goto sites for rock-solid Chinese recipes. That and Jaden makes me laugh much like the way my sister made me laugh. But her book is more than just Chinese recipes. It has Thai, Viet, Korean and lots of great Asian fusion dishes like her Korean BBQ burgers.

look at all those goodies

they go *in* the burger

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: pomegranate chocolate dessert

I thought I might find a little time to do some festive baking, but it seems that I won’t have much time this season for a variety of reasons. There has been one recipe I’ve been wanting to try out for a couple of months now ever since pomegranates arrived in our markets. Pomegranate seeds are little jewels. We have five large pomegranates sitting on our counter right now. I tend to stock up on them because Jeremy can put away quite a few. My enjoyment of pomegranate seeds increased tenfold several years ago when I learned I could EAT the crunchy center. How about that?

the glamour girl of the fruit world

boozy version

PAMA had sent me a bottle of their pomegranate liqueur last month to inspire and shoehorn me out of this creative funk I’ve been wallowing in. Well, I suppose lack of time and funk are not the same thing, but I have noticed that lack of time can be an inspiration-killer. Jeremy’s immediate reaction was pomegranate martini! Oy, martinis and I have a checkered past. I thought something more tame like a dessert, was in order.

had to try making pomegranate molasses

cutting the cake bases

**Jump for more butter**