We just got back from the IACP Cookbook Awards where I presented the Eat Your Books Award.  All the nominees were tremendous books - we were delighted to present it to Stephanie Alexander for Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Companion.  Well I would have done if she had been there so it went to Lauraine Jacobs from New Zealand (an ex-IACP President and cookbook author herself) who collected it on her behalf.  See all the winners on the IACP Awards page.

We had our first day today at the IACP Conference in Portland, Oregon.  It was a packed and exciting day.  Lots of networking and meeting interesting people.  And tonight there was the opening reception where Portland's finest chefs and vineyards produced the food and wine.  Excessive sampling of everything ensued.  But the highlight for me was that I met Madhur Jaffrey - I should have got a photo with her but was just too much in awe.

We are soon planning to test the new EYB searches that we have been working away at recently.  It will take about 30-40 minutes and you would do it from home on your own computer, on April 27 or 29.  If you think you might be interested please email me at info@eatyourbooks.com with some basic info - age, work/at-home/retired, # of cookbooks, if any children, etc.  We're not being nosey, we're just trying to fit the testers to the user profiles we have created for the website.  We also need some people who have never used EYB at all to test it so if you know anyone who has not yet joined but might be interested ask them to contact us.  Testers who are non-members will get a free Lifetime membership and if they are already members they will get an equivalent value book voucher (to buy new cookbooks of course).

The other help I am looking for is to find cookbook indexers in Canada, Ireland, and the UK (paid freelance positions).  We really want people experienced in data entry, preferably food related (someone who already does back-of-the-book cookbook indexes is ideal).  Again contact me at info@eatyourbooks.com.

Today we added our 1,000th indexed book - that is almost quarter of a million recipes now indexed.  Since we added two books at the same time, I couldn't decide which was the 1,000th since they seemed equally deserving. So we proclaim both Well Preserved by Eugenia Bone AND Tuscan Cookbook  by Stephanie Alexander and Maggie Beer as our 1,000th book.  Fittingly, both Eugenia and Stephanie are nominees for 2009 Cookbook Awards - Stephanie for the Eat Your Books Award at IACP and Eugenia for the Single Subject Award at James Beard.

Jamie Oliver has launched an online petition to improve the eating habits and lifetime health of America's children.  This ties in with his new TV show Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution which is currently showing on ABC.  Jamie hopes to present the petition to Barack & Michelle Obama at the end of the series. You can see how many votes your state has generated - if you live in Vermont please vote as you are the only state on the east coast with less than 500 votes!