I want to thank all of my readers who have so generously donated to A Menu For Hope this year, and while it is true that we have together broken last years record of approximately $62, 000.00, we’d like, in the last few hours of the campaign, send as much as we possibly can to the schoolkids of Lesotho.

There are some woefully neglected prizes with some great odds of winning out there: Pim breaks down some of them, and on her blog, there are links to more extensive lists breaking down the odds on prizes regionally.

These links are on the right hand side of the front page of her blog–under A Menu For Hope Daily, which lists the up-to-the-minute donation total.

It is amazing to me to see generosity in action among food blog readers: you all are a wonderful bunch of people! Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.

Oh, and while you are at it–keep playing Free Rice. With Free Rice, the bookish cook’s hunger for vocabulary can help feed poor people around the world. It is a great way to extend the generosity of A Menu For Hope all through the year.

Remember, the more people who play, the more people who win a full dinner plate through the United Nations World Food Program.

A Menu For Hope continues on–and blog readers are giving generously to help out the school lunch program of Lesotho.

I know it is hard to choose among so many amazing prizes, but do give it a shot and buy a raffle ticket or two or three. They make great gifts for those hard to buy for folks who also happen to be inclined toward charitable works.

And if you win–or your gift recipient wins–that is just icing on the cake.

Here are some of my favorite prizes–meaning ones I am going to buy tickets for–which you might like too:

From Chez Pim– UW11 Lunch with Howard McGee: Harold is the original Culinary Nerd. And I mean that in the fondest sense possible–author of On Food and Cooking, which is one of my favorite reference books of all time. I would love to sit, eat and geek out about food with Harold. (I am sure that every other Culinary Nerd food blog reader in the world would also love to geek out with Harold! Who wouldn’t?)

From Becks And Posh: UW32The English Afternoon Tea Package, which includes a beautiful teapot, English preserves, Twining’s tea, handmade scones, and all sorts of other lovelies. I want to bid on it not only because I love tea, but because I want to know how Sam makes English style clotted cream here in the US. Sam is so clever–she is making sure that everyone who bids on her prize wins.

From Quick Indian Cooking: UK12 Indian Cooking Bible Published in India. Malinka says she will send a copy of National Indian Association of Women Cookbook, a book only available in India, anywhere in the world. She also says it has taught generations of Indian women how to cook–and that is a great endorsement. I -really- want to get my hands on a copy of it, so I’ll definitely be bidding on it.

Those are my favorites so far–and of course, there is always the prize I am sponsoring–A Gift of Indian Spices.

The total raised so far this year is $30,850.00.

Let’s keep up the good work!

Now, you can finally see all the goodies which will come to the lucky winner of prize number UC06: “A Gift of Indian Spices” from the Menu For Hope raffle. Everything you see, with the exception of the jars holding the three kinds of dal, will be included in the gift.

The dals which will come with the gift are two pounds each masoor dal–which are those pretty orange split lentils you see in the big jar, toor dal, which are in the medium sized jar, and moong dal. You can cook these separately or in any combination and they make a great protein-rich vegetarian dish.

Now, let’s talk about the spices, and the masala dhaba–the traditional Indian spice tin you see in the middle of all the goodies.

The masala dhaba has seven little cups which go into the big outer tin. The large outer tin also has an inner lid which fits tightly, keeping the spices sealed in an airtight environment, and a spoon, which is used to scoop the spices out for use. Then, there is an outer lid which seals everything up perfectly, keeping out moisture, light and all the other things which are bad for making your spices stale.

It is of solid stainless steel construction, and is nice and shiny. It is meant to be left out on your counter, near your stove so you can use it every day. It will last a lifetime, I promise you.

It will come with the spices pictured–or at least, if not these exact spices, ones like them.

Here is a closeup of the masala dhaba along with all of the spices that will come with it. (I will pack the spices in little plastic bags for shipping so they don’t get spilled and messed up. The spices included are, from the top going clockwise: very pungent black malabar black peppercorns, brown mustard seeds, which you can use ground or whole–I like them best whole, whole green cardamom pods–you can use them whole, or ground, cumin seeds–again, I love them whole, a hand-mixed batch of Bengali panch phoron–my very favorite Indian whole spice mixture containing cumin, nigella, fennel, mustard and fenugreek seeds, all whole–this mixture does magical things to any vegetable dish, and in the center, coriander seeds.

Along the periphery, filling in the gaps between the inner tins, you see that I have tucked more spices. This is not how you are supposed to store spices in your masala dhaba, but I really wanted to give the winner a lot of really good spices, so, again, clockwise from the top, you will see cinnamon sticks, dried sanam chilies, bay leaves, whole dried Thai chilies I grew this summer, black cardamom pods–go easy on these, they are strong!, and Pakistani whole dried chilies which are super, super SUPER hot.

Oh, wait–I forgot one spice mixture–see the one ground spice in the tin, next to the panch phoron? That is my own house garam masala–a mixture of spices I toasted, and ground to be sprinkled on a dish near the end of cooking to add that last little fillip of fragrance and heat. The winner has a choice with this one–I can send it to them with the spices toasted but whole, ready to grind, or ground up and ready to go. In either case, it will be done right before I ship the package off, for optimum freshness.

And, finally, the Stash Tea gift box includes six types of teas, all sealed for freshness, all from India, packed in the absolutely gorgeous box you see here. I love the art on the box, and would be tempted to frame the lid and hang it on a wall in my kitchen if I were keeping the box.

To read more about the books you see–if you haven’t read my first post about this prize, check it out here.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them, and I will answer as soon as I can.

You can see the little spoon for the masala dhaba in the garam masala.

Hello, everyone!

Welcome to the beginning of A Menu For Hope campaign for 2007, hosted by Pim at Chez Pim where food bloggers come together and raffle off great prizes and gifts to help raise money for the United Nations World Food Program. The funds raised by this year’s raffle will all go to the Lesotho school lunch program. To read more about this program, check out this post at Chez Pim.

To see a list of all the prizes being offered by food bloggers, go to Chez Pim and check them all out.

Kalyn at Kalyn’s Kitchen is a regional coordinator for the Midwestern US, and she has a list of all the prizes from bloggers in her area, where you can see larger photographs and links to all the blog posts describing them. You can check out that list here.

I posted about my prize, which I call “A Gift of Indian Spices,” on Saturday; follow the link here to read about it. The prize code for “A Gift of Indian Spices” is UC06.

Here’s How to Participate in A Menu for Hope:

1. Choose a prize or prizes from our Menu for Hope at Chez Pim. (Check the morning of December 10 to see all the prizes.)

2. Go to the donation site at First Giving and make a donation.

3. Please specify which prize you’d like in the ‘Personal Message’ section in the donation form. You must write in how many tickets per prize, and use the prize code. (Each $10 you donate will buy one raffle ticket toward any prize.For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for EU01 and 3 tickets for EU02. Please write 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 could contact you in case you win.Your email address will not be shared with anyone. Check back on Chez Pim on Wednesday Jaunary 9 for the results of the raffle.

That’s how it all works. A Menu For Hope runs from today, December 10 through December 21.

Now–let the giving begin!

Here is the first post listing the prize that Restaurant Salaam and Tigers & Strawberries are sponsoring for the fourth annual Menu For Hope event hosted by Pim at Chez Pim. The prize code number you will use when you go to first giving if you are interested in buying raffle tickets for this prize is UC06

I don’t have all of the pieces to the prize gathered in one place, so I have to post several different photographs to show all of the goodies that will be coming to the lucky holder of the winning raffle ticket. When all of the prize bits are gathered together, I will post again, with a single photograph of everything arranged artfully and aesthetically. Until then, let’s make do with the three photographs and intense verbal descriptions herein. (For better photos of the complete prize, along with descriptions of all the spices, dals and everything that will be include, go here.)

First, as you can see in the photograph above, we are offering four books, all relating to food in India. All of these books have been reviewed or at least mentioned on this blog, and all of them are excellent resources for someone who is learning to cook Indian foods.These books are all brand new, unopened and ready for you to dive into them and add your own drips and dribbles of kitchen magic as you learn to cook from them.

First up, going clockwise from the upper left corner, is Monisha Bharadwaj’s Indian Vegetarian Cooking: A Regional Guide. This is an excellent cookbook, filled not only with great recipes, but with cultural and culinary information, as well as gorgeous photographs of the food, people, land and spices of India.

Next we have Madhur Jaffrey’s From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes from the Spice Trail of India. This is one of the most fascinating of Jaffrey’s many excellent cookbooks, because she recounts the history of curry and how it has traveled around the world and transformed itself in each country where it has taken root. This is not only a cookbook to cook from, but to also read like a novel.

Speaking of reading something like a novel–I am also offering Jaffrey’s wonderful memoir, Climbing the Mango Trees, where she tells of her early life in India, where she witnessed such historical events as the partition of India and Pakistan and even more sadly, the assassination of Gandhi. This memoir is quite fascinating and reads like a novel, filled as it is with unforgettable characters and vibrant settings.

Finally comes Monisha Bharadwaj’s The Indian Spice Kitchen. I haven’t reviewed this book on my blog, in large part, because it was out of print for a while, but has finally come back into print. This makes me very, very happy, in large part because it is one of the best books to introduce cooks new to Indian food to the staple spices, legumes, flours and other ingredients of the Indian kitchen. It is encyclopedic in scope, with lots of recipes and photographs of each food item as well as its name in several Indian languages, in addition to its commonly known English name. I used to suggest this book to many of my culinary students interested in Indian food, especially those who were taking my “Introduction to Indian Spices” class where we smelled and tasted Indian spices alone and in combination, and then practiced several techniques of flavor extraction with them. This is quite simply a great book.

These books are the core of the prize, but they are not all that will come in the box from me to the lucky winner.

I am also including a masala dhaba–as pictured above. It is a traditional Indian spice box which contains seven round tins, a scooping spoon, and inner, airtight sealing lid that keep the spices from spilling from the inner containers and an outer lid. It is made from stainless steel and is like the boxes used in households all over India to keep the most commonly used spices close to hand near the stove.

It won’t come to you empty as pictured. Nope–it will come filled with fresh spices, selected by myself, to help you get started cooking Indian foods right away. In addition, I am going to throw in a selection of Indian dals and legumes–lentils, split peas and beans–so you can dive right into making filling home-style Indian vegetarian goodies as soon as your package arrives.

Finally, Hilarie at Salaam thought it would be nice if the winner had something to drink while he or she read these wonderful books and cooked, then ate their spicy Indian foods, so she is donating a lovely Stash Tea gift box of select Indian teas. This lovely box, pictured above, comes with a nice variety of teas grown in India that will make a perfect match with whatever you feel like cooking with your spices and cookbooks.

So, all together, this Gift of Indian Spices prize will consist of four books, a stainless steel spice box filled with fresh spices, a selection of Indian legumes and premium Indian tea in a decorative gift box.

I will only be able to ship to the US, due to the issue of weight. Books and beans are pretty heavy so I will have to restrict the prize to ticket holders within the United States.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments section.