Hello, hello, hello.

There are a number of things to update all of you today. It had been yet another busy week for Suanne and I. We had been telling ourselves that we gotta give up some stuff we want to do.

At least we had some very good progress in some fronts.

The Diversely Delicious Cookbook

It is now officially launched! The Diversely Delicious cookbook was officially unveiled at the Richmond Community Kitchen Open House.

Six months in the making, the cookbook is Suanne’s contribution to the Richmond Community Kitchen. She had first envision this to be just a compilation of all the recipes that were featured on chowtimes in 2009.

There was a lot of work on her part putting this together. Charlene and Minoo too spent countless hours pouring over every word on the 160 page cookbook making sure that everything is perfect. I am just awed by the level of attention they gave to each detail, like spending time just to verify the source of each recipe.

Suanne is not expecting that this will sell like hot cakes. She is happy if just one person cares enough to support the Richmond Community Kitchen. This is because the price of the book had been marked up and that all proceeds will go to the Richmond Community Kitchen. Because the book is not printed in bulk, you can just imagine that it is not priced like the cookbooks you find in the bookstores.

Nevertheless, Suanne sold two copies of Diversely Delicious cookbook yesterday. He he he … I was there when I saw she was asked to sign the two cookbook. He he he … she is like a real author of a book. That’s my Suanne … am so proud of her.

Anyway, I am going to figure out later today how to put up a widget on chowtimes.com so that you can have a closer look at the cookbook … and perhaps help support the Richmond Community Kitchen by buying a copy.

iPod, iPod and More Giveaways

It is confirmed. We had finalized the plans with Sidral Mundet. Sidral Mundet is a popular apple-flavoured soft drink from Mexico. It has a great taste that comes from real apples and not artificial flavourings. Although relatively unknown outside of Mexican households, Sidral Mundet is looking to expand to a wider audience in North America.

Chowtimes will be hosting a giveaway contest. The prizes includes two Apple iPods and a host of other stuff.

This will be one of easiest contest anyone can take part in. There is one requirement … that you have a Twitter account. In order to win, you just have to retweet a message. That’s it.

The contest will be held on the 4th and 5th of May. It is a good time now to get ready, creating a Twitter account (if you don’t already have one) and follow chowtimes (http://twitter.com/chowtimes). Just watch out for the tweet from chowtimes.

The contest is exclusively brought to you by chowtimes with the Rocket XL, a social media agency based in LA.

Changes on Chowtimes.com

We had completed most of the important changes on our blog. Actually, Suanne was the one who did all the heavy lifting work. I wanted to call out to you some of the visible changes.

At the bottom of each post, you will see a “like” button. It is very much like what you see on Facebook. We are hoping that you provide us a feedback what you think of the post. I think it is a good feedback mechanism for you to let us know if you enjoy reading the post. That way we can focus more on writing stuff you like most. It’ll take a click to let us know — simple!

We have moved a lot of stuff from our site to a taskbar at the bottom of the page. We like this a lot and is much more accessible to everyone. You can toggle this taskbar on and off by clicking on the chevron icon on the far right. The other thing I want to mention is that the search bar feature is now on this taskbar; it is no longer on the sidebar. I’ll let you explore the other buttons on your own. They are really intuitive but if you have any questions, just ask.

Let me know what you think … you like it? You hate it?

That’s it for this week.

It looks like a gorgeous day out there today … blue skies, sunshine and everything nice. So go out and enjoy it!

Have a good weekend, guys … and … eat well!